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.