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!