Ball Lightning

Tornadoes

I soon found the thing I needed to do. It was the kind of research I’d spoken of to Gao Bo, which would save and benefit lives, but could not be put to military uses: predicting tornadoes. Witnessing a tornado from the small island with Jiang Xingchen the past summer had left a deep impression on me. The optical system for detecting macro-electron bubbles clearly displayed atmospheric disturbances on the screen as it operated, which had given me the idea that it might provide a key breakthrough in tornado forecasting. Modern atmospherics had a thorough understanding of the aerodynamic mechanisms giving rise to tornadoes. By building an improved mathematical model of the process of tornado formation and linking it to the atmospheric disturbances observed by the bubble detection system, we would be able to identify the ones that might develop into tornadoes, and thus be able to predict them.

Gao Bo solved the biggest obstacle to the project: transferring technology behind the bubble optical detection system over for civilian use. When he contacted the military, he discovered that it was easier than he had imagined: since the system had no direct connection to ball lightning, the military readily agreed to the technology transfer.

When Gao Bo returned from GAD, he had me set up direct connections with the two units working on the development of the bubble detection system: namely, the software and hardware researchers, both of which were non-military and had no more ties with the base. I asked Gao Bo about conditions at the base, and he said he only spoke with the GAD project management department, and had not interacted with the base at all. He had heard that secrecy had been tightened substantially, and that practically all contact with the outside world had been cut off. This was understandable, in light of the present global situation, but I still found myself worrying about my old colleagues from time to time.

My research made swift progress. Since the precision required for detecting atmospheric disturbances was far less than what was necessary to detect bubbles, the optical detection system could be used in its present state, and its detection range correspondingly increased by an order of magnitude. What I needed to do was to use an appropriate mathematical model to analyze existing images of atmospheric disturbances, and recognize which ones might give rise to tornadoes. (Later, specialists in the field would call such disturbances “eggs.”) In my early days doing ball lightning research, I had put an enormous amount of energy into mathematical modeling. It was a road I had no desire to look back upon, but at least it seemed like it wasn’t a total waste of time. I had the skills to construct models in fluid and gas dynamics, skills that were immensely useful in my present research, allowing the software portion of the tornado detection system to be completed quite quickly.

We tested the system in Guangdong Province, a frequent site for tornadoes, and successfully predicted several of them, one of which grazed a corner of urban Guangzhou. The system gave ten- to fifteen-minute advance warnings—enough time to safely evacuate personnel before the tornado’s arrival, but not long enough to avert other losses. But in atmospherics circles, this was already a remarkable achievement. Besides, according to the principles of chaos theory, long-term prediction of tornadoes was basically impossible anyway.

Time moved quickly while I was immersed in my work, and, in the blink of an eye, a year had passed. In that year, I attended the World Meteorological Congress, held once every four years, and was nominated for the International Meteorological Organization Prize, known as the Nobel in Meteorology. In part because of my academic background, I ultimately didn’t win, but I still attracted the attention of the meteorological world.

To demonstrate the achievements of tornado research, a conference sponsored by the organization—the International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones—specifically selected Oklahoma to host. The region, known as “Tornado Alley,” was the setting for the movie Twister, which depicted tornado researchers.

The main motivation for the trip was to see the world’s first practical tornado forecasting system. Our car drove along the flat plains, Oklahoma’s three most common sights alternating outside the window: livestock farms, oil fields, and vast wheat fields. When we had almost reached our destination, my travel companion, Dr. Ross ordered the windows covered.

“I have to apologize. We’re entering a military base,” he said.

I felt crushed. Was I really unable to escape from the military and army bases? I got out of the car and noticed that most of the buildings around us were temporary structures, along with several radar antennas in large radomes. I could also see a vehicle carrying a device that resembled a telescope, but was no doubt actually a high-powered laser transmitter, probably for atmospheric optical observation. In the control room was a familiar sight: a row of dark-green military computers and operators wearing fatigues. The only thing a little unfamiliar was the large, high-resolution plasma display, usually unaffordable back home, where projection screens were used instead.

The big screen displayed images of atmospheric disturbances captured by the optical observation system, a technology transfer that had netted Gao Bo’s Lightning Institute a nice sum. What appeared as ordinary disturbance images on the small screen were quite impressive when blown up to this size, chaotic turbulence like a group of crystalline pythons dancing wildly, tangling into balls, and then flinging out again in all directions, disorienting and frightening at the same time.

“You look at the air and it seems so empty, not a crazy world like this,” someone exclaimed.

There’s even wilder stuff you haven’t seen yet, I said to myself, and then looked closely at the chaotic turbulence on the screen, trying to get a glimpse of a macro-electron bubble. I couldn’t, of course, but there was definitely more than one of them hiding in such a large area, only recognizable by the still-classified pattern-recognition software.

“Will we be seeing any eggs today?” I asked.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Ross replied. “Tornadoes have been common in Oklahoma and Kansas lately. Just last week, 124 tornadoes occurred in Oklahoma in the space of a single day. A new record.”

So as not to waste time, our hosts had set up a conference room on the base so the symposium could take place while we waited for the eggs to appear. Before the attendees had even taken their seats, an alarm sounded. The system had found an egg! We rushed back to the control center, but the screen still rolled with the same translucent chaos, little different from how it was before. The egg had no fixed shape; it was only discernible through the model recognition software, which then marked it on the image with a red circle.

“It’s 130 kilometers away, at the border of Oklahoma City. It’s very dangerous,” Ross said.

“How long until it produces a tornado?” someone asked nervously.

“Around seven minutes.”

“It will be difficult to evacuate all personnel,” I said.

“No, Dr. Chen. We’re not doing any evacuation!” Ross said loudly. “This is the surprise we want to give you today!”

A small square region on the big screen displayed a missile roaring off the launcher and into the sky. The camera tracked it, showing its thin white tail painting a giant parabola across the sky. Roughly one minute later, the missile crossed the peak of the parabola and began to descend, and after one more minute, at an elevation of roughly five hundred meters, it exploded in a blistering fireball that looked like a blooming rose against the sky. In the section of the screen showing the atmospheric disturbance, a rapidly expanding crystal ball appeared at the spot marked by the red circle egg. Then the transparent sphere transformed and disappeared, its position filled in by the chaos of the disturbance. The red circle vanished, and the alarm ceased. Dr. Ross declared that the egg had been annihilated. This was the ninth egg wiped out by the “Tornado Hunter” system that day.

Dr. Ross explained: “You all know that tornadoes are usually born out of strong thunderstorms. When the hot, wet air of a thunderstorm rises and crosses the upper layer of cold air, it gradually cools. Water vapor condenses into raindrops or hailstones, which are borne downward when the cooled air begins to sink, only to be pushed back up again by factors like the warm lower layer and the rotation of the Earth. Ultimately, these layers form a tornado. The process of tornado formation is unstable, but the sinking of the cold air represents a critical energy flow. This mass of sinking cold air is the heart of the egg. The Tornado Hunter system fires a missile carrying an oil firebomb that detonates in a precision strike on the sinking cool air, instantly releasing an immense amount of heat energy that increases the temperature of the mass of air and breaks the tornado’s formation. It strangles it in the cradle.

“As we’re all aware, the technology for missile strikes and oil firebombs is not new. This isn’t really a precision strike, either, since the precision we require is a level less than is used for military uses. That lessens the cost. What we’re using are all obsolete, decommissioned missiles. The key technology in the Tornado Hunter system is Dr. Chen’s atmospheric optical detection system. That’s the innovation that allows us to determine the advance positioning of the egg. It’s what makes the artificial destruction of tornadoes possible. Let us pay him our deep respect!”

The next day, Oklahoma City, the state capital, made me an honorary citizen of the city. When I accepted the citation from the governor, a young blonde woman presented me with the Oklahoma state flower, mistletoe, which I had never seen before. She told me that a tornado had taken her parents the previous year. It had been a terrifying night. An F3 tornado had ripped off the roof of her house and flung everything inside more than a hundred meters into the air. She had only survived because she had landed in a pond. Her account reminded me of the night I lost my parents, and gave me a sense of pride in my work. It was this kind of work that finally rid me of the shadow of ball lightning, and let me start on a new life in the sun.

After the ceremony, I congratulated Dr. Ross. Even though I had been the one to make the breakthrough in forecasting tornadoes, they had been the ones who ultimately conquered them.

“It was TMD that finally conquered tornadoes,” he said absently.

“Theater missile defense?”

“That’s right. It was adopted practically without modification. It was only a matter of replacing the system’s incoming missile identification module with your egg positioning system. TMD seems purpose-built to destroy tornadoes.”

I realized then that the two were indeed similar: they both automatically identified targets, and then used guided missiles for precise interception.

“My original field of study had nothing to do with meteorology. I was in charge of TMD and NMD software systems for many years. When I realized that the weapons systems I’d developed could be used to benefit society, I felt a joy I’d never had before. Dr. Chen, you have my special thanks for that.”

“I feel the same way,” I said sincerely.

“Swords can be made into plowshares,” Ross said. But then in a much lower voice, he added, “But some plowshares can be cast back into swords. Weapons researchers like us sometimes have to accept blame and loss for this in the course of carrying out our duties…. Can you understand that, too, Dr. Chen?”

I had heard similar words from Gao Bo, and so I nodded silently, but my mind grew wary. When he said “us,” did he include me? Did they really know about the work I used to do?

“Thank you. You have my sincere gratitude,” Ross said. He was looking at me with a peculiar expression, which betrayed a glimpse of sorrow. Later I realized I was thinking too much, and that his words had nothing to do with me. I only learned later what his expression really meant.

I was among the final group of visiting scholars to go abroad. Ten days after I returned home, war broke out.

Zhufeng

Life grew tense. Apart from daily attention to the war, work also took on a new level of meaning, since the joys and cares that had previously occupied a primary position in my life no longer seemed so important.

One day I received a telephone call from the military instructing me to attend a meeting. A naval ensign would come to pick me up by car.

As the war escalated, I sometimes thought about the ball lightning weapons project. These were unusual times, and if the research base needed me to go back, I would abandon all of my personal feelings and do my utmost to fulfill my duty, but I never heard from them. The war news I read never had anything related to ball lightning weapons. This should have been the best opportunity for them to come out, but it was as if they had never even existed. I tried calling the base, but found that all their numbers were disconnected. Ding Yi was similarly nowhere to be found. All that I had been through was like a dream, and it had left no traces behind.

It was only after I arrived at the military meeting and discovered that most of the people there, none of whom I recognized, were from the navy that I realized that this had nothing to do with ball lightning weapons. Everyone looked grim, and the atmosphere of the meeting was depressive.

“Dr. Chen, first off we’d like to explain to you something that happened in naval combat yesterday,” a senior colonel in the navy said, getting down to business without any opening remarks. “You don’t need to know the specific location and circumstances of the battle, so I’ll only tell you the pertinent information. At around three p.m. yesterday, the Zhufeng carrier battle group was attacked by a large number of cruise missiles—”

My heart jumped when I heard the name.

“—Forty of them. The group immediately switched on defensive systems, but they soon discovered the method of attack was peculiar: under ordinary circumstances, cruise missiles attacking a sea target will fly close to the surface of the ocean to break through anti-missile defenses, but these flew at an altitude of one thousand meters, as if they didn’t care about being shot down. And sure enough, the missiles didn’t directly attack targets in the group. Instead, all of them exploded outside our defensive perimeter at altitudes of five hundred to one thousand meters. The force of each explosion was small, just enough to disperse a large quantity of white powder. Please have a look at the recording.”

Empty sky appeared on the projection screen. There were lots of clouds, and it looked about to rain. Then lots of small white dots appeared and gradually expanded, as if dripping dozens of drops of milk onto the water.

“Those are the cruise missiles’ explosion points,” the senior colonel said, pointing at the expanding dots on the screen. “What’s strange is that we really didn’t know what the enemy was doing. That white material—”

“Were there any other unusual signs at that location?” I interrupted, a foreboding fear rising in my heart.

“What do you mean? There was nothing that seemed relevant.”

“Unrelated, then. Can you take a look?” I asked urgently.

The colonel and several other officers exchanged glances, and a bespectacled lieutenant colonel said, “An enemy early warning aircraft flew through that airspace. That doesn’t seem unusual.”

“Anything else?”

“Hmm… the enemy emitted a high-energy laser at that region of the ocean from a low-orbit satellite, perhaps to coordinate submarine detection with the plane…. Is that related to the missile attack under discussion? Dr. Chen, are you okay?”

I hope to God it’s submarine detection. May the lord make it submarine detection. My heart prayed in a panic as I said, “Not really…. That white powder, do you have a rough idea of what it was?”

“I was about to tell you,” the senior colonel said as he flipped the scene on the screen. Now it was an image formed from a small number of brilliant colors, like a well-used painter’s palette. “This is a false-color infrared image of that region of space. See, the explosion points are rapidly turning into low-temperature zones.” He pointed at a patch of brilliant blue, and said, “So we guess that the white powder might be a highly efficient refrigerant.”

I felt like I had been struck by lightning, and the world had turned upside down. I had to grip the table to bring myself to earth. “Hurry! Get the fleet out of there!” I said to the senior colonel, while pointing at the screen.

“Dr. Chen, this is a recording. The event took place yesterday.”

Dazed by the facts, I was struck dumb for a while before I realized what he meant.

“This was recorded on Zhufeng. Have a look.”

Sea and sky appeared on screen. A small escort destroyer flickered in and out at one corner. A thin funnel took shape in the sky, its tail extending down toward the ocean as a long thin thread. Upon contact with the surface, the thread turned white as it began sucking up water. At first this thread connecting sea and sky was narrow, and it rocked and swayed gently, and seemed almost to snap in half at its thinnest point. But it soon grew thicker, turning from thin gossamer hanging from the sky into a towering column standing on the water, holding up the heavens. It turned black, with only the swirling seawater on its surface still reflecting the sun.

I had thought of this before, in fact, but didn’t believe anyone would do it.

The disturbances capable of giving birth to a tornado—the eggs—were very numerous in the atmosphere. The sinking cold air at the heart of the egg could be warmed to stop its descent, thereby wiping out the egg that would evolve into a tornado, like I had seen in Oklahoma. Similarly, if a coolant were used to further chill that mass of air, “incubating” an egg that would otherwise have disappeared, it could be spurred to form a tornado. Since the eggs were so plentiful, under appropriate climatic conditions, tornadoes could be manufactured at will. The technological key was in finding potential eggs, and my tornado forecasting system made that possible. Even worse, the system could be used to find opportunities for two eggs nearby, or even superimposed. If multiple eggs were incubated at once, it could focus atmospheric energy into the generation of super-tornadoes that had never existed in nature.

Now before me was one of those tornadoes, more than two kilometers in diameter, twice as large as any naturally occurring tornado. The largest tornadoes in nature were F5s, and their size had won them the name “the hand of God.” But this artificially incubated tornado was at least an F7.

On screen, the tornado crept toward the right. Zhufeng was clearly executing an emergency turn in an attempt to avoid it. Tornadoes usually advance in a straight line at a speed of around sixty kilometers per hour, or roughly the same as the carrier’s top speed. If Zhufeng could accelerate and turn quickly enough, it had a chance of missing it.

But just then, in the air on either side of the huge black column, two more white threads dropped down and then swiftly thickened and evolved into another two huge black columns.

The three super-tornadoes were separated by less than their diameter, not even a thousand meters. Together they formed a nearly eight-kilometer-wide, slowly approaching earth-to-sky fence of death. Zhufeng’s fate was sealed.

The tornado columns now filled the entire screen. Mist from the roiling waves surged ahead of them like an approaching waterfall, the columns themselves the dark abyss behind. The picture jostled violently, and then cut out.

As the senior colonel explained, a tornado had crossed Zhufeng’s front half, and, just like the lieutenant colonel had predicted on that small island, its deck snapped. Half an hour later it sank, carrying more than two thousand officers and sailors, including their captain, to a watery grave. As the tornadoes neared, the captain had issued a decisive order to fully seal off the two pressurized water reactors to reduce any nuclear leak to the minimum possible, but this left Zhufeng dead in the water. Two escort destroyers and one supply ship were also sunk. When the super-tornadoes had swept the ships, one of them continued onward for two hundred kilometers before expiring, twice as far as any tornado had traveled in recorded history. During its journey, it retained enough power to scour an island fishing village and kill more than one hundred people, including women and children.

“Was Jiang Xingchen captaining Zhufeng?”

“Yes. Did you know him?”

I didn’t speak. I was thinking more of Lin Yun now.

“We asked you here firstly because you are the most successful tornado researcher in the country, and secondly because the attack on Zhufeng was carried out by a meteorological weapon system code-named Aeolus. Our intelligence indicates it is related to your research results.”

I nodded heavily. “That’s true. I’m willing to accept responsibility.”

