The oceanbound lanes across from them are bumpertobumper and crawling, and without a doubt it’s worse on the far side of the accident, everyone overriding their carbrains to slow down and stare over into the other lane, bloodlust curiosity surging.… But going upcanyon they can still move; they haven’t reached the accident’s backup yet.
“Indications seem to be that the track has once again been left behind, causing two cars to occupy the same space at the same time,” Xavier says in his rapid on-the-job patter. “We suspect lane changing is perhaps the culprit. My, look at the traffic ahead.”
“I know.” They’ve reached the backup. Ahead of them the brake light symphony is blinking, redred, redred, redred redred redred. Overrides everywhere, nowhere for people to go, impossible for the computers to clear things up when the lanes clog this badly, it’s time to take the old Chevy supertruck offtrack, yes this baby has an internal combustion engine under its big hood. “Independent lo-comotion,” Xavier sings as Abe turns the key and revs the engine, 1056 horsepower, atavistic Formula One adrenaline rush here as he steers them off the magnetic track into the narrow gap between fast-track cars and the center divider, roaring along in vibratory petrol power, let the poor saps breathe a bit of that carbon monoxide ambrosia, nostalgic whiff of last century’s power smog as they zroom by almost taking off door handles, sideview mirrors, sure why not clip a few to give them a story to tell about this ten-millionth traffic jam of their OC condo lives? Abe still gets a bit buzzed putting the antique skills to work, firing by all the cars; he’s just short of his first anniversary on the job. He cools it, drives closer to the center divider, still just manages to squeeze the gap left by some Cadillac monster, fiberglass body a replica of the 1992 cow, “Sure buddy, I’m the one in a car, here, a big fucking truck in fact and I’ll shave your whole plastic side off if you don’t get over.”
They barrel up the curves of the canyon road past traffic stopped dead on the tracks, past the condos covering the hills on both sides, ersatz Mediterranean minivillas in standard OC style—these carefully named Seaview Clifftops because they’re the first homes upcanyon without the slightest chance of a glimpse of the ocean. Vroom, vroom, vroom, past the complex’s too-small-to-be-used park, where as Jim tells it a hippo that escaped from Lion Country Safari settled down to establish a little hippo’s empire in a pond, until they darted him to crane him out and killed him with too much tranquilizer, the idiots. And just past that heraldic fragment of OC natural history they accelerate over chewed asphalt covered with trash and chips of broken headlight plastic, around a corner and into the sota, the scene of the accident. One Chippiemobile there off the tracks, its rooflight doing a strobe over the scene, red eye winking over and over.
Abe puts the truck in neutral and turns on the exterior power system, and they jump out and run to the scene. CHP are out on the tracks doing what they do best, setting out flares. Fast lane is a mess. As they approach Abe feels the sick horror and helplessness that anyone would feel, oh my God no, then he passes through the membrane as always and the professional takes over, the structural analyst trying to comprehend a certain configuration, and the best way to extricate the organic components of it from the inorganic.… And the horrified helpless witness is left up in a back corner of the mind, staring over the shoulder of the other guy, storing up images for dreams.
This time one of the lane-changing tracks appears to have malfunctioned. It’s rare, but it happens. Working correctly, the computer controlling the magnetic track takes a request from an approaching car, slows cars in the adjacent lane to make a gap, slots the car onto the lane-change track and into a quick S-curve onto the track of the desired lane, fitting it neatly into the flow of traffic. No room for human error, and really it’s thousands of times safer than letting drivers do it. But the one in ten million has come up once again, and the cause of accident is sits, something in the silicon; a car in the middle lane was tracked directly into the side of another in the fast lane, knocking it off its guidance system and into the center divider, while the first car spun and was plowed into by a follow-up car. All at around sixty-five mph. One more follow-up crunched mildly into the mess. The driver of that one, saved by the power of electromagnetic brakes, is out and babbling to the Chippies with the usual edge of hysteria. Abe and Xavier hop around the three main participants. The car against the center divider has a single occupant, crushed between dash, door, and divider. Chest cavity caved and blood-soaked, neck apparently broken. On to the impacting car, a couple in the front seat, driver unconscious and bleeding from the head, woman trapped underneath him and dash, bleeding heavily from the neck but apparently still conscious, eyes fluttering. Main follow-up with heavily starred windshield, not wearing those seat belts were you, two people already dragged out and on the ground, heads bloody.
“Those two in the middle car,” Xavier pants as they run for the truck. “Yeah,” says Abe. “The one on the divider is dots.” Meaning dead on the spot. Xavier grabs his medic pack and hauls back to the car, Abe brings the truck down the shoulder as close to the middle car as he can get. Then he’s out and pulling the cutters from the truckside, yanking on the power cord, hands shoved down into the sleeves, it’s waldo time here and novice expert cutter Abe Bernard now has all the power of modern robotics in his hands. He starts snipping the flimsy steel of the car’s sidewall as if it were chocolate. There’s no resistance to the sheers at all. Water streams out over the metal under the cutters, spraying over Xavier who is crawling around just beyond the reach of Abe’s work, squeezing into the new hole to do his medic routine. Xavier did two tours on Java with the Army and is very good indeed. At this point they could sure use another man or two, but budgets are tight everywhere, lot of rescue trucks to be kept manned and ready for tap-out, and budgets are tight, budgets are tight!
The horrified witness in the back of Abe’s mind watches him snip steel as if he is cutting origami, with Xavier and the woman passenger just beyond the end of the blades, and wonders if he really knows how to do this. But the thought never reaches the part of Abe’s mind that’s at work. A Chippie comes over to help, pulls the wet steel back with his gloved hands, Abe keeps cutting, they make a good new door approximately where the old one used to be, and Xavier’s got some compress kits plastered on the woman and is busy injecting her with various antishock superdrugs and a lot of new plasma/blood. Then it’s time to get her into the inflatable conformable braces, neck and spine held firm and they reach in and everyone takes a hold, carefully here, breath held, warm flesh squeezed between the fingers, blood trickling over the back of the hand, they lift her out, oops her hand is caught, Abe snips the folded section of dash and she’s free. Onto a stretcher, off to the ambulance room in the back of the truck. They run back and extricate the man, who may or may not be living, his head looks bad indeed but they stretcher him and run him into the gutbucket, lay him next to the woman. “Shit I’ve got to confirm the guy in the lead car,” Abe remembers, grabs Xavier’s steth and runs back. He has to break a window and lean in to get the steth on the driver’s neck. Readout shows flat and he’s back to the truck. A private gutbucket has showed to pick up the two from the follow-up car, Abe gives them a quick thumbs-up and guides the cutters as they’re reeled back on board and jumps in the driver’s seat, seat belt on yes, off they go. These old gasoline hogs can really accelerate.