Hiro gets back into the chopper. They cruise up the middle of Beachwood Canyon, headed straight for the Hollywood sign.
Da5id's house has been transfigured by light. It's at the end of its own little road, at the summit of a hill. The road has been blocked off by a squat froglike Jeep-thing from General Jim's, saturated red and blue light sweeping and pulsing out of it. Another helicopter is above the house, supported on a swirling column of radiance. Soldiers creep up and down the property, carrying hand-held searchlights.
We took the precaution of securing the area," Major Clem says.
At the fringes of all this light, Hiro can see the dead organic colors of the hillside. The soldiers are trying to push it back with their searchlights, trying to bum it away. He is about to bury himself in it, become a single muddy pixel in some airline passenger's window. Plunging into the biomass.
Da5id's laptop is on the floor next to the table where he liked to work. It is surrounded by medical debris. In the middle of this, Hiro finds Da5id's goggles, which either fell off when he hit the floor, or were stripped off by the paramedics.
Hiro picks up the goggles. As he brings them up toward his eyes, he sees the image: a wall of black-and-white static. Da5id's computer has snow-crashed. He closes his eyes and drops the goggles. You can't get hurt by looking at a bitmap. Or can you