“No, you’ve misunderstood. We didn’t ask you here to assign blame. And you don’t have any responsibility. The Lightning Institute’s publication and transfer of the project’s results passed through multiple levels of review by the relevant departments and was entirely legal. Of course someone must be held responsible, but it isn’t you. We’re not as sensitive about the use of advanced technology as the enemy.”

I said, “The weapon can be defended against. All you need to do is link up the fleet’s missile defense system with our atmospheric optical detection system. I’ve seen how a missile shooting an oil firebomb can wipe out a tornado, but there’s an even faster and more effective method: use high-energy microwaves or lasers to heat up the descending cold air mass.”

“Yes, we’re putting all our energies into developing that kind of defensive system. And we’d like your full assistance.” The senior colonel sighed gently. “But, honestly speaking, it will probably have to wait until the next war to be used.”

“Why is that?”

“The loss of the Zhufeng carrier battle group was a huge blow to our sea power. For the rest of this war, we no longer have the ability to engage the enemy in a large-scale sea battle. We have to rely on shore-based firepower for coastal defense.”

After I left the Naval Warfare Center, shrill anti-aircraft sirens sounded in the air above the city. The streets were empty, and I walked through the emptiness with no particular destination in mind. A civil defense warden ran at me shouting something, but I pretended not to hear him. The wardens came over to grab me, but I shook them off unfeelingly and continued to sleepwalk along, and they left me on my own like the lunatic they imagined I was.

Now all of my hopes were dashed, and I ached for a bomb to bring my tormented life to an end. But the explosions remained distant. Nearby, the silence only grew.

After I’d walked for I don’t know how long, the sirens seemed to have stopped, and people gradually returned to the streets. In total exhaustion I sat down on the steps of a city garden, and realized that my empty brain was now occupied by a feeling, the feeling of understanding someone at last.

I understood Lin Yun.

I took out my mobile and dialed the number of the base, but no one answered. So I got up and looked for a cab. They were rare in wartime, and it took half an hour before I found one, then we drove off to the base at once.

It was around three hours later that we arrived at the base, only to discover that I had wasted my time. It was completely empty, personnel and equipment removed. I stood on my own for a long while in the center of the excitation lab, a shaft of weak light from the setting sun piercing the broken window to illuminate me, gradually fading until night descended. Only then did I leave.

After returning to the city, I made inquiries into the fate of the ball lightning project team and Dawnlight, but no one could tell me anything. They seemed to have evaporated from the world. I even dialed the number that General Lin had left, but there was no answer there, either.

There was nothing I could do but go back to the Lightning Institute and start researching the use of high-powered microwaves to dispel tornadoes.

Chip Destruction

The war dragged on, and another autumn arrived. People gradually grew accustomed to life during wartime, and air-raid sirens and food rationing, like concerts and cafés before them, became a normal part of life.

For my part, I threw myself entirely into developing a tornado defense system, a project overseen by Gao Bo’s Lightning Institute. Work went at a feverish pace, so for a while I forgot everything else. But one day, what seemed like an endless stalemate in the war was finally broken.

That afternoon at roughly 3:30, I was discussing technical details of shipboard high-energy microwave emitters with a few engineers from the Institute and the military. The device could emit a highly focused microwave beam of around one billion watts of power at frequencies from ten to one hundred hertz, frequencies at which the power could be absorbed by water molecules. Several of these beams added together could produce a regional power density of one watt per square centimeter, comparable to a microwave oven, that would raise the temperature of the falling mass of cold air in the egg and eliminate it in an embryonic state. When the device was paired with the atmospheric optical detection system, they would form an effective defense against tornado weapons.

Just then there was a sudden, strange noise outside, a little like the drumming of a squall of hail on the ground. Starting off in the distance, the sound grew closer, until it finally reached the room we were in. Then there were snapping sounds all around us, as close as the left side of my chest! As this was going on, something strange was happening to the computers: lots of objects flew out of the towers, but left their cases untouched. On closer inspection, they turned out to be complete CPUs, memory chips, and other chips. For a moment, the floating chips grew incredibly dense in the air. I waved a hand and brushed against several of them with the back of my hand, so I knew they weren’t an illusion, but eventually they all disappeared without a trace, leaving the air empty again. Then the computer screens changed, showing blue screens, or simply going dark.

I felt an intense heat on the left side of my chest and felt for the source. My mobile, in my shirt pocket, was burning up, so I plucked it out. My companions were doing the same thing. Our phones emitted white smoke, and when I took mine apart, a small quantity of white ash dispersed. The chips inside had been incinerated. We opened up the computers and found that nearly a third of the chips on the motherboards had been burned up. White ash and a peculiar stench filled the office for a while.

Then the rest of the computer screens and the lights went dark. The power had gone out.

My first thought was that we had been attacked by ball lightning that released its energy into computer chips, but something wasn’t right: all of the nearby buildings were research units where chips were plentiful. This would weaken the ball lightning energy discharge enough to reduce its effective radius to no more than one hundred meters. At that distance, we’d definitely have heard the unmistakable explosion it made when discharging, but we had heard nothing apart from the popping of burning chips, so I was nearly certain that no ball lightning had been present nearby.

The first thing we had to do was to determine the scope of the attack. I picked up my phone from the table, but it was dead, so we went downstairs together to check things out. We soon learned that chips had been attacked in two of the Institute’s office buildings and one lightning lab, and about a third of them had been destroyed. Separately, we visited the neighboring Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Meteorological Modeling Center, and found that the chips in those two units had suffered an attack identical to ours. It would have taken dozens of ball lightning strikes to do the damage we were now aware of, but I hadn’t seen the slightest trace of it.

Immediately after that, Gao Bo sent a few younger people off on bicycles to check out the situation, while the rest of us waited anxiously in the office. He and I were the only ones at the Lightning Institute who knew about ball lightning weapons, and we exchanged glances from time to time, with a panic somewhat worse than other people’s. Half an hour later, the bicyclists came back, terror on their faces, like they’d seen a ghost. They had all ridden for three to five kilometers. Everywhere they went, all electronic chips, without exception, had been attacked by some mysterious force, and had been destroyed in the same ratio, around one-third. They panicked and didn’t dare ride any farther, reporting back to the Institute instead. We were a little unaccustomed to being without mobile phones and landlines.

“There’s no hope for us if the enemy really has such a devilish weapon!” someone said.

Gao Bo and I exchanged another glance. My mind was a jumble. “How about we take four of the Institute’s cars and drive off in four directions so we can check out things in a wider area?”

I drove a car through the city to the east. All of the buildings I saw along the way were dark, with people clustered in small groups outside talking nervously. Many of them still held their clearly useless mobile phones. I knew what the situation was in these places without even having to get out of the car, but I still got out a few times, mostly to ask people whether they had seen signs of ball lightning. But no one had seen or heard anything.

Outside of the urban area, I continued to drive, all the way to a distant county seat in the far suburbs. Here, even though the power was out, there were far fewer signs of panic than downtown. I felt a surge of hope in my heart, a hope that I was approaching the edge of the ring of destruction, or at least that I would see fewer signs of damage. I parked the car outside a web café and rushed inside. It was dusk, and the café was very dark without power, but I smelled that familiar burnt odor at once. I grabbed a machine, took it outside, and carefully inspected the motherboard. In the light of the setting sun I saw that the CPU and several other chips were missing. The computer dropped out of my hands and smashed onto my foot, but I didn’t feel the pain. I only shivered heavily in the cold late autumn breeze, and then jumped in the car and went back.

Not long after I got back to the Institute, the other three cars also returned. The one that went the farthest had taken the expressway for over a hundred kilometers. Everywhere they went, things were the same as here.

We urgently searched for information of the outside, but we had no TV or Internet, and no phone. Only the radio worked. But all of the deluxe digitally tuned radios were driven by integrated circuits, and all of them were now junk. It wasn’t easy, but we eventually found a usable vintage transistor radio that an old mail clerk kept in the reception office, which received three fuzzy southern provincial stations, as well as three in English and one in Japanese.

It was only late that night that these stations began to have reports on this bizarre disaster, and from those fragmentary broadcasts, we learned the following: the chip damage zone was centered somewhere in the northwest of China. It covered a circular area with a radius of 1,300 kilometers, or around one-third of the land in the country, an astonishingly large area, but the chip damage rate gradually tapered off the farther you got from the center. Our city was located near the edge of the region.

For the next week, we lived in a pre-electricity agricultural society. It was a difficult time. Water had to be trucked in and rationed out in amounts that were barely sufficient to drink. At night we relied on candles for illumination.

During this period, rumors about the disaster flew thick as cow hair. In the public chatter as well as in the media (which for us was limited to radio), the most popular explanation had to do with aliens. But in all of the rumors, there was no mention of ball lightning.

Out of the mess of information, we could conclude one thing: the attack was unlikely to have come from the enemy. It was obvious that they were as confused as we were, which let us breathe a little easier.

I came up with a hundred different possibilities during that time, but none of them was convincing. I was convinced that this was connected to ball lightning, but I was also certain that ball lightning wasn’t that powerful. So what was?

The enemy’s behavior was also mystifying. Our territory had been dealt such a blow that our defensive capability was basically gone, yet they halted their attack. Even the routine daily airstrikes disappeared. The world media had a fairly convincing explanation: in the face of such a strong, unknown force that could easily destroy the entire civilized world, no one wanted to act rashly before figuring out what it was.

In any event, it gave us the most peaceful period since the start of the war, albeit an ominous and chilly one. Without computers or electricity, we had nothing to do, and no way to dispel the terror in our hearts.

One evening, as an icy autumn rain began to fall outside, I sat by myself in my chilly apartment listening to the raindrops. It felt as if the outside world had been swallowed up by an infinite darkness, and the lonely flickering candle in front of me was the only light in the entire universe. An infinite loneliness crushed me, and my all-too-brief life played back like a movie rewinding in my mind: the abstract painting made up of children’s ashes in the nuclear plant, Ding Yi putting the Go board behind the bubble, long electric arcs in the night sky, Siberia in the blizzard, Lin Yun’s piano playing and the sword at her neck, the thunderstorm and starry sky on Mount Tai, my university days on campus, and finally back to that stormy birthday night…. I felt like my life had gone in a huge circle, bringing me back to my point of origin, only now there was no sound of thunder in the rain, and there was only one candle left in front of me.

Then there was a knock at the door. Before I could get up to answer it, someone pushed it open and came in. He took off a wet raincoat, his thin body shivering from the cold, and when I made out his face in the candlelight, I cried out for joy.

It was Ding Yi.

“Do you have anything to drink? Preferably something hot,” he said, through chattering teeth.

I passed him half a bottle of Red Star erguotou. He held it over the candle flame to warm it, but he soon grew impatient and tossed back a few mouthfuls. Wiping his mouth, he said, “No beating around the bush. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Ambush at Sea

This is the account that Ding Yi gave me of what happened at the ball lightning research base after I left:

Because the nuclear plant operation was such a big success (from the military’s point of view, at least), the sidelined ball lightning weapons project began to receive renewed interest, followed by substantial investment. This investment was mostly put toward collecting chip-striking macro-electrons, as highly selective strikes on integrated circuits were believed to be the area of ball lightning weapons with the greatest potential. After a large amount of work, there were finally more than five thousand of these rare macro-electrons in storage, enough to constitute a combat-capable weapons system.

When war broke out, the base entered a state of nervous excitement. Practically everyone there believed that ball lightning would be to this war what the tank was to the First World War and the atom bomb to the Second, a history-making weapon. Overflowing with enthusiasm, they prepared to make history, but their instructions from the higher-ups were just two words: await orders. And thus Dawnlight was the idlest of all the units in the war. At first, people imagined that High Command might want to use the weapon in the most critical position at the most critical moment, but Lin Yun learned through her channels that they were thinking too highly of themselves; High Command had a fairly low opinion of the weapon. They believed that the nuclear plant operation had been a special case and did not prove the weapon system’s battlefield potential. None of the branches had much of an interest in putting the weapon to use. Hence, investment in the project dried up again.

After the destruction of the Zhufeng carrier battle group, the base was fraught with anxiety. The staff were baffled that the demonstration of the enormous power of a different new-concept weapon had done nothing to shake up old attitudes toward ball lightning. They felt that their weapon was the only hope left for turning the tide of the war.

Lin Yun repeatedly asked her father to give Dawnlight a battle assignment, but each time she was refused. On one occasion, General Lin told his daughter, “Xiao Yun, don’t let your fascination with weapons develop into superstition. Your thinking about war needs to be deeper, more holistic. The notion that the entire war can be won by relying on one or two new-concept weapons is, frankly, naïve.”

Here Ding Yi said, “As a believer in science, my faith in the weapons was even stronger than Lin Yun’s. I firmly believed that ball lightning could determine the outcome of the war. At the time, I ascribed High Command’s attitude toward ball lightning weapons to rigid thinking that was impervious to reason, and I was far more annoyed than most of the people at the base. But the way things developed ultimately demonstrated our naïveté.”

At last there was a turning point. The base and Dawnlight received orders to carry out an exploratory attack on an enemy carrier group in coastal waters.

The headquarters of the South Sea Fleet convened a war meeting. Personnel in attendance were not of high rank, so clearly the higher-ups did not place much value on this combat operation. Two senior colonels chaired the meeting: one the director of the fleet’s Operations Division, the other from the army, the second commander of the Southern Military Region’s coastal defense system. The other twenty-odd officers mostly hailed from submarine units and the coastal force of the South Sea Fleet.

The defense commander started off by describing the battlefield situation: “You are all aware of recent events that have seriously weakened our blue-water sea power. The enemy’s naval forces are encroaching on our coastal waters. The enemy fleet has on several occasions come within range of our shore-based anti-ship missiles, but our strikes have failed. Their missile defense systems have successfully intercepted the vast majority of our anti-ship missiles. If we can destroy or partially destroy the systems’ early warning capability, then our land-based missiles will be able to effectively attack the enemy. The primary mission of the present operation is this: the electronics in the enemy fleet’s missile defense system will be destroyed using ‘Maple Leaf,’ partially or totally crippling the system to give our land-based defenses an opportunity to attack.”

Maple Leaf was the code name for the ball lightning weapon. This gentle name in part reflected the attitude the higher-ups had about the weapon.

The operations director said, “Let’s first agree on a general framework for drafting the battle plan, then each branch can work out specific details on their own.”

“I have a question,” an army colonel said, standing up. He was the commander of a shore-based missile unit. “I’ve heard that Maple Leaf can only be used for line-of-sight attacks. Is that the case?”

Colonel Xu Wencheng answered in the affirmative.

“Then what’s the use of your gadget? A basic requirement for modern weaponry is the ability to strike from beyond line-of-sight. Maple Leaf isn’t any better than a premodern weapon.”

“Colonel, I’d say it’s your mind that’s premodern,” Lin Yun snapped, drawing disapproving looks.

“Well then, would Maple Leaf’s commander please discuss their ideas for a battle plan?” the operations director asked.

“We plan to use a submarine as a launch platform for Maple Leaf,” Colonel Xu said.

“Can Maple Leaf strike underwater?” a submarine colonel asked.

“No.”

“To conduct a line-of-sight surface attack, even under ideal conditions, will require approaching to within eight to ten thousand meters of the target. If a submarine surfaces that close to the enemy’s antisubmarine center, isn’t that basically suicide?” the submarine commander said angrily.

“Colonel, a very short time after Maple Leaf strikes, the enemy’s electronics systems will be destroyed. Its antisubmarine system will be completely disabled and no longer pose a threat to you,” Lin Yun said.

The submarine commander snorted almost imperceptibly, but he clearly had no regard for the female major. He shot a glance at the operations director, and his meaning was clear: Do you trust this girl’s assurances?

The operations director shook his head firmly. “Vetoed. This idea won’t work.”

After a heavy silence, a naval lieutenant colonel proposed another plan: “Let high-speed torpedoes lie in wait outside the line of sight of the enemy fleet, and, when the target approaches, speed into line-of-sight and attack.”

“That won’t work, either,” another naval officer said. “Torpedoes can’t be hidden. Have you forgotten that the enemy has aerial reconnaissance? They have very strong aerial patrols cruising coastal waters. Stealth only applies to radar. And since this operation will strike the entire fleet at the same time, it will need a considerable number of torpedoes, which will form a target that will definitely be detected from the air. Unless the torpedo ambush is set up outside the enemy’s three hundred kilometer aerial patrol radius, it won’t have any use in combat.”

An army senior colonel looked around the room. “Is there no one from the air force? Can’t we consider an air strike?”

Colonel Xu said, “Maple Leaf does not have any airborne models. Besides, line-of-sight attacks are even more dangerous in the air.”

Another heavy silence. The members of the ball lightning unit could feel the unspoken accusation of the other participants: What a piece of junk.

The operations director said, “Let’s focus our thinking on a single problem: Is there anything that can get to within sight of the enemy fleet?”

Lin Yun said, “There’s only one thing: a fishing boat.”

A few chortles sounded in the meeting room.

“According to our observations, the enemy fleet generally ignores fishing boats near its sea routes. Even more so for small-tonnage fishing boats. So we can use fishing boats as a launch platform for Maple Leaf, and get even closer to the enemy than just within sight.”

There was more laughter. The shore defense commander shook his head and said, “No need to be patronizing, Major. We’re just coming up with ideas, aren’t we?”

Colonel Xu said, “No, this is a plan we’re actually working on. And it’s the plan we believe is the most workable. Before we received this battle order, we had already been thinking about it for quite some time, and we sent a task force to carry out research.”

“But it’s just—” a naval officer started to say, before a gesture from the operations director cut him off.

“Don’t say it. It really looks like a plan! They’ve evidently put some thought into it.”

The missile unit commander that Lin Yun had attacked laughed. “It really is a premodern plan.”

“Not even premodern,” the submarine commander said. “Have you heard of anyone using fishing boats to attack warships in Jutland or Tsushima?”

“If we had Maple Leaf back then, we would have,” Lin Yun said.

“It just doesn’t seem like naval warfare. It’s more like piracy. If it gets out, won’t we look ridiculous?” asked a navy captain.

“So what? If we can give shore-based firepower a chance to strike, then we can be thieves, not just pirates,” one of the battle plan’s drafters, a shore-based defense system commander, said.

The operations commander said, “The flaws of the fishing boats are, one, they have no defensive weapons, and two, they are slow. But in the face of the total attack power of the enemy fleet, the difference between fishing boats and torpedoes on those two points can be ignored.”

No one spoke. The meeting attendees thought over this plan carefully, several naval officers occasionally exchanging views in low voices.

“For the time being, it looks basically workable. However…,” a naval officer said.

Again there was silence, silence for the “however,” since everyone knew what it implied: if the attack failed, or if it succeeded but the land-based missiles did not arrive in time, then those small fishing boats would have no chance of escaping from the powerful fleet.

But as soldiers in wartime, they knew that there was no need of further discussion of that “however.”

After a brief, whispered exchange with the shore defense systems commander, the operations director said in a loud voice, “Very well. Teams for each branch should draw up detailed battle plans based on this framework at once.”

The next day, Dawnlight, fully equipped, took three military transport planes to a small airfield in the Fujian theater. Ding Yi and Lin Yun disembarked first. On the runways to either side of them, fighters and bombers were landing in succession, while on a runway a little farther away, a large number of transport planes were landing, depositing a stream of tanks and soldiers in fatigues. More planes were circling, their engines thundering as they waited to land. On a road in the distance, an iron river of military vehicles sped through the dust, with no end in sight.

“Deployment against a land invasion has begun,” Lin Yun said darkly.

“Ball lightning will make it unnecessary,” Ding Yi said to console her. At the time, he believed it too.

At this point, Ding Yi said, “After I said that, Lin Yun looked at me for a few seconds, with the face of a woman looking for comfort. I had the wonderful feeling that, for the first time, I was not just a thinker, but a strong, powerful man.”

“Do you really believe that you’re stronger emotionally than she is?” I asked.

“She has her weaknesses, too. She can even be fragile. After Zhufeng sank and Jiang Xingchen died, that fragility became increasingly apparent.”

Lin Yun pointed out a grassy area not far off that was closely guarded. Heavily armed soldiers stood watch over tall stacks of goods, all of them in dark green metal containers half the size of a standard freight container. A large number of military trucks were constantly loading them and carrying them off.

“It’s all C-805 missiles. Probably in preparation for this operation,” she said softly. Ding Yi knew she was referring to the “Chinese Exocet” anti-ship missile, the most powerful weapon in China’s shore-based defense system, but he was shocked by the sheer quantity.

The first set of thunderball guns arrived, and were immediately shipped to the harbor and installed on the requisitioned fishing boats that were waiting there. The boats were small, the largest having a displacement of no more than one hundred tons. Each thunderball gun’s superconducting batteries were placed in the cabin, but the launchers were too long and had to be placed on deck, covered with a tarp or fishnet. Naval sailors and engineers took the place of fishermen, more than one hundred in all to pilot the fifty fishing boats.

Leaving the harbor, Lin Yun and Ding Yi headed toward the Coastal Defense Command Center, where Xu Wencheng and Kang Ming had assembled Dawnlight. In the war room, a navy colonel was describing the enemy on a large screen.

“…the core of the enemy fleet consists of three carriers: Carl Vinson, John C. Stennis, and Harry S. Truman, all of them top-of-the-line nuclear supercarriers first launched in or after the 1980s. Also in the battle group are the following: three cruisers, fourteen destroyers, twelve frigates, and three supply ships. Thirty-five surface vessels altogether. Submarine numbers are uncertain—we believe around ten. Next is a diagram of the fleet formation.”

An image came up on the screen that resembled a complicated chess position made up of lots of oblong pieces.

“This is our ambush formation.”

A line of dots appeared on either side of the central fleet’s heading, twenty-five in each line.

“Using this diagram, you can easily determine the target you’re responsible for. Know that although the enemy may change formation when it reaches coastal waters, it’s already in a classic coastal defensive formation, so any changes are expected to be minimal. Fire points should adjust their targets according to actual conditions.

“Let me particularly stress the focus of the attack. I asked around just now and found unanimous agreement that the carriers were the focal point. I can forgive my army comrades for this, but for my naval comrades to have the same idea is ridiculous. Remember: ignore the carriers. Attack the cruisers! They are the backbone and control center of the electronics parts of the Aegis defense system. And after them, target the destroyers, an integral part of that defense system. With them disabled, the entire fleet is a hunk of meat on the chopping board. Also, those ships will be closest to our positions. Ignoring the periphery to attack the center will have disastrous consequences. Once more: the carriers are the meat, the cruisers and destroyers are the bones! At least eight hundred shots should be taken at every cruiser, and one hundred and fifty to two hundred per destroyer.”

On the screen appeared a longitudinal section of a warship showing a dizzyingly complicated internal layout. Then a green line extended from the bridge and twisted through the bowels of the ship like a roundworm.

“This is a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. The green line is the path of the thunderball sweep.”

Small circles appeared at different points along the line, each accompanied by a number.

“These are the key strike points. The numbers next to them are the recommended number of thunderballs for that point. The booklet you have just been given contains longitudinal sections and sweep lines for every ship. There’s no way to memorize all of them in the time we have, so remember your own targets for the key strike points. Army comrades may find it more difficult to read the diagrams, so just commit them to memory. Let me simply say that the key strike points are the Aegis computer systems on the cruisers and destroyers. Now, let’s have the head of weapons technology elaborate on some details.”

Lin Yun went up front and said, “I already said all I need to say back at the Beijing training center. Here I’d just like to remind everyone that according to the average speed of the thunderball guns, you’ll have to fire on each target for anywhere from forty seconds to one minute before finishing. This is a relatively long time, so don’t panic. The thunderball paths are clear. Fire just like you’d fire ordinary tracer rounds. Get a stable path going, and then begin the sweep.

“The fleet’s wake is a major issue. Our vessels are small, so their rocking will definitely affect your shooting. When the enemy has entered the ambush area completely, the wake won’t have reached the front section of the ambush line, and it will already have calmed for the back section. So shooting in the middle section will be affected the most. We have deployed our toughest fireteams there. They’ve had marine training and are experienced at firing on the waves…. We should have had a longer training period, but there’s no time. We’re relying on your performance on the battlefield!”

“Don’t worry, Major. Do you think a gunner who’s firing on a carrier will fail to perform?” a second lieutenant said.

“Let me repeat yet again: the carriers are not within our attack scope! Stop thinking about them! Anyone who wastes ammo on them will be held responsible!” the navy colonel said.

After dark, Dawnlight went to a shooting range where a peculiar simulated fleet was set up. Dozens of ship profiles had been cut out from large cardboard sheets, each set on two small rollers so they could move slowly across the range if pushed by a soldier. Each shooter trained a light machine gun, a laser pointer affixed to the barrel, on their designated target to indicate the point of impact, and then strove to move the red dot along the prescribed sweep path. The exercise continued late into the night, until everyone was entirely familiar with the shooting process for their own target. The ship silhouettes moving slowly in the dark and the red dots moving equally slowly along them formed a mysterious, abstract painting, hypnotic enough to make everyone drowsy by the end.

The rest of the night they spent asleep in naval barracks. It was said that the night before the Normandy invasion, a psychologist observed the sleeping conditions of the soldiers, imagining that they would have difficulty falling asleep on the eve of a bloody battle. To the contrary, all of them slept soundly, a fact he attributed to an instinctive response of the group to the huge energy expenditure they were about to experience. Dawnlight also fell asleep quickly. It was a night without dreams.

As morning broke, Dawnlight arrived at the dock. The sun was still at the horizon, and the fifty fishing boats in the harbor rocked gently in the morning mist.

Before they boarded, Lin Yun drove up in an open-top jeep carrying several camouflage bags, which she took out of the vehicle and opened up. They were stuffed with uniforms. Dawnlight had left them behind at camp after they changed into a fishing company’s work clothes that stank of the sea.

“What are you doing, Lin Yun?” Lieutenant Colonel Kang Ming asked.

“Have the soldiers put their uniforms on under the work clothes. When the operation is finished, they can strip out of the work clothes.”

Kang Ming was silent for a while, then slowly shook his head. “I appreciate your good intentions, but Dawnlight has its own rules. We won’t be captured. Let the naval soldiers wear uniforms.”[10]

“Those rules may apply to lieutenant colonels and higher ranking officers, but the soldiers executing this mission are just thunderball gunners. They don’t know much. I’ve made inquiries, and the higher-ups have given their tacit permission. I’m telling the truth. Please believe me.”

Lin Yun was correct. In the early stages of Dawnlight’s training, Kang Ming had wanted to conduct all-round training in both operation and repair of the thunderball gun, but she had staunchly opposed the idea, and had pushed successfully for the strict separation of personnel for weapons operations and engineering services. The thunderball gunners were not permitted to dismantle the weapons, nor did they have any opportunity to come into contact with the principles of the weapon or other technical information. Their only concern was its use. Up until they boarded the fishing boats, none of the gunners knew that what they were firing was ball lightning. They believed, as the commander had told them, that they were firing EM radiation bombs. Looking back, Lin Yun’s decision was made not merely for confidentiality purposes, but also out of kindness.

“This kind of mission is seldom seen in modern warfare. If the attack fails, we require nothing from these soldiers other than the immediate destruction of their weapons,” she said urgently.

Lieutenant Colonel Kang hesitated for a few seconds, then waved a hand at the unit. “Very well. Put these uniforms on at once. Be quick about it!” Then he turned toward Lin Yun and extended a hand. “Thank you, Major Lin.”

Ding Yi interrupted his story to remark, “You can see where she had become fragile.”

The following account Ding Yi pieced together after the fact.

Ten minutes later, the fifty fishing boats filed out of the harbor, a classic scene of fishermen heading out to sea at dawn. No one would have imagined that the humble craft were en route to attack the most powerful fleet on the planet.

After leaving the harbor, Kang Ming and the naval commanding officers—a lieutenant commander, a lieutenant, and two junior lieutenants—held a meeting on a larger fishing boat that served as a command craft for the hundred-odd helmsmen and engineers piloting the fishing boats.

The lieutenant commander said to Kang Ming, “Colonel, I suggest your people stay hidden belowdecks. You clearly don’t look like fishermen.”

“We can’t stand the fishy stench down there,” Kang Ming said with a grimace.

The lieutenant said, “Our orders are to pilot the fishing boats to the designated region, and to accept your instructions only when enemy ships appear. Our superiors said this mission is extremely dangerous, and asked for volunteers. That’s highly unusual, you know.”

A junior lieutenant said, “I’m the navigator of a Luda-class destroyer. It would be more than a little pathetic if I sank on this leaky boat.”

“Even if this leaky boat is headed to attack a carrier battle group?” Kang Ming asked.

The junior lieutenant nodded. “That would be more heroic. Yeah, back in school, attacking a carrier was our biggest dream. The second was to be a ship captain. The third was to find a woman able to put up with us being at sea all the time.”

“We’ve been tasked with targeting a cruiser. If we succeed, the enemy carrier will be sunk in a matter of minutes.”

Four naval officers stared in astonishment. “Colonel, you’ve got to be kidding!”

Kang Ming said, “Why act so surprised? Have you lost the courage of your predecessors? Back when the country was founded, the navy once sunk a destroyer with wooden boats.”

“Sure, and we ought to do them one better and assault a mobile offshore platform with surfboards!” the lieutenant commander said.

A junior lieutenant said, “Even so, we’ve got to have weapons, right? All we’ve got aboard this vessel are a few handguns.”

Kang Ming asked, “What do you think that equipment on board was?”

“Those are weapons?” the lieutenant commander asked, looking at the other three officers.

The lieutenant said, “It looks like radio or radar. Isn’t that an antenna there on the deck?”

“That, I can tell you, is the weapon we’re going to use against the carrier group,” Kang Ming said.

The lieutenant commander laughed. “Comrade Colonel, you’re making it hard for us to be serious.”

A junior lieutenant pointed at the two superconducting batteries and quipped, “I’ve got it. Those are depth charges, and the two iron frames are launch rails.”

Kang Ming nodded. “I can’t tell you the weapon’s real name, so let’s just call them depth charges.” He showed the officers a red button on one of the batteries, and said, “This is the self-destruct button. If things get tight, the first thing we’ve got to do is press this, and then toss the thing into the ocean. Whatever happens, we can’t let it fall into enemy hands.”

“Don’t worry, our superiors have stressed that repeatedly. If there’s nothing else, then we should get to work. This old boat leaks oil all over.”

They reached the ambush point around noon and began a long wait, during which Kang Ming had little to do apart from scanning the ambush line and checking the state of each vessel’s thunderball gun. The boat he was on had a radio, which he used to contact headquarters just twice, once to report that all vessels were in place, and a second time to resolve a technical issue: he had reservations about the plan’s stipulation that all boats operate under a blackout after dark. He felt it was pointless, and would only serve to raise the enemy’s suspicion. Headquarters concurred, and instructed all vessels to run with normal lighting. No information was provided about the enemy’s movements.

Their anxiety and excitement quickly burned away in the blistering sun, and they no longer trained their binoculars constantly on the northern horizon. So as not to attract attention, the vessels occasionally moved back and forth in a small area, futilely tossing the nets out and bringing them back in again. The lieutenant was skilled at this, and managed to catch a few fish. Kang Ming learned that he hailed from a fishing village in Shandong.

More of their time was spent on the deck, playing cards or chatting about all sorts of topics with their backs to the sun. The only thing they didn’t mention was their mission, and the fate of the tiny ambush fleet.

By nightfall, the team had grown a little lax, after so long a wait. It had been over eight hours since their last contact with headquarters, and since then there had been nothing but static on the radio. Kang Ming had not slept well for several nights, and the monotonous rhythm of the ocean waves made him drowsy, but he fought to stay awake.

Someone nudged him gently. It was the lieutenant commander. “Look ahead to the left, but don’t be too obvious,” he said softly. A reddish moon had just risen over the horizon, rendering the ocean surface clear. In that direction, Kang Ming first saw a V-shaped wake, then, at its head, a thin black vertical rod with a spherical object at its tip. It reminded him of a photo he had seen somewhere of the Loch Ness Monster, its long neck extending from the murky water.

“Periscope,” the lieutenant commander whispered.

The thin rod moved quickly. As it cut through the water’s surface it whipped out an arc of spray that was audible as a light whoosh. Then it gradually slowed, and the spray lessened and vanished. The periscope, now directly ahead of their vessel around twenty meters away, was motionless.

“Ignore it,” the lieutenant commander said, a slight smile on his face, as if he was absorbed in conversation with Kang Ming.

Just before he turned away, Kang Ming clearly saw the glint of light reflecting off the glass spherical object at the top of the rod. Then the lieutenant and the two junior lieutenants emerged from the cabin carrying a netting shuttle, and sat right on the tarp covering the weapon’s launch rail to mend nets under the moonlight. Kang Ming watched the captain’s skilled hands and followed his movements, but his mind concentrated on the strange eye behind him that was staring at them from the ocean, stabbing into his back.

The lieutenant said, “I’ll throw this one over, and with any luck it’ll get tangled in their damn propeller.” He wore an expression of lazy fatigue, as if complaining about having to work so late at night.

“Then toss over those two depth charges,” a junior lieutenant said, chuckling. Then he turned to Kang Ming. “Say something.” But Kang Ming couldn’t come up with anything.

The lieutenant pointed at the net and asked him, “How’s my mending look?”

Kang Ming held the mended section up against the light coming from the cabin, inspected it, and said to him, “Let’s give them a look at your handiwork.”

The lieutenant commander said, “It’s moving again.”

The lieutenant warned Kang Ming, “Don’t look back.”

After a while, they heard the whooshing sound again, and when they looked behind them, the rod was heading away from them at increasing speed, lowering as it went, until it was entirely underwater.

The lieutenant threw down the net, stood up, and said to Kang Ming, “Colonel, if I were commanding that sub I’d have seen through us. You held the net all wrong!”

Then the radio received a short message from headquarters telling them that the enemy fleet had reached the ambush area, and to prepare for attack.

Before long, they heard a faint rumbling sound that quickly grew loud. They looked off to the northern sky and saw a line of black dots appear—five of them, one smack in the middle of the moon’s disc, so its whirling rotors were visible. The five helicopters came in fast and rumbled overhead, red beacons flashing on their bellies. One dropped a long object that hit the water not far from them in a plume of white; a short distance later, another helicopter dropped another long object. Kang Ming asked what they were, and the lieutenant commander’s voice answered from the cabin: “Sonar buoys for submarine detection. The enemy takes great care with its antisubmarine measures.”

The helicopters soon vanished into the southern night sky, and stillness returned once more. Now Kang Ming’s micro-earpiece, tied in to the radio in the cabin, chirped with a voice from headquarters.

“The target is approaching. All vessels to shooting state. Over.”

The moon was now blocked by clouds, darkening the ocean surface, but a glow had appeared in the northern sky, the same glow that was visible from the base each evening in the direction of the city. Kang Ming raised his binoculars, and for a moment had the impression he was looking at a glittering shoreline.

“We’re too far forward!” the lieutenant commander shouted, putting down his binoculars and dashing into the cabin. The fishing boat’s turbines rumbled to life and it reversed course.

The glow in the north grew brighter, and when they turned back to look at it, the “shore lights” on the horizon were visible even without binoculars. With them, they could make out individual ships. The voice in Kang Ming’s earpiece said, “Attention all vessels. The target formation is basically unchanged. Proceed according to original plan. Over.”

Battlefield command, Kang Ming knew, had now been transferred to their vessel. If everything had developed as expected, they had only to wait for the cruisers at the head of the enemy fleet to advance directly in front of their small craft, then give the order to fire, since they knew from their intel of the enemy’s fleet formation that the fleet would be entirely encircled at that point. Now they made their final preparations before firing: putting on life jackets.

The fleet approached quickly. When individual ships became visible to the naked eye, Kang Ming looked for targets he could identify only to hear the lieutenant shout, “That’s Stennis!”—perhaps because the ship’s shape had been imprinted in his brain at the naval academy. As he shouted, he looked at Kang Ming with a challenge: Let’s see what you do now. Kang Ming stood at the bow, silently watching the swiftly approaching fleet.

Enormous ovals cast by the fleet’s searchlights danced chaotically on the water ahead of them. Occasionally the beams caught a fishing boat in a beam and threw a long shadow onto the surface, but they soon moved away. The small boats apparently did not attract attention. The enormous fleet now filled their whole field of vision. Details of the two cruisers at the front were clearly visible under the moonlight and the ships’ running lights, while the six destroyers on either side were black silhouettes, and the enormous bodies of the three carriers in the center of the formation cast giant shadows on the water. The sailors on the fishing boats heard a sharp, scalp-tingling whistle overhead that grew dramatically louder, as if the sky were being cut open. They craned their necks upward in time to see four fighters pass by. And then they began to hear the rolling crash of surf, the sound of those metal hulls plying the waves. The thin white cruisers passed by, followed by the gray iron destroyers—which, though smaller than the cruisers, appeared much larger, since they were on the nearer side of the formation. They dazzled with intricate superstructures and towering antennae. A few sailors were visible moving about on board. Soon the carriers were in front of them, partially obscured by the destroyers: three nuclear-powered floating cities, three death-bringing iron mountains whose outlines seemed beyond the work of human hands. For the troops on the fishing boats, this massive fleet was a surreal sight, as if they had suddenly landed on a strange planet whose surface was covered in enormous iron castles.

Kang Ming took out a tiny wireless mouthpiece from his lapel, and the two Dawnlight gunners who had stayed in the hold the entire time lifted the tarp off the thunderball gun, lay down on it, and aimed directly at the cruiser passing ahead of them, tracking it with the launch rail. Kang Ming said in a soft voice, “All fire points, commence firing.”

Ball lightning issued from the tip of the rails, strands of pearls issuing an ear-splitting crackle and lighting up the surrounding ocean with an intensely flickering blue electric light. A string of red thunderballs flew across the ocean, close to the surface, trailing long tails and whistling sharply. Gracefully, they swept by the stern of the first destroyer and the prow of the second, heading toward the cruiser.

Lines of ball lightning shot at the fleet by the other fishing boats looked from this distance like bright rays of light. When ball lightning was fired along an unvarying trajectory, the ionized air formed a fluorescent trail that would continue to glow after the lightning itself moved on. These trails fanned out from each fishing boat and expanded as the ball lightning moved about. The battleground was a giant net made out of strings of ball lightning and their far more numerous fluorescent trails.

They seemed on the cusp of a grand moment in the history of warfare.

But just as the first group of ball lightning was about to reach the target, their trajectories were diverted by a giant, invisible hand. The ball lightning shot up into the air, or plunged into the ocean, or veered off to either side, passing far from the prow or stern of their targets. And when the diverted ball lightning flew near neighboring ships, the same thing happened. It was as if every ship in the fleet was enveloped in a giant glass enclosure that ball lightning could not penetrate.

“A magnetic shield!”

This was the first thought that entered Kang Ming’s mind. Something that had come up countless times in the nightmares of ball lightning researchers had come to pass in the real world.

Kang Ming shouted the command: “All strike teams, abort firing! Destroy your weapons!”

On each boat, a Dawnlight sergeant pressed a red button on the thunderball gun, then, together with the other crew members, shoved it into the ocean. Not long after, the sound of muffled explosions carried up from the depths, and the surface of the ocean roiled, rocking their boats. The superconducting batteries that powered the guns had been shorted out and exploded with a power equivalent to a depth charge. The thunderball guns were now in pieces underwater.

The streams of ball lightning from the fishing boats had been severed simultaneously. Now a large mass of ball lightning floated above the fleet, absent any targets, weaving a shining carpet in the air with their fiery tails. Their sound changed from a uniform whistle to a chaotic buzz or shrill moaning.

Kang Ming saw a flash from a gun on the destroyer, but only in his peripheral vision. When the shell struck the command ship, he was staring straight ahead at the sea, where the ball lightning that had fallen into the water continued to glow faintly, like a school of effervescent fish.

The sound of guns grew thick, and in the ocean on either side of the fleet, huge columns of water bearing pieces of the fishing boats rose and fell. When the firing stopped after three minutes, forty-two of the fifty fishing boats had been taken out. They were so small that most of them hadn’t even sunk, but had been blown to pieces by direct hits from the large guns. The eight remaining ships were locked in a circle of searchlights, as if taking a lonely curtain call at the close of this tragedy on the ocean stage.

The ball lightning released its energy as electromagnetic radiation, and soon went out, ionized air forming a fluorescent canopy in the air above the fleet. The radiation’s effect on the ocean covered it in a layer of thick white steam. Some long-lasting balls of lightning slowly floated away, their sound growing fainter and more ethereal, like lonely ghost lanterns carried by the wind.

How the enemy knew of ball lightning’s existence, and how it had built a system to defend against it, were unanswered questions. But there were some scattered clues: at the test target range in the south the previous year, ball lightning shot from the thunderball gun hadn’t entered a quantum state even in the absence of our observers, which meant that there was another observer present. It was known that the nuclear plant operation could lead to a leak, but it was deemed to be worth the risk. The enemy could hardly have learned the fundamental principles of ball lightning or the technical details of the weapon from observing, but they too had been studying that natural phenomenon for many years. They may even have conducted large-scale R&D, like Project 3141 in Siberia, and if so would not have found it difficult to guess the truth beneath those scattered intelligence reports. And the effect of magnetic fields on ball lightning had long been known to science, independent of the nature of ball lightning itself.

On the transport plane back to base, Lin Yun squatted silently in a corner holding her helmet, her slender body curled up into a ball, looking alone and helpless like a girl lost in the wilderness in the dead of winter. Ding Yi felt a sudden compassion for her, so he went over and sat down next to her with words of comfort:

“You know, our success has been pretty great. Through macro-electrons, we can view the most profound mysteries of matter on a macro scale, something that was once only possible by entering the microscopic world. Compared to this achievement, the military use of ball lightning is insignificant—”

“Professor Ding, do people burned up by ball lightning remain in a quantum state?” Lin Yun interrupted him with a mindless question.

“Yes. Why?”

“You once said that the teacher would come to attack me.”

“That was just random nonsense. Besides, you didn’t believe me, did you?”

Lin Yun rested her chin on the helmet lying on her knees, and looked straight ahead. “After you mentioned it, I slept with a gun with the safety off. I really was afraid, but I was too embarrassed to let anyone know.”

“I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“Do you think it’s really possible?”

“Theoretically… perhaps. But the probability is so low that it’s not going to happen in the real world.”

“But it is possible,” Lin Yun murmured. “And if the teacher can attack me, then I can attack the enemy carrier.”

“What?”

“Professor Ding, I can take another fishing boat close to the enemy fleet.”

“…and do what?”

“Incinerate myself with ball lightning. Wouldn’t that turn me into a quantum soldier?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it. In a quantum state, I can sneak into the carrier, and the enemy will have no way to find me, since the moment they notice me, my quantum state will collapse, just like you said. There’s a large arsenal on board, and thousands of tons of fuel. So as long as I can find those, I’ll be able to easily destroy the carrier…. Oh, and I can find Lieutenant Colonel Kang Ming and the other Dawnlight personnel. We could become a quantum unit…”

“This loss has turned you into a child, I see.”

“I never was very old.”

“You should go rest. We still have two hours until Beijing. Get some sleep.”

“Is what I described possible?” Lin Yun turned to look at Ding Yi, with a look of entreaty in her eyes.

“Okay. Let me tell you what a quantum state really is. In a quantum state, you—ah, supposing you’ve already been incinerated by ball lightning—you are just a probability cloud. In that cloud, everything you do is indeterminate. You lack the free will to decide where you will appear. Your position in the probability cloud, and whether you will be alive or dead when you appear, is indeterminate, decided only when God rolls his dice. If you are burned up on the fishing boat, then the probability cloud for quantum-you will be centered on that boat. In the surrounding space, you have a very small probability of appearing in the carrier’s arsenal or fuel storage. You will most likely appear in the water, and if you’re in a live state at that time, you will very quickly drown. Then your quantum state will no longer include the probability of being alive; you will be dead in every probability. Taking a huge step back, even if you hit the probability jackpot and appear in some critical part of the enemy carrier, will you be alive then? How long can you stay there? An hour, or a tenth of a second? Also, the moment one enemy, or one of the enemy’s cameras, catches sight of you, you will immediately collapse into that pile of ash in the center of the probability cloud to await your next jackpot. And when that opportunity comes, the carrier will be eighteen thousand kilometers away and there may no longer be any war left on Earth…. Finally, you’ve forgotten one point: those Dawnlight soldiers died from artillery shells, not ball lightning. Before their sacrifice, the ball lightning weapons were destroyed and sent to the bottom of the sea, so the soldiers did not turn quantum…. Lin Yun, you’re like the little match girl, seeing all kinds of illusions. You really need to rest.”

Lin Yun abruptly flung aside her helmet, then leaned against Ding Yi’s shoulder and started crying as if heartbroken. She cried sorrowfully, her slender frame trembling in Ding Yi’s embrace, as if letting out all of the anguish in her life at once….

“You can imagine how I felt at the time,” Ding Yi said. “I thought I was the sort of person for whom all emotions apart from rational thought were nonessential, and that impression has been reinforced on several prior occasions. But now I know that something else in addition to rationality can occupy a person’s entire mind…. Lin Yun seemed to have shrunk down. The old unshakable, goal-oriented major was now a fragile, helpless little girl. Was that who she really was?”

“Maybe a combination of the two. I understand women even less than you,” I said.

“Jiang Xingchen’s death already weighed heavy on her, then the failure of the mission smashed through the limit of what her psyche could endure.”

“That’s not a good state to be in. You should get in touch with her father.”

“Listen to yourself. How could I contact someone so high up?”

“I’ve got General Lin’s phone number. He gave it to me himself, and asked me to look after Lin Yun.”

I noticed that Ding Yi had not moved, and was staring at me. “It’s no use.”

His words frightened me. It was only then that I realized: Ding Yi’s story was cloaked in a shroud of sadness.

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked quietly out at the chilly night. It was a long while before he turned around again. He pointed at the empty bottle on the table. “Got another one?” I rummaged around for another bottle, opened it, and poured him half a glass. He sat down, looked squarely at the glass, and said, “There’s more. More than you ever would have imagined.”

Strings

After their mortal failure in battle, ball lightning weapons research and deployment work came to a halt. Most personnel were transferred away, and even though the unit had not been disbanded, the base was a depressing place. It was then that Zhang Bin passed away.

“Zhang Bin was, after all, one of the pioneers of domestic ball lightning studies, so we decided to honor his wishes and conduct a ball lightning funeral. This would have to be kept confidential, and since you were an outsider then, we didn’t notify you,” Ding Yi explained.

I sighed softly. It was an unusual time, and my feelings were not overly stirred up by my advisor’s passing.

The funeral was conducted on the base at the lightning test ground. It was overgrown with weeds, so they cleared a patch in the center for Zhang Bin’s remains. When everyone had retreated to the one-hundred-meter safe line, a single excited high-energy ball of lightning flew from one corner of the test ground at slow speed. It floated slowly over Zhang Bin’s body, whistling that deep xun music, as if narrating the unfortunate life of this ordinary explorer. Ten minutes later, the ball disappeared with a bang, and white smoke rose from the body. The white sheet covering it collapsed; underneath, all that was left was fine bone ash.

Since work at the base had stopped, Ding Yi had returned to the Institute of Physics in the city to continue theoretical research on macro-electrons. He had missed Zhang Bin’s funeral, but he had seen the papers of calculations left behind in Zhang Bin’s effects and had been stunned by the sheer amount of work in them. In his eyes, Zhang Bin had not been granted the imagination or opportunity for theory, but had lived a life of wandering uncertainly through the muddy wilderness; he deserved respect as well as pity. Ding Yi felt he ought to visit the grave of that pioneer.

Zhang Bin’s grave was in a public cemetery near Badaling. Lin Yun drove Ding Yi out there one afternoon. They followed the stony path to the cemetery that afternoon, a carpet of golden leaves under their feet, and a stretch of the Great Wall peeking out of the distant mountains blanketed in red. Another autumn had come, the season of dying, of parting, and of writing poetry. A shaft of light from the setting sun reached through a gap in the mountains to touch the lines of headstones.

Ding Yi and Lin Yun stood before Zhang Bin’s plain headstone, pondering their own thoughts until the sun had completely set.

Lin Yun murmured a Frost poem:

Her voice was like a woodland spring.

“Have you ever thought of taking a different road?” Ding Yi asked.

“Is there one?” she said softly.

“Leave the army after the war, and come study macro-electrons with me. I’ve got the theory skills, and you’re an engineering genius. I’ll build the ideas, and you’ll be in charge of experiments. It’s very possible we’ll make the greatest breakthrough in modern physics.”

She smiled at him. “I grew up in the army. I don’t know if I could entirely belong anywhere else.” She hesitated before adding, “Or to anyone else.”

Ding Yi said nothing. He walked up to the gravestone and placed the fresh flowers he had brought on the pedestal. As he did so, something on the stone caught his attention, and for a long while, he didn’t straighten up. Eventually he squatted down and peered closely, his face practically pressed against the stone.

“My God. Who drafted the inscription?” he exclaimed.

His question caught Lin Yun by surprise, since at Zhang Bin’s request, nothing had been put on the stone but his name and his dates, since he felt that there was nothing worth saying about his life. Lin Yun came over for a closer look, and then froze in shock. In addition to the large inscription, the face of the marker was densely covered with small carved letters. Lettering was on the top and sides of the stone, too, along with formulas and calculations. It was as if the gravestone had been dipped in a liquid made of formulas.

“Oh, they’re fading. They’re disappearing!” Lin Yun shouted.

Ding Yi roughly pushed her away. “Turn around! With one less observer they’ll collapse more slowly.”

Lin Yun turned around and wrung her hands anxiously. Ding Yi leaned on the stone and began reading the text line by line. “What is it? Can you see anything?” she asked.

“Keep quiet!” he said loudly, still focused on reading.

Lin Yun rummaged in her pockets. “Should I go back to the car for a pencil and paper?”

“There’s no time. Don’t bother me!” he said, reading the text with astonishing speed. His eyes were locked fiercely on the stone, as if trying to pierce through it.

Now the last bit of light in the west painted the gravestones an eerie blue, and the surrounding woodland was immersed in a sea of darkness. The few gleaming stars that had emerged hung unblinkingly in the sky. From time to time there was the faint whisper of leaves rustling in the gentle breeze, which soon stopped, as if some unknown power was holding its breath. Stillness enveloped everything, like the whole world was focusing its attention along with Ding Yi on the quantum inscription.

Ten minutes later, Ding Yi had finished reading the front of the gravestone, and, after a quick scan of the top and sides, began reading the back. It was completely dark now, so he took out a lighter and read rapidly in the light of its weak flame.

“I’ll get a flashlight!” Lin Yun said, running off along the path between the ranks of gravestones to the car. When she returned with a flashlight in hand, the lighter flame had gone out. She found Ding Yi sitting with his back against the gravestone and his legs stretched out in front of him, looking at the stars.

On the gravestone, the inscription had vanished without a trace. The smooth marble surface reflected the flashlight beam like a mirror.

At the light from the flashlight, Ding Yi regained his senses like a man waking from a dream. He reached out, pulled Lin Yun around to the back of the gravestone, and pointed to its base. “Look at that. There’s one line left. It’s not in a quantum state, and it’s the only line of the inscription in Chinese.” Lin Yun crouched down and read the elegantly carved text:

“I know that handwriting!” Lin Yun said, staring at the words. On more than one occasion, she had read Zhang Bin’s notebook, its alternating pages burned by ball lightning.

“Yes. It’s Zheng Min.”

“What did she carve?”

“A mathematical model. A complete description of macro-atoms.”

Lin Yun sighed. “We really should have brought a digital camera.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got it all in my head.”

“You do? All of it?”

“Most of it I’d derived already. But my theoretical system was stuck on a few points that she cleared up.”

“It must be a very important breakthrough!”

“Not just that. Lin Yun, we can find macro-nuclei!”

“The nuclei of macro-atoms?”

“Yes. By observing the movement of a macro-electron in space, we can use this model to precisely determine the exact location of the macro-atom it belongs to.”

“But how can we detect those macro-nuclei?”

“The same as with macro-electrons, and just as surprisingly simple: we can see them with the naked eye.”

“Wow… what do they look like? I remember you said that the shape of macro-nuclei would be completely different from the shape of macro-electrons.”

“Strings.”

“Strings?”

“Yes, strings. They look like a length of string.”

“How long? How thick?”

“They’re in basically the same class as macro-electrons. They’re about one to two meters long, depending on the atom. And they’re infinitely thin. Every point is a dimensionless singularity.”

“How can we see an infinitely thin string with the naked eye?”

“Because light bends in its vicinity.”

“So what does it look like?”

Ding Yi half closed his eyes, like someone who has just woken up attempting to recall a dream. “It’ll look like… a transparent crystalline snake. Or a hanging-proof rope.”

“That second one’s a strange analogy.”

“That’s because the string is the smallest building block of macro-matter. It’s impossible for it to be cut.”

On the way back, Lin Yun said to Ding Yi, “One more question: You’re the cutting edge of theoretical physics in this country. It’s hard to believe that decades ago, another ball lightning researcher was as well. There’s certainly an element of subjectivity in Zhang Bin’s assessment of his wife, but was Zheng Min really capable of making those discoveries?”

“If humanity lived in a frictionless world, Newton’s Three Laws might have been discovered even earlier by someone even more ordinary. When you yourself become a macro-particle in a quantum state, you might have a far easier time understanding that world than we do.”

And so the base started working on collecting macro-atomic nuclei.

They began by using the bubble optical detection system to make precise observations of the free-motion state of macro-electrons in the air, understanding now that the complicated floating path followed by a macro-electron, or the ball lightning that resulted when it was excited, was in fact an endless succession of atomic electron transitions—quantum leaps—that appear to us like continuous motion. If that macro-electron did indeed belong to a macro-atom, the magnificent mathematical model that had appeared on Zhang Bin’s gravestone could determine the position of a macro-atom’s nucleus through a complicated calculation involving various parameters of the atomic transition.

The first set of ten free-moving macro-electrons observed were discovered at a height of five hundred meters. A macro-electron had to be observed continuously for half an hour to obtain enough raw data for the calculation. The results showed that, of those ten macro-electrons, two were free electrons, and the other eight each belonged to a different macro-atomic nucleus, between three hundred and six hundred kilometers away. This was very close to Ding Yi’s initial estimate of the size of macro-electrons. Three of the nuclei were beyond the atmosphere in space, one was deep in the Earth’s crust, and of the four in the atmosphere, two were outside the country. So the researchers set off in search of one of the in-country macro-atomic nuclei, which was 534 kilometers away from the observed macro-electron.

It was wartime, so it was impossible to requisition a helicopter, but fortunately the base had three helium blimps they had used for capturing macro-electrons. These were easy to use, and cheap to fly; their one flaw was that they moved very slowly, at maximum speed no better than a car on an expressway.

Skies were blue in northern China that day, an excellent time for capture. They flew westward for more than four hours, crossing the Shanxi border. Below them was the unbroken line of the Taihang Mountains. The position of macro-nuclei was relatively constant compared to macro-electrons, but they still moved slowly, meaning the base had to continuously monitor the macro-electron and notify the capture blimp of the latest calculations of the macro-nucleus position. After the observation team on base notified the blimp that it had reached the target’s location, the aviators turned on the blimp’s optical detection system, whose pattern recognition software had been modified to detect a length of string rather than a round shape. There was a roughly one-hundred-meter margin of error for locating the macro-nucleus, so the optical detection system carried out fine observations of that area of sky to quickly locate the target.

The blimp descended slightly, and the aviator said that the target was several meters off the front left side of the cabin.

“Maybe we can see it directly!” Ding Yi said. Macro-electrons were hard to see without particularly keen eyesight, but Ding Yi had predicted that the shape of macro-nuclei was clearer to the naked eye, and their movement was slower and more regular, so they could be tracked more easily.

“It’s over there,” the aviator said, pointing down and to the left. All they could see in that direction was a rolling mountain range.

“Can you see it?” Lin Yun asked.

“No. That’s based on the data,” the pilot said, pointing at the detection system’s screen.

“Take us down a bit more, so we can use the sky as a background,” Ding Yi said to him.

The blimp descended slightly. The aviator watched the screen as he worked, and soon the blimp came to a standstill again. He pointed up and to the right. “It’s over there….” But this time, he didn’t pull his hand back. “My God! There really is something! Look over there! It’s moving upward!”

And thus, after the discovery of the macro-electron, humanity saw a macro-atomic nucleus for the first time.

The string was indistinct against the background of the blue sky. Like the bubbles, it was transparent, with a shape formed from its refraction of the light around it. Motionless, it would be invisible to the naked eye, but the string bent and contorted continuously in the air in a strange dance, unpredictable, but full of a wild vitality that exerted a strong attraction and hypnotic power on the observer. Later, theoretical physicists gave it a poetic name: “stringdance.”

“What are you thinking?” Ding Yi asked, without taking his eyes off the macro-nucleus.

“It’s not a crystalline snake or a hanging-proof rope,” Lin Yun answered. “It reminds me of Shiva, the eternally dancing god of Hinduism. When her dance stops, the world will be destroyed with a bang.”

“Brilliant! You seem to have found a sensitivity for abstract beauty.”

“I’ve lost my focus on the beauty of weapons. An emptiness needs to be filled with some other sort of feeling.”

“You’ll refocus on weapons soon enough.”

At Ding Yi’s statement, Lin Yun turned away from the macro-nucleus outside the cabin to look at him in wonder. Until that point, she had not connected the string dancing in midair to weapons.

When she turned back to look at the macro-nucleus, finding it again took a lot of effort. It was hard to imagine that the dancing transparent string and the far-off crystalline bubble formed an atom with a radius of more than five hundred kilometers. How big would a macro-universe formed from those atoms be? The mere thought was enough to drive you crazy.

Capturing macro-nuclei worked similarly to capturing macro-electrons. Since the protons in a macro-nucleus bore a positive charge, they were attracted to magnetic fields. But unlike macro-electrons, they would not flow through superconducting wires. The blimp hatch opened, and a feeler with a powerful electromagnetic coil attached to its end gingerly extended toward the string. The balancing presence of the macro-electrons gave the macro-atom itself a neutral charge, but the blimp was now deep inside it, near the unneutralized nucleus. When the coil at the tip of the feeler neared the string, the rhythm of its dancing slowed. It rotated once, bringing one end into contact with the coil, as if it knew which end was supposed to be connected. Then it continued its senseless dance, only fixed in place this time.

Lin Yun and Ding Yi carefully drew the feeler back into the cabin. It’s a little like fishing, they thought. The string danced in the cabin. It was around one meter long, and looked like a shimmer of hot air on the summer blacktop, rendering the cabin wall behind it slightly wavy. Lin Yun reached out to it, but, like the helicopter pilot who paused before the first macro-electron, she stopped, then watched uncomfortably as Ding Yi passed his hand casually across the center of the string without affecting its dance in the slightest.

“No big deal. It doesn’t have any interaction with the physical matter of our world.” Then, after staring at the string with Lin Yun for a minute, Ding Yi let out a long sigh. “Frightening. A terror of the natural world.”

Lin Yun asked, “It can’t be excited like macro-electrons, so what’s so terrible about it? It looks like the most harmless thing in the world.”

Ding Yi sighed again, and then stepped away, seeming to leave behind the unspoken words, Just you wait.

It wasn’t long before the detection team at the base located another macro-nucleus three-hundred-odd kilometers away from the blimp. They continued on, and three hours later, in the sky over Hengshui, Hebei Province, captured their second macro-nucleus. Another three were located in quick succession, the farthest some four hundred kilometers away, the nearest just over one hundred. The problem was that the blimp was only equipped with two magnetic coils, each of which had a string stuck to it. Lin Yun suggested that they stick two to a single coil, and use the other coil to capture new strings.

“Are you crazy?” Ding Yi shouted sharply, startling Lin Yun and the pilot. He pointed at the two coils and their strings. “I’ll say it again: the coils must be kept at least five meters apart. Do you understand?”

Lin Yun looked at Ding Yi thoughtfully for a few seconds, and said, “There’s something you’re not telling me about macro-nuclei… for example, you’ve never been willing to explain what that last line on the gravestone means.”

“For something this important, I wanted to go directly to the higher-ups,” Ding Yi said, avoiding Lin Yun’s eyes.

“You don’t trust me?”

“That’s right. I don’t trust you.” Finding his resolve, Ding Yi looked straight at Lin Yun and said, “I can trust Colonel Xu and the others at the base, but I don’t trust you. The other person I don’t trust is myself. We’re actually quite alike. Both of us might use macro-nuclei without considering the consequences, albeit for different reasons. I would act out of a burning curiosity about the universe, but you—you would act out of an infatuation with weapons, driven by your failures.”

“Again with the weapons,” Lin Yun shook her head in confusion. “This pliable, infinitely thin string can pass through our bodies without us feeling anything, and it can’t be excited into a high-energy state. It’s got nothing to do with weapons…. Your refusal to explain is affecting our work.”

“With your training, you should be able to figure it out.”

“I don’t get it. Why is putting two of them together so frightening?”

“They’ll get tangled.”

“So what?”

“Think about what happens to two atomic nuclei that get tangled up in our world.”

Ding Yi knew he had peeled back the last layer of wrapping, and he watched her closely, hoping to see signs of shock and terror on her face. There were traces at first, but they were quickly replaced by excitement—the excitement of discovering a new toy.

“Fusion!”

Ding Yi nodded in silence.

“Would it release a lot of energy?”

“Of course. A ball lightning discharge is like a chemical reaction in the macro-world. Fusion would yield at least a hundred thousand times the energy of a chemical reaction of the same number of particles.”

“Macro-fusion—that’s what we’ll call it. Would its energy release have target selectivity like ball lightning?”

“In theory, yes, since they have identical energy release channels. They both experience quantum resonance with our world.”

Lin Yun turned back to look at the two hanging strings. “That’s brilliant. We used to require temperatures of a billion degrees for fusion, but now we can achieve it simply by tangling two strings!”

“It’s not that simple. The separation I’m insisting on is merely a cautionary measure. If you put those two strings together, they wouldn’t get tangled, since electrical repulsion would prevent them from coming into contact.” Ding Yi extended a hand to rub an incorporeal dancing string. “Combining strings requires a certain amount of relative speed to overcome that repulsion. You should now be able to understand the inscription from the gravestone.”

“Inciting F requires a speed of just 426.831 meters per second…. F is fusion?”

“That’s right. Two strings need to strike each other at that relative speed in order to become entangled. That’s fusion.”

Lin Yun’s engineering mind began working at top speed. “Since the strings carry a positive charge, it wouldn’t be hard to get each of them to two-hundred-some meters per second on two EM accelerator rails of sufficient length.”

“Don’t head off in that direction. Our primary task now is to think of a safe way to store them.”

“We should begin building two accelerators immediately—”

“I said, don’t go in that direction!”

“I’m just saying, we should make preparations. If we don’t, we won’t be ready when the higher-ups decide on macro-fusion tests…,” Lin Yun said. Then, suddenly she got angry, and paced urgently inside the narrow cabin. “What’s the matter with you? You’re so neurotic and shortsighted. It’s like you’re a different person compared to when you first came!”

Ding Yi gave a strange laugh. “Major, I’m just carrying out my pitiful little duty. Do you think I really care? I don’t. No physicist really cares about anything. Last century, when they turned over the formulas and techniques for atomic energy release to engineers and soldiers, then struck a pose of injured innocence at the price paid by Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Such hypocrites. They wanted to see the results, believe me. They wanted a demonstration of the power they had discovered. It was determined by their nature—by our natures. The only difference between them and me is that I’m not a hypocrite. I really want to see what will happen when those two strings of singularities get tangled together. Do I care about anything else? Hell no!”

Ding Yi had begun to pace as he spoke, and now the blimp rocked from their restless movement. The pilot turned back curiously to watch them fight.

“Then let’s go back and build rails,” Lin Yun murmured, her head down. She seemed momentarily drained of energy, as if something Ding Yi said had hurt her. And he soon found out the answer. On the flight back to base, sitting with him between the two dancing strings, Lin Yun said softly, “Do you really not care about anything apart from the mysteries of the universe?”

“Oh, I…,” Ding Yi stammered. “I just meant that I don’t care about the consequences of macro-fusion tests.”

The Special Leading Group

After the first successful capture of macro-nuclei, the base delivered a research report to the higher-ups that had the immediate effect of refocusing attention on the forgotten ball lightning weapons project.

Not long after, the base received a relocation order moving it from Beijing to a region in the northwest. The first things to move were the captured macro-nuclei, which by this point numbered twenty-five. Keeping them near the capital was highly dangerous, no question about it.

Relocating the base took a month. During that time, work on macro-nuclei capture (they referred to them as strings now) continued uninterrupted; by the time the move was complete, nearly three hundred strings had been captured and stored. Most of them were lightweight nuclei. It appeared that in the macro-universe, as in ours, lighter elements like hydrogen were most plentiful. But Ding Yi staunchly opposed defining them using terms like “macro-hydrogen” and “macro-helium,” since it was now known that the elemental system of the macro-universe was completely different. It had an entirely unknown periodic table whose elements were not in one-to-one correspondence with our own.

The captured strings were stored in simple, hastily assembled warehouses in the Gobi Desert, stuck to magnetic coils in a grid separated by at least eight meters, and subject to an isolation field to guarantee that they were kept safely apart. From a distance, these warehouses resembled greenhouses, so, to the outside world, the base was the Research Center for Anti-Desertification Plants.

The higher-ups specifically named safety concerns as the reason for relocating the base, but its location clearly suggested another possibility.

This was the spot where China had detonated its first atomic bomb. Here, just next to the base, were remains of metal towers twisted by the atomic blast and a small, nearly forgotten commemorative plaque. A short journey would take you to the nuclear weapon proving ground: buildings and bridges constructed to observe the effects of the nuclear explosion on them, and a large number of old armored cars used as test targets. Geiger counters no longer clicked incessantly here—radiation left by the explosion had been drained by time—and it was said that a fair number of those abandoned objects had been carted off by local farmers for sale as scrap.

A major meeting to discuss the discovery of strings was held in Beijing. It was attended by senior leaders, including the premier. Lin Yun’s father chaired the meeting. The fact that he was able to take a full day away from vital war command to hold the meeting demonstrated the strings’ importance.

After listening to two hours of technical reports by Ding Yi and the other physicists who had just been added to string research, General Lin said, “These reports have been rigorous and comprehensive. Now I’d like to ask Professor Ding to clear up a few questions for us in the plainest language possible.”

Ding Yi said, “My understanding of the physical laws of the macro-world is still very superficial. Our study of strings has only just begun. For some questions, I’ll only be able to give a very vague or even uncertain answer. I hope that you all will understand.”

General Lin nodded. “First, when two strings from light atoms collide at critical velocity, how certain are we that they will undergo fusion? As far as I am aware, only two hydrogen isotopes and He-3 can cause a fusion reaction in our world.”

“Sir, it’s hard to compare the physical elements of the macro-world with ours. The unique string structure of macro-nuclei makes it relatively easy for them to combine, so fusion reactions between macro-atoms can be accomplished with much less effort than for our atoms. And macro-particles move at velocities a great many orders of magnitude slower than our particles. That means that, from the perspective of the macro-world, a collision speed of four-hundred-odd meters per second is equivalent to fusion temperature in our world. So we can be certain of producing fusion if we achieve a collision at that critical velocity.”

“Excellent. The next, and most important, question: What will the size and effect scope of fusion energy be?”

“Sir, this question involves many variables, so it’s difficult to be certain. This is the question that I’m most concerned with, too.”

“Can we try to come up with a relatively conservative estimate, like the equivalent of fifteen or twenty megatons of TNT?”

Ding Yi shook his head with a smile. “Definitely not that high, sir.”

“For safety’s sake, we’ll base our thinking on that, then. That is roughly the biggest thermonuclear yield that humanity has detonated. In the mid-twentieth century, during US ocean tests and Soviet land tests of that yield, the destructive radius was around fifty kilometers, well within controllable range. So what’s your worry?”

“Sir, I’m afraid you’re forgetting one thing: the high selectivity that macro-particle energy discharge has for its target. Conventional nuclear fusion releases its energy without any selectivity at all. It acts upon all matter in its surroundings—air, stone, earth, and so forth—which swiftly drains it away. So while conventional fusion may be high-yield, its area of effect is limited. But macro-fusion is different. The energy it releases acts on only one specific type of matter, and all other matter is completely transparent to it. If there’s only a very small amount of that matter type, the energy drain will be small, but the area of effect will be large indeed. I’ll give you an example: a twenty megaton release of energy without selectivity would turn the region within a fifty kilometer radius to cinders, but if that energy only acted upon hair, it would be enough to turn everyone in the world bald.”

It was an amusing example, but no one laughed. The climate of the meeting remained serious and oppressive.

“Are you now able to determine a string’s specific energy release target?”

“Yes. We discovered a while ago that microwaves are modulated into a complicated spectrum when passing through a macro-electron—different spectrums for different macro-electrons, as if they were fingerprints. Macro-electrons having the same discharge targets share a spectrum. Theoretically, this method will also apply to strings.”

“But obtaining the spectrum of a particular class of macro-electron at first required discharge tests. You now believe that strings that share a spectrum with macro-electrons will also share a discharge target. Is there a theoretical basis for this?”

“Yes. We are able to prove this.”

“So what are some of the targets of the three-hundred-odd strings you have captured?”

“All kinds. The most dangerous are those that target living organisms. Fusion of those strings would have unimaginable destructive power.”

“One final question: Are there strings that release into electronic chip targets?”

“As in the case of macro-electrons, these are very rare. At the moment, we have collected only three of them.”

“Good. Thank you.” General Lin concluded his questioning, and the meeting fell into silence.

“The situation, I think, has been fully explained,” said the premier, who had kept silent until this point. “Everyone not in the leading group is dismissed.”

A thousand kilometers away, the ball lightning research base was engaged in intense preparation for macro-fusion tests.

The string accelerator rails, each of them more than ten meters long, were complete. They resembled two model railroad bridges, and, indeed, their code names were “Bridge 1” and “Bridge 2.” The two strings would be accelerated to 250 meters per second on these bridges before colliding and undergoing macro-fusion.

The strings to be used in this experiment were those with the greatest practical significance: strings that released into electronic chips.

The bulk of the work went into setting up the target area. The base began importing huge quantities of electronic waste from overseas, most of it junked computer motherboards and network cards. Under the wartime economic blockade, e-waste was among the few products it was possible to import, and it was acquired in large quantities from third parties or even directly from the enemy. It was collected domestically as well. Ultimately, eighty thousand tons of e-waste were amassed and piled into unnatural mountains in the Gobi Desert. The boards and cards, bearing a huge number of chips, were arranged in three target circles around the central fusion point, the innermost at a radius of ten kilometers, and the outermost at one hundred kilometers, which included two small county towns on the edge of the Gobi. Small yellow surveying flags were used in this region, under each of which was anchored a black sealed bag holding several boards.

At the final work meeting, Ding Yi said, “I’ll warn you of one thing: since the energy density will be high in the vicinity of the point of macro-fusion, there will be no target selectivity. Everything within a radius of two hundred meters will be incinerated. That means the rails will be single-use, and test personnel must maintain a safe distance of at least two thousand meters from the fusion point and ensure that they have no electronic equipment on their person.”

Everyone waited, but Ding Yi said nothing more. “Is that all?” Colonel Xu asked.

“I’ve said everything I need to say to the people I need to say it to,” he said, without emotion.

“Are you anticipating something unpredictable?” Lin Yun asked.

“As of this moment, I have not found anything predictable about macro-fusion.”

“It’s just two nuclei. They may be macro-nuclei, but it’s only two of them. In micro-fusion in our world, a hydrogen bomb with a mass far greater than those two strings has a yield of only a few megatons.”

Ding Yi said nothing, but just shook his head—whether to express his own lack of understanding or his helplessness at Lin Yun’s naïveté, it was hard to say.

The next day, a battalion of soldiers from a local garrison arrived to strengthen security at the base. This caused excitement, since it was a sign that the test was about to start.

“Even if the fusion energy only destroys chips in the first target circle, we will have acquired an unstoppable weapon. Think of it: How can a fleet defend against an explosion ten kilometers away? An explosion that cripples all of its electronics?” Lin Yun enthused.

Her mood was shared by everyone on base. Their first failure had robbed them of the chance to make history, but now a second chance was in front of them, and it was even more palpable.

Late that night, Lin Yun and a few engineers were still making final adjustments to the bridges. To avoid detection from the air, the two bridges had been set up in a large tent the size of a gymnasium. During the test, the tent would be the first thing destroyed by the fusion energy. Ding Yi called Lin Yun outside, and they walked in the cold Gobi wind.

“Lin Yun, leave the base,” Ding Yi said, suddenly breaking his silence.

“What are you talking about?”

“I want you to leave the base. You can apply for a transfer, or take a vacation. Just leave at once. Ask your father for help if you need to.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You’re the crazy one if you stay.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No. It’s just a feeling.”

“Can’t you think of my feelings? How can I leave at a time like this?”

In the dark, Lin Yun heard a long sigh. “I fulfilled my duty at the meeting in Beijing last week. Now I’ve done my duty as far as you’re concerned.” He waved both hands at the darkness, as if casting something aside. “There. Since you’re not going to leave, then let’s make preparations to watch the spectacle together. A spectacle beyond our wildest dreams!”

Under the moonlight across the vast sand of the Gobi, in a carpet of white temporary warehouses, three hundred strings spun their silent, endless dance.

The next morning, the base received notice that a special leading group would arrive that day to take over. The news pushed excitement to new heights, for this was an unmistakable sign that the macro-fusion test was a go.

That afternoon, the leading group arrived in two helicopters. Heading the group was a major general named Du Yulun. He wore glasses and cut a cultivated figure, a scholar-general. The group was warmly welcomed at the landing site by base leadership and the entire ball lightning project team. When Colonel Xu’s introductions reached Lin Yun, Ding Yi noticed that General Du’s smile vanished, and when Lin Yun saluted, he clearly heard her call him “teacher.” General Du just smiled thinly and gave a slight nod before moving on to the next person.

On the way to the office building, Ding Yi overheard Colonel Xu talking to General Du.

“You seem to know Major Lin, sir?”

“Hmm. I was her doctoral advisor.”

“I see.” Colonel Xu did not inquire further. Clearly he had also noticed their unusual interaction. But Du Yulun did not change the topic.

“I did everything I could to stop her from getting her degree,” he said, turning his head to look at Lin Yun following far behind them.

“Why? Major Lin was exemplary in her discipline.”

“In her discipline, I’ll acknowledge that she was the most exemplary student I’ve ever advised. Her technical gifts were without peer. But in our area of research, I place the same value on a person’s morality as on their talent.”

Colonel Xu was evidently a little surprised. “Oh… yes. Lin Yu’s personality is a little abrasive, a little headstrong—”

“No, no.” The general waved a hand. “It’s not about temperament. I believe that someone who treats guns like drugs is unfit for weapons research. Particularly cutting-edge and new-concept weapons.”

Colonel Xu said nothing, but turned slowly to look back at Lin Yun.

“Colonel Xu, you’ve probably heard of the liquid mine incident.”

“Yes. The Discipline Inspection Commission at Headquarters told me about that…. What? Did the investigation find anything?”

The general nodded. “She sold the technology to Chile and Bolivia simultaneously. That’s deplorable, and she must be held responsible.”

Colonel Xu, his expression grim now, looked back at Lin Yun again. She was engrossed in conversation with some young technical officers.

“Lin Yun will be isolated for investigation. Starting now, she is not to be permitted to have contact with any of the materials or equipment pertaining to string research. I must specifically state that this is the wish of General Lin Feng. He knows his daughter even better than I do.”

“But… she is the key tech on base. Without her, the fusion test can’t proceed.”

General Du looked meaningfully at Colonel Xu, but said nothing more.

They all realized that the atmosphere wasn’t right as soon as the meeting started, but what General Du led with came as a shock.

“Colonel Xu, what sort of show are you running here? You attended the meeting in Beijing. You ought to understand the intent of the higher-ups. You ought to know that there has never been a plan to go forward with macro-fusion tests, much less any sort of decision to do so! We ordered you to proceed with preparations only as a precautionary measure.”

Colonel Xu sighed. “Sir, I have made this clear to the comrades on the base time and again, but… they have their own ideas.”

“It’s because of your permissiveness of a certain dangerous line of thinking on base that they have been misled.”

A murmur passed through the meeting room.

“Now I will read out the order that’s been handed down.” General Du adjusted his glasses, and began. “First, immediately cease all preparations for macro-atomic fusion tests and seal up all experimental equipment. Second, cease all experimental research on macro-nuclei, all experimental projects involving macro-nuclei, and strictly restrict research on macro-nuclei to the confines of pure theory. Third, release the vast majority of collected macro-nuclei currently in storage back into the atmosphere, retaining only one-tenth for future research use. Fourth, the special leading group will take over all facilities on base. Apart from a small number of personnel to keep guard, all members of the ball lightning project team are to vacate immediately and return to Beijing to await orders.”

Silence descended on the meeting room, but the icy stillness did not last very long. It was Lin Yun’s voice that broke it.

“Teacher, why are you doing this?”

“I am not your teacher anymore. And as a base-level technical officer, your only right at this meeting is to listen.”

“But I have a soldier’s duty. With the war in such a dire state, we’re going to abandon a chance for victory out of a few vague fears?”

“Lin Yun, you’re at your most shallow and naïve when you believe that any one new-concept weapon will win the war. Think about your actions. Are you still qualified to talk about duty?” General Du looked straight at her as he spoke, then swept his gaze around the whole room. “Comrades, the war is indeed in a grave situation, but even greater than our responsibility to the war is our responsibility to human civilization!”

“Those are some lofty words,” Lin Yun challenged him, jumping up.

“Lin Yun!” Colonel Xu snapped. “You cannot talk to a superior that way.”

General Du stopped Colonel Xu with a wave of his hand, then turned and said to Lin Yun, “I am carrying out a lofty order, an order given by people wiser, more moral, and more responsible than you. Your father is among them.”

Lin Yun said nothing more. Her bosom heaved and tears had welled up in the corners of her eyes, but her expression was as fiery as before.

“Now, Colonel Xu, get going with the handover. But let me note that the base’s handover team may not include Major Lin Yun. She has been transferred off of the ball lightning project team, and will leave the base by helicopter immediately after the meeting,” Major General Du said, looking meaningfully at Lin Yun. “This is also your father’s wish.”

Lin Yun sat slowly back in her seat. When Ding Yi looked back at her a little while later, he was surprised to discover that she seemed an entirely different person. The tumult in her heart seemed to have vanished in a flash, and her expression was as calm as water. She was silent for the remainder of the meeting.

The meeting continued for another half hour, focusing mainly on the details of the handover. When it was dismissed, Lin Yun passed through the exiting crowd to the front of the building, where she said to General Du, “Teacher, have someone accompany me.”

“Where?” he asked, confused.

“To the fusion point. I need to pick up some personal items,” she said simply.

“Oh, right,” Colonel Xu said. “She’s been staying out by the bridges doing calibrations.”

“You go with her,” General Du said to a lieutenant colonel next to him.

Lin Yun saluted, then turned and left, disappearing into the blood-red Gobi sun outside.

Macro-Fusion

Following the meeting, the members of the special leading group remained behind with several of the base’s technical directors to discuss the issue of storing the small number of macro-nuclei that were to be kept. They agreed that the strings would be stored in an underground facility to mitigate the risk of air strikes and other dangers.

Colonel Xu inquired again about the ultimate fate of the ball lightning project team, and General Du said, “I may have been too severe at the meeting. The higher-ups are well aware of the excellent achievements the project team has made, and even though string research will be suspended for the time being, macro-electron research can still continue.”

“Sir, ordinary macro-electron weapons have reached a dead end,” Colonel Xu said, grimacing.

“Is it really that serious? It was just one failed attack on a fleet. And a fleet is the most heavily defended target in modern warfare. But on land? The enemy can’t equip every single soldier with a magnetic shield, and I’d wager it would be pretty difficult to do so for every tank and armored vehicle. So there’s still a bright future for the weapon. The key is where you use it. Also, the higher-ups are now very interested in pure dissipation ball lightning.”

“Pure dissipation? But that’s useless junk,” Colonel Xu said uncertainly. That type of ball lightning did not have an explosive release of energy at all. After excitement, it gradually discharged its energy through ordinary EM radiation. It was the gentlest macro-electron, and had been deemed to be the least useful, militarily.

“No, Colonel. Haven’t you noticed the EM radiation that they release? It blankets practically all communication wavelengths, and is very strong. Right now, the military has adopted a double-blind warfare strategy and is carrying out full-spectrum jamming of the enemy, but our jamming sources frequently get located and destroyed, so we are investigating pure dissipation ball lightning as a jamming source.”

“That’s true! When it drifts through the air, wireless communications cut out over a fairly large area. And it’s long-lived, with a discharge that lasts for up to two hours!”

“And it’s not easily destroyed. We’ve done tests in which ball lightning in flight hasn’t been affected even after being bombed.”

“That’s right, sir. We should have come up with that idea before.”

“You did come up with the idea, Colonel. You’ve submitted so many technical reports that it’s quite likely you just didn’t notice it.”

Ding Yi said, “I knew about it. Lin Yun was the one who proposed it.”

At the mention of Lin Yun, they fell into silence.

Just then, the sound of a gunshot came from the fusion point.

The test location was roughly one thousand meters away, so the sound was faint, but Ding Yi knew it was a gunshot from the soldiers’ sudden alertness. It was followed by several more in quick succession. Everyone in the meeting room rushed outside and looked off toward the fusion point.

A swath of empty land lay between the fusion point and the office building. They could see someone running across that space from the tent holding the acceleration bridges. As he got closer, they could make out the lieutenant colonel who had gone with Lin Yun to the fusion point. Closer still, and they saw that his left hand was clutched to his shoulder, and his right held a gun. When he reached the office building, they could see the blood running down and dripping off the barrel of his gun.

The lieutenant colonel pushed aside someone who tried to treat his wound and went straight up to General Du. In a hoarse voice, he said, “Major Lin Yun… she’s going to conduct the macro-fusion test by force!”

Time froze. They looked across at the fusion point, and for a moment, everywhere else in the world vanished from sight, leaving only the huge tent towering alone.

“Who fired?”

“I did. There were too many of them. If I didn’t shoot first, it would have been too late.” The lieutenant colonel set down his bloody gun and sat down heavily.

“Any other casualties?” Colonel Xu asked.

“I definitely hit one of them. A captain, I think. Injured or dead, I don’t know.”

“And Lin Yun?” General Du said.

“Unharmed.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Six, including Lin Yun. Three of the others are three majors and two are captains.”

“So many people are on her side?” General Du said, eyeing Colonel Xu.

“Lin Yun had considerable appeal to some of the more nationalistically inclined young people on base.”

“And the atomic nuclei for the fusion test?”

“The two strings are already on the bridges.”

Every eye drew back from the tent in the distance to focus on General Du Yulun.

“Order base security to attack and occupy the fusion point immediately,” General Du instructed the guard commander who had just run up.

“Sir, I’m afraid that’s impossible!” said the deputy director of the special leading group, a senior colonel named Shi Jian, as he walked quickly over to General Du. “The strings are already on the bridge. Fusion might take place at any time. We need to take more decisive action.”

“Carry out the order,” Du Yulun said, without expression.

Senior Colonel Shi stared at him in anxiety verging on panic, but ultimately said nothing.

“Professor Ding, we ought to go and dissuade her,” Colonel Xu said.

Ding Yi shook his head. “I won’t go. It wouldn’t do any good. Besides, I understand her.” His frankness drew odd looks from the others. He added, “I might be the only one here who understands her.”

“Let’s go!” Colonel Xu said, and, without a second look at Ding Yi, he hurried off with the guard commander.

“Don’t shoot rashly,” General Du called after them as they left. The guard commander turned back with a hasty, “Yes, sir.”

“It’s no use. Trying to persuade her won’t work. I still don’t understand her…,” General Du murmured to himself. He looked like he had aged considerably in the blink of an eye, perhaps blaming himself for allowing emotion to trump reason, for it was clear to all now that Lin Yun had been his most prized student.

The security force quickly surrounded the fusion point and began drawing their line tighter around the tent. They moved in silence, neither side opening fire. When the line reached the tent, Colonel Xu shouted through a megaphone, but he was clearly no longer thinking straight. His attempts at persuasion were jumbled and unconvincing, nothing more than entreaties to “calm down,” and “think of the consequences.”

As if in answer, the sharp electric hum of a thunderball gun was heard in the tent, followed immediately by a whistling string of cool blue ball lightning, which whipped over the line like a gale. The soldiers reflexively hit the ground. The ball lightning exploded just behind them in a short bang, and a few stands of tamarisks and two nearby piles of crates turned instantly to ash, producing no flame, but giving off black tendrils of smoke. The ball lightning had released its energy into wood and vegetation.

“That was a warning. Your last warning.” From the tent, Lin Yun’s voice came over a megaphone, calm as water.

“Lin Yun, you… you’d really try to kill your comrades in arms?” Colonel Xu shouted in despair.

There was no answer.

“Pull the forces back at once,” General Du said.

“We should immediately carry out a ball lightning attack on the tent, sir. We can’t delay any longer!” Senior Colonel Shi said.

“No,” a base officer said. “Lin Yun’s group is using the latest-model thunderball gun. It has a built-in EM shield system that will deflect all ball lightning shot by other thunderball guns at fifty meters.”

General Du thought for a few seconds, then picked up a phone and dialed the number for Lin Yun’s father, General Lin Feng.

“Sir, this is Du Yulun. I’m calling you from the Project B436 base. When the special leading group was about to take over the base, there was an unexpected incident. Lin Yun and five other young officers forcibly occupied the fusion test point, and are now going to carry out the macro-fusion test by force. The two atomic nuclei are in the accelerators, and fusion could take place at any time. They are armed with a thunderball gun. Would you…”

The other end was quiet for two seconds, but only two seconds. Then General Lin said evenly, “You are fully capable of giving the order yourself.”

“But, sir—”

“You have been relieved. Hand the phone to Senior Colonel Shi Jian.”

“Sir!”

“Quickly.”

General Du passed the phone to Shi Jian, who snatched it up at once, clearly eager for the opportunity to talk to the brass. He was about to speak when General Lin gave a short, decisive order: “Destroy the fusion point.”

“Yes, sir.”

The senior colonel then set down the phone and turned to a major: “What’s the nearest class two or higher fire point?”

“Red 331. It’s around 150 kilometers away.”

“Immediately transmit the fusion point coordinates to them. Four-point precision. Send them the attack authorization, and connect me with the commander of Red 331.”

The missile base commander was soon on the line. The senior colonel said into the receiver, “Yes. Right. Have you received the coordinates and the attack authorization? Right. Immediately! Good. Treat it as a type-four land target…. You determine that yourselves. Just ensure it’s destroyed. Immediately. I won’t hang up….”

“Hey, don’t we have any other choices? Where macro-fusion is concerned…,” Ding Yi said, pushing forward.

Phone in hand, Senior Colonel Shi Jian turned a fierce glare on Ding Yi, and gave a decisive sweep downward with his other arm, either to say there was no other choice, or to stop Ding Yi from talking at all.

“Good. Acknowledged,” he said into the phone, then set it down. His movements slowed, the anxiety dissipated. He let out a long sigh, like he was free at last of a heavy burden, but also like fear had struck him.

“The missile is in transit. It will arrive in three minutes,” he said.

“Sir, maybe we should pull back a little,” an officer said to General Du.

“No.” General Du waved a hand tiredly and did not raise his bowed head.

Very soon they were able to see the missile. Its white tail traced it in the southern sky like an airplane’s contrail, but far faster.

Lin Yun’s voice sounded through the megaphone from the tent, still calm, as if everything that was happening was nothing more than a fluid piece of music she was playing. Now she was declaring that it had come to an end.

“You’re too late, Dad.”

Macro-fusion is quiet. In fact, the majority of eyewitnesses said that it was quieter than usual at the time of fusion, as if all other sounds in nature had been screened out so that the whole process could be conducted in an incomprehensible silence. As one eyewitness put it, the process of macro-fusion looked like “the rising and setting of a blue sun.” At first, the tent emitted blue light. Then people could see the ball of light, still small, as the tent turned transparent like a sheet of cellophane hanging over the tent poles. But soon it collapsed, as if melting. The collapse strangely drew every part of the tent into the fusion’s center, where it was absorbed into the ball of light as if being sucked into a whirlpool, leaving behind no remains or traces of any kind. After the tent disappeared, the ball continued to grow, and soon emerged in the Gobi Desert like a blue sun. By the time it stopped expanding, its radius had grown to around two hundred meters, the distance at which Ding Yi had predicted that ball lightning’s target selectivity would start. Within that distance, the extreme density of the energy meant that everything was destroyed.

The blue sun remained at its largest state for around half a minute. It was stable during that time, but an eerie stillness enveloped the world, so that the brief period felt like an eternity, as if nothing had changed since the birth of the world. The blue sun outshone the real sun, which was half below the western horizon. It drowned the entire Gobi in its blue light and rendered the world weird and unfamiliar. It was a cold sun, and even close by, no one could feel any heat from it.

Then came the strangest marvel of all: from its ghostly depths, the blue sphere radiated a multitude of glittering small stars that turned immediately into objects of various sizes when they reached its surface. The onlookers were shocked when they realized what the objects were: tents, in a state of quantum superposition! They appeared entirely corporeal, not illusory. The largest was bigger than the original tent and hovered in the air like an enormous black shadow. The smallest was pebble-sized, but was complete and whole, like an exquisite model. The tents soon collapsed under the gaze of the observers into a destroyed state, trailing a series of superimposed images before vanishing into the air. But more quantum tents kept flying out from the center in a tent probability cloud that permeated the nearby space. The blue sun was enveloped within the cloud, its expansion arrested by the presence of observers.

At last a sound broke the stillness: a faint snap from a computer on the desk, and then from everyone’s mobile phone. The sound of electronic chips frying. At the same time, a multitude of small objects passed through the unharmed outer case of the computer and radiated outward—objects that, on closer inspection, turned out to be complete CPUs, memory sticks, and other chips, each in a quantum superposition, existing simultaneously in an unknown number of positions. The flying chips were so numerous that the office building was momentarily choked in a thick chip probability cloud. Then, like an invisible broom, observation returned these chips to a destroyed state and they vanished, dragging tails behind them, collapsing to ash inside the computer case. Soon the air was empty again.

There was a louder noise, a thunder that carried through the air. It was the incoming missile, chips fried, spiraling downward in a huge fireball.

Peace was restored. The blue sun shrank rapidly down to a single point near the ground, then disappeared into the spot where, just one minute before, two macro-nuclei had collided off their bridges at five hundred meters per second and two strings of singularities twisted together in the blink of an eye. Now, in the unimaginable macro-universe, two atoms were gone, but a new one had been born, an incident unnoticed by any observer in that world. As in our world, only when billions and billions of nuclei were tangled together would they produce an effect that could be called an incident.

The setting sun quietly shone its light on the Gobi Desert and the base. A few birdcalls sounded from the tamarisks, as if nothing at all had happened.

Base personnel gathered at the fusion point, where the tent and everything within it had vanished without a trace. Before them was a smooth mirror roughly two hundred meters in radius lying flat on the sands, formed when the silicon of the ground instantly liquefied and then solidified. Like other objects melted by ball lightning, the ground had not emitted an appreciable amount of heat when it melted, but had been transformed while in a wave state in some other space. It was now cool to the touch. Its surface was astonishingly smooth, and reflected their faces with great clarity. Try as he might, Ding Yi found nothing to indicate how the ground had solidified, or by what mechanism this part of the Gobi had been made so flat and smooth after melting. The people stood around the huge mirror in silence, looking at the beautiful reflection of the sunset in the western sky, then the stars that came out one by one in the reflection of the heavens.

Meanwhile, the macro-fusion wave of energy was propagating outward. It passed all three target circles, turning all eighty thousand tons of chips in the hundred-kilometer radius to ash, then kept going. It expanded to more than a thousand kilometers before the volume of chips it passed along the way was enough to weaken it, thereby dragging one-third of the country back to an agricultural age.

Lin Yun II

The rain had stopped at some point, and outside the window, the first light of dawn was coming.

As on that birthday night in my youth, I was no longer the person I was the day before. I had lost too much—although, for the moment, I wasn’t sure of what I had lost, only that I had been reduced to a weak, hollow shell.

“Do you want to keep listening?” Ding Yi, his eyes bloodshot, said drunkenly.

“Hmm? No, I don’t want to listen anymore.”

“It’s about Lin Yun.”

“Lin Yun? What more is there to say about her? Go on.”

On the third day after macro-fusion, Lin Yun’s father arrived at the fusion point.

By this point, most of the more than three hundred captured macro-nuclei had been released into the air. When the electromagnets that attracted them cut out, the strings danced away fairly quickly, and soon disappeared without a trace. The thirty-odd strings kept for research use were transferred to a safer storage point. Base personnel had mostly dispersed, and stillness returned to this part of the Gobi Desert that had witnessed two massive energy discharges in two separate centuries.

Only Colonel Xu and Ding Yi accompanied General Lin to the fusion point. The general looked more haggard and far older than he had at the meeting in Beijing not long before, but he maintained an indomitable spirit that made him appear unbroken.

They reached the edge of the huge mirror created by macro-fusion. The mirror’s surface was covered in a thin layer of sand, but it was still smooth and bright and reflected the clouds that swirled overhead, like a patch of sky fallen into the Gobi, or a window into another world. As General Lin and the other two stood there in silence, time in their world seemed to have stopped. In the world of the mirror, it raced breakneck forward.

“This is a unique monument,” Ding Yi said.

“Let the sand slowly bury it,” General Lin said. A few wisps of white hair that had appeared on his head wafted in the wind.

And then Lin Yun appeared.

The clunk of a security officer pulling back a rifle bolt alerted them. When they looked up, they saw Lin Yun standing on the other side of the mirror—four hundred meters away, but even at that distance, they all recognized her. She strode across the mirror toward them. General Lin and the others quickly realized it was the real Lin Yun, not an illusion, since they could hear the light crunch of her feet on the surface like the tick of a second hand, and they could see the footprints she left in the thin layer of sand. The clouds continued their tumble across the mirror as she walked atop them, at times raising a hand to brush away her short hair where the Gobi wind had blown it onto her forehead. When she had nearly reached them, they could see her uniform was trim, like new, and although her face was a little pale, her expression was clear and calm. Finally, she stood in front of her father.

“Dad,” she said softly.

“Xiao Yun, what have you done?” General Lin said. His voice wasn’t loud, and it was tinged with a deep sorrow and despair.

“Dad, you look tired. Why don’t you sit down.”

A security officer carried over a wooden crate that had once held experimental equipment, and General Lin sat down on it slowly. He did seem exhausted. Perhaps for the first time in his long military career, he let his exhaustion show.

Lin Yun nodded at Colonel Xu and Ding Yi in greeting, and gave a familiar smile. Then she said to the guard, “I’m unarmed.”

General Lin waved at the guard, who lowered the assault rifle, but kept a finger next to the trigger.

“I really didn’t imagine that macro-fusion would have so much force, Dad,” Lin Yun said.

“You’ve rendered a third of the country defenseless.”

“Yes, Dad,” she said, lowering her head.

“Xiao Yun, I don’t want to criticize you. It’s too late for that. This is the end of everything. The only thought in my mind the past two days has been: Why did you take this step?”

Lin Yun looked at her father, and said, “Dad, we came here together.”

General Lin nodded heavily. “Yes, child. We came here together, and what a long road it’s been. Perhaps it began with your mother’s sacrifice.” The general squinted at the blue sky and clouds in the mirror, as if staring at past time.

“Yes, I remember that night. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival. A Saturday. I was the only one left behind out of all the kids in the military kindergarten. I sat on a stool in the compound, clutching a mooncake an auntie had given me, but instead of looking up at the moon, I was staring at the gate. She said, ‘Poor Yunyun, your dad’s with the troops and can’t come back to pick you up. You’ll sleep at the kindergarten tonight.’ I said, ‘My dad never comes to pick me up. My mom does.’ She said, ‘Your mom’s not here. She gave her life in the south. She won’t be coming to pick you up anymore, Yunyun.’ I knew that already, but now the dream I had tended for a month was completely dead. The big kindergarten gate often appeared before me in my waking hours and my dreams. The difference was that, in my dreams, Mom always came through the gate, but when I was awake, it remained empty…. That Mid-Autumn Festival night was a turning point in my life. My lonely melancholy turned all at once to hatred, hatred for the people who had taken Mom’s life, making her leave me alone in the kindergarten even on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.”

General Lin said, “I came to get you a week later. You were always holding a little matchbox with two bees inside. The women were afraid you’d get stung, and wanted to take the matchbox from you, but you cried and howled and wouldn’t give it to them. Your ferocity frightened them.”

Lin Yun said, “I told you that I wanted to train those bees so they’d sting the enemy, like they’d stung Mom. I proudly described to you all my ideas for killing the enemy… like how I knew that pigs liked to eat, so we should put lots and lots of pigs where the enemy was living and let the pigs eat all of their provisions so the men would starve to death. I thought a small speaker placed outside the enemy’s homes could produce an eerie sound at night to frighten them to death…. I constantly came up with ideas like these. It became a fascinating thought exercise for me that amused me to no end.”

“I was alarmed to see that in my daughter.”

“Yes, Dad. After I finished telling you my ideas, you looked at me in silence for a while, then took out two photos from a briefcase. Two identical photos, except that the corner of one was singed, and the other had brown marks on it that I later learned were blood. They were photos of a family of three. Both parents were military officers, but their uniforms were different from yours, Dad, and they wore epaulets that you and the others didn’t have back then. The girl was around my age and pretty, her pale skin a little pink, like fine porcelain. Growing up in the north, I had never seen skin like that. Her hair was so black and so long, down to her waist. So cute. Her mother was pretty, too, and her father was so handsome that I envied the entire family. But you told me that they were enemy officers who had been killed by our artillery fire, and the photos had been recovered from their bodies when the battlefield had been swept. Now the pretty kid in the photographs didn’t have a mom or dad anymore.”

General Lin said, “I also told you that the people who killed your mom weren’t bad. They did it because they were soldiers and had to carry out their duty to the fullest. Like your father the soldier, who also had to carry out his duty to kill the enemy on the battlefield.”

“I remember that, Dad. Of course I remember. You need to understand that it was the 1980s. The way you educated me was pretty alternative and unrecognized back then. If it had gotten out, it would have spelled the end of your political career. You wanted to dig out the seed of my hatred to keep it from germinating. That showed me how much you loved me, and I’m still grateful for that.”

“But it didn’t help,” General Lin said, with a sigh.

“Right. Back then I was curious about a thing called duty, which made it possible for soldiers to kill but not hate each other. But not for me. I still hated them. I still wanted to have them stung by bees.”

“It pained me to listen to you. Hatred born out of the lonely melancholy of a child who lost her mother doesn’t go away easily. The only thing capable of wiping out that hatred is a mother’s love.”

“You understood that. For a while there was a woman who came over often and was kind to me. We got on well. But for some reason she didn’t end up as my new mother.”

The general sighed again. “Xiao Yun, I should have paid more attention to you.”

“Later, I slowly got used to life without Mom, and the naïve hatred in my heart faded with time. I never stopped the fascinating thought exercises, though, and I grew up with all kinds of fantasy weapons. But it wasn’t until that summer holiday that weapons became a real part of my life. It was the summer of second grade. You had to go to the south to work on building up the PLA Marine Corps, and when you saw how disappointed I was that you were going, you took me along. It was a fairly remote unit, and with no other kids around. My playmates were your colleagues and subordinates, all of them officers in the field army, most of whom didn’t have children. Bullet casings were what they usually gave me to play with. All kinds of casings. I used them as whistles. One time I saw a man eject a bullet from a magazine and I started fussing for it. He said, ‘That’s not for children to play with. Children can only play with headless ones.’ I said, ‘Take off the head and give it to me!’ He said, ‘Then it’ll be just like the casings I gave you before. I’ll give you some more of those.’ I said, ‘No, I want that one with the head taken off!’ ”

“That’s just how you were, Xiao Yun. Once you got something in your sights, you didn’t care about anything else.”

“I gave him such a hard time that he said, ‘Fine, but this one’s hard to take off. I’ll shoot it for you instead.’ He shoved it back into the magazine, carried the rifle outside, and fired once at the sky. Then he pointed at the casing that bounced onto the ground and said, ‘Take it.’ Rather than picking it up, I asked with wide eyes, ‘Where did the head go?’ He said, ‘It flew away, way up high.’ And I said, ‘Was the sound right after the crack the sound of it flying?’ He said, ‘You’re really clever, Yunyun.’ Then he aimed at the sky and fired again, and again I heard the sound of a bullet whistling in flight. He said it flew fast enough to puncture thin steel plates. I rubbed the rifle’s warm barrel, and all the weapons I had fantasized about in my thought exercises instantly seemed weak and impotent. The real weapon in front of me held an irresistible attraction.”

General Lin said, “The rough army guys thought it was adorable that a little girl loved guns, so they continued to amuse you with them. Ammunition was far less strictly supervised back then, and lots of ex-soldiers took dozens of rounds away with them, so they had plenty for you to play with. Eventually it got to the point where they let you fire, at first helping you hold the gun, and eventually letting you do it on your own. By the time the summer holiday ended, you could drop to the ground with an assault rifle and fire bursts all by yourself.”

“I held the gun and felt the vibrations of it firing the way other girls cradled singing dolls. Later on, I watched light machine guns firing on the practice range. To me it was a song of delight, not a painful sound…. When summer was over, I no longer covered my ears for hand grenade explosions or recoilless rifles.”

“I took you to the front-line troops for subsequent holidays, mostly with the thought that I’d be able to spend more time with you, but also because I felt that, even though the army wasn’t a place for a kid, it was at least a fairly innocent place that wouldn’t do you much harm. But I was wrong.”

“I had more contact with weapons during those holidays, since the enlisted officers and troops liked to let me play with them. They were proud of their weapons. In their childhood memories, guns were always their favorite toys. Teaching me to shoot was a pleasure for them, so long as they kept things safe. Other kids only had toy guns to mess around with, but I was lucky enough to play with the real thing.”

“Right. I remember this was just after the marines had been established, so there were frequent live-fire exercises, and you also got to see live firing of heavy equipment. Tanks, artillery, and ships. On that seaside hill, you watched warships shell the shore, and bombers drop column after column of bombs on sea targets….”

“What made the deepest impression on me, Dad, was the first time I saw a flamethrower. I watched in excitement as the whooshing flame left a pool of fire on the beach. A marine colonel said, ‘Yunyun, do you know what the scariest thing on the battlefield is? Not a gun or a cannon, but this thing. On the southern front, it licked the ass of one of my buddies, and his skin fell right off and put him in a living hell. In the field hospital, when no one was paying attention, he took a gun and offed himself.’ I remembered my last sight of Mom in the hospital, all the skin on her body festering, her blackened fingers so swollen there was no way for her to turn a gun on herself…. Such an experience might turn some people off of weapons, but for others, it made them even more fascinating. I was in the latter group, for whom those fearsome machines possessed the intoxicating power of a drug.”

“I did have a sense of the power weapons had over you, Xiao Yun, but I didn’t pay much attention. At least until that exercise on the beach range, which involved a machine-gun squadron firing on near-shore targets. It was a difficult exercise, since the targets were rocking on the water and the light machine-gun tripods were liable to sink into the sand on the beach, so the performance of the soldiers was unimpressive. Then the captain in command shouted, ‘You’re pathetic! Look at yourselves! You’re worse than a little girl! Come here, Yun, and show these rejects how it’s done.’ ”

“And so I lay on the sand and fired two magazines, both of them to outstanding success.”

“I watched the flashing rifle pulse steadily in the soft, pale hands of my twelve-year-old girl, the blowback from the chamber tossing your bangs on your forehead, the reflection of the muzzle fire in your child’s eyes, and the look of rapturous excitement on your face… and I was frightened, Xiao Yun, truly frightened. I didn’t know how my daughter had become like that.”

“You dragged me away. Dragged me away amid the cheers of the marines, and furiously told all of them, ‘You are not to let my daughter touch a gun!’ That was the first time I had ever seen you so angry, Dad. From then on you stopped taking me with you to the army, and you took more time to be with me at home, even if it was detrimental to your career. You introduced me to music, art, and literature—at first just for the novelty of it, but later going deep into the classics.”

“I wanted to find a normal aesthetic sense for you, to steer your sensibility away from those frightening tendencies.”

“You did so, Dad. You were the only one who could. None of your colleagues back then had that ability. I’ve always admired your erudition, and I’m grateful beyond words for the amount of effort you devoted to me. But Dad, when you planted that flower in my heart, did you ever stop to look at what the soil was like? There was no way to change it. Yes, growing up, I may have had more appreciation for beauty in music, literature, and art than most girls, but the greatest significance it held for me was the deeper appreciation it gave me for the beauty of weapons. I realized that beauty for most people is characterized by fragility and powerlessness. True beauty needs to be supported by an internal strength, and develop itself through sensations like terror and brutality, from which you can both draw strength and meet your death. In weapons, this beauty is expressed to the full. From then on—it must have been around high school—my fascination with weapons reached the level of aesthetics and philosophy. You shouldn’t feel bad about this change, Dad, since you helped me accomplish it.”

“But Xiao Yun, how did you take that step? Weapons could turn you unfeeling, but did they need to turn you mad?”

“We spent less and less time together after I went to high school, Dad. And then after I joined the army and went to college, we had even fewer opportunities for contact. You have no idea about lots of things that happened during that time. There’s one incident having to do with Mom that I never told you about that had a huge effect on me.”

“With your mom? But she had been dead for over a decade, then.”

“That’s right.”

And then, in the chilly wind of the Gobi, between the sky streaked with clouds and its reflection in the enormous mirror, Ding Yi, Colonel Xu, and General Lin listened to Lin Yun’s story:

“You may be aware that the bees that killed Mom on the southern front weren’t indigenous. They came from a habitat at a far higher latitude. It was strange: the tropical environment of the southern front had a wealth of bee species, so why weaponize this species from the distant north? It was an ordinary bee, not one prone to swarming and stinging, and not particularly toxic. Similar attacks occurred a few more times on the southern front, causing some casualties, but the war ended quickly after that, so it didn’t attract much attention.

“When I did my master’s, I used to hang out on an old BBS, Jane’s Defence Forum. Three years ago I met a Russian woman there—she didn’t reveal anything more about herself, but her language indicated she was no amateur weapons enthusiast, more likely a well-qualified expert. She was in bioengineering—not my field at all, but she had sharp ideas about new-concept weapons, and we got on well. We stayed in contact, often chatting online for hours. Two months later, she told me she had joined up with an international expedition to Indochina to survey the long-term effects of US chemical weapons from the Vietnam War on the region, and she invited me along. I was on break, so I went. When I saw her in Hanoi, she was nothing like I’d imagined: in her forties, thin—nothing of a Russian woman’s stockiness—with that kind of timeless beauty, Eastern and deep-seated, that made me feel warm and comfortable when we were together. With the expedition team, we began an arduous survey of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where the US army had sprayed defoliants, and the Laotian jungles where traces of chemical weapons had been found. I found her highly professional, always working with a sense of mission and dedication. Her only fault was drinking: she drank to desperation. We were good friends in no time, and on several occasions, after she got drunk, she told me bits of her own experiences.

“I learned from her that as early as the 1960s, the Soviets had established a new-concept weapons institute under the General Staff called the Long-Term Equipment Planning Commission, where she and the man she later married worked in the biochemistry department. I wanted to find out what work the department had done, but I discovered that, even when drunk, she kept a clear head and said not a word about any of it. It was obvious she had spent a long time in key military research organizations. Later, after my persistent questioning, she told me about one project: the agency had once conducted research on a large number of people with so-called psychic abilities to see if they could find NATO nuclear submarines deep in the Atlantic. But this had been declassified long ago, and was the butt of jokes in the world of serious research. Still, it showed that her agency had adopted a dynamic approach, a clear contrast to the ossified thinking of Base 3141.

“The agency was dissolved after the end of the Cold War. Due to the poor conditions of the military in those days, researchers turned to jobs in the private sector, where they immediately ran into problems, and then their Western counterparts exploited the opportunity to trawl for talent. After her husband left the service, he accepted a high-paying position from DuPont, which promised her the same treatment if she was willing to come along, provided she brought her new-concept weapons research with her. They fought bitterly over this, and she laid it out for him: she wasn’t totally divorced from reality, and she wanted a better future, to own a comfortable detached home with a swimming pool, holiday in Scandinavia, and give a good education to their only daughter; and the superlative liberal research conditions were a definite attraction as well. If she had been on a civilian project, or even an ordinary military project, she would not have hesitated at all. But their research had been on new-concept weapons that could not be openly discussed. It was highly advanced technology nearing practical application, and the tremendous military power it held might decide the balance of power in the next century. She was dead set against seeing the fruits of half a lifetime of R&D put to use against her homeland. Her husband said she was being ridiculous. He was from Ukraine, and she was from Belarus. The homeland she had in mind had splintered into many countries, some of which were now enemies of each other.

“In the end, her husband left, and her daughter left with him. Her life was a lonely one from then on. Many aspects of this woman’s personality and demeanor were familiar, and it occurred to me that they were there in my hazy memories of Mom.

“In Laos, the team stayed in a village in the jungle. A strain of malaria transmitted by mosquito had already killed two children there. The team’s doctor was powerless to do anything: he said the onset of the virus was so fierce that there was no way to treat it locally. But the virus had an incubation period, and if it were possible to discover certain indications that might show up during that time, the entire village could undergo a physical exam, and those found to be infected treated.

“When she heard that, she went out at once and came back a couple of hours later carrying a bag made of mosquito netting full of mosquitoes she had caught. She stuck an arm into the bag and tied it tight around her elbow. When she took her arm out again, it was covered in welts from mosquito bites. She had the doctor observe her for symptoms, but he saw nothing, until she came down with that strain of malaria five days later and was evacuated to a hospital in Bangkok.

“I spent the last few days of my holiday sitting with her in the hospital. I felt even closer to her then. I told her about my mom dying in the war when I was six, and how I had lived with my mother in my memory, and how she had stayed forever young in my mind until a short while ago, when, with the realization of the passing of time, my mind began to sketch the outlines of an older image of her, but one I was unable to fully imagine. But when I saw the Russian woman, the image suddenly clarified and I became convinced that if Mom were still alive, she would be much like her.

“When I said this, she hugged me and began to cry, and told me through her tears that six years before, her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend had overdosed and were found dead in a luxury Las Vegas hotel.

“We parted with an added sense of worry about each other. That’s why, on my trip to Siberia to study ball lightning with Dr. Chen, I paid her a visit when we passed through Moscow.

“You can imagine her surprise upon seeing me. She still lived alone, in a chilly retirees’ apartment, and she drank even more heavily. She seemed to spend her days in a half-inebriated state. She kept saying, ‘Let me show you something. Let me show you something.’ She brushed aside a stack of old newspapers concealing an oddly shaped sealed container, which she said was a super-cooled liquid nitrogen storage tank. A large part of her meager income was spent on periodically refilling the liquid nitrogen. That she had such a thing at home surprised me, and I asked her what it contained. She said it was the distillation of more than twenty years of efforts.

“She told me, ‘In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union’s new-concept weapons institutes had conducted a survey, global in scope, that brought together scattered ideas and implementations for new-concept weapons projects. Ideas first, collected from a truly broad range of sources. Intelligence agencies, naturally, but personnel going abroad on business were given these tasks as well. Sometimes things got ridiculous: researchers in some departments watched James Bond films over and over, to try and glean traces of the West’s new-concept weapons from the fancy gadgets he carried. Another angle was collecting the applications of new concepts on the battlefield from regional conflicts then in progress. The Vietnam War was their first choice, of course. Bamboo traps and the like set up by the Vietnamese people were carefully observed for their effectiveness on the battlefield. The first thing my department came across were some guerrillas in the south who used bees as weapons. We learned of it from news reports, and so I took a trip to Vietnam to investigate. It was at the time that the US was planning to abandon South Vietnam: the Saigon regime was teetering, and the Vietcong’s guerrilla war in the south had evolved into a proper war that was growing larger by the day. Naturally, the peculiar ways of fighting I wanted to investigate were no longer to be found. But I made contact with lots of guerrilla groups and learned details about their combat effectiveness—which it turned out the news reports had greatly exaggerated. All of the guerrillas I spoke to who had used bees said they had practically no lethal effect as weapons. Any use they might have had was purely psychological: they heightened the American soldiers’ feeling that this land they were in was unfamiliar and eerie.

“ ‘But I found inspiration there anyway. When I came home, we started using gene technology to modify bees. It might have been the earliest application of genetic engineering. Little was accomplished the first few years, since molecular biology was still primitive throughout the world, and also because the political suppression of genetics in the Soviet Union a short while before had caused technology of that sort to lag behind. But by the early eighties we finally made a breakthrough in breeding highly toxic, highly aggressive bees. Marshal Dmitry Yazov personally observed a test in which one attack bee stung a bull to death. The marshal was greatly impressed, and I, as director, was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Money poured into the project, and further studies were made of the possibility of combat use of attack bees. Our first breakthrough came in target discrimination. New bees were bred to be highly sensitive to certain chemicals, which our forces could apply in minute amounts to their bodies to avoid accidental harm. The next development was in bee toxicity: joining the initial highly toxic variety that could kill instantly was a new breed, equally deadly, but with mortality delayed by five to ten days, so as to increase the burden on the enemy….

“ ‘This storage tank contains one hundred thousand attack-bee embryos.’ ”

Here Lin Yun sighed, and her voice trembled. “You can imagine how I felt when I heard this. My eyes darkened and I nearly collapsed, but, still holding out hope, I asked her if they had ever been used in combat. But I had already guessed the answer. Without noticing my expression, she told me even more excitedly that, due to the war with Cambodia and border conflicts with China, Vietnam was constantly asking the Soviets for weapons, causing headaches for the Politburo, which gave them only perfunctory replies. When Lê Duẩn visited, the general secretary promised to provide the most advanced weapons systems to Vietnam—meaning none other than the attack bees. She was sent to Vietnam with one hundred thousand attack bees. You can imagine how incensed the Vietnamese were when the advanced weapons systems they had been dreaming about turned out to be a beehive. They said that the Soviets had engaged in shameless deception toward their comrades while standing on the front lines of a bloody war against imperialism.

“While it was true that the Soviet leadership was giving them the brush-off, she personally believed that no one had been cheated. Although the Vietnamese didn’t realize the attack bees’ power at first, they did put them into action, deploying a special forces division from the General Department for Military Intelligence to handle it.

“Before they did, the Russian woman took the division through a weeklong training and then went with them to the front lines. Trembling, but still clinging to a pitiful thread of hope, I asked her, ‘Which front lines? Cambodia?’ She said, ‘Not Cambodia. The Vietnamese army had the absolute advantage on that front. It was the northern front. Against you.’ I looked at her in terror, and said, ‘You… you went to the Vietnam-China border?!’ She said she had—not to the farthest front lines, of course, but to Lang Son, and she had watched every time the five-man teams of wiry young guys applied an identification agent to their collars and ran off to the front carrying two thousand attack bees…

“Finally noticing the state I was in, she asked, ‘What’s wrong? The whole time, all we conducted were experimental attacks. We’d hardly gotten any of your people by the time the war ended.’ She said it so casually, like talking about a ball game.

“If we were only chatting between two soldiers, then I was out of line, since I ought to have been able to remain relaxed even when discussing the Zhenbao Island Incident.[11] But I didn’t want to tell her the cause of Mom’s death, so I ran out, leaving her staring in shock. She chased me and caught up to me and begged me to tell her what she’d done wrong, but I struggled free and ran aimlessly through the frozen streets.

“It snowed that night, and for a moment I felt the grim face of the world. Later, a police patrol van rounding up drunks took me back to the hotel….

“When I got home, I received an e-mail from the Russian woman that read, ‘Yun, I don’t know how it is I’ve hurt you. After you left, I spent many sleepless nights, but couldn’t think of anything. I am certain, though, that it’s connected to my bee weapons. If you were just an ordinary young woman, I wouldn’t have let the slightest hint of it slip out, but you and I are alike. Both of us are soldiers researching new-concept weapons, and we have common aims, which was why I told you everything. When you left in tears that night, it was like a knife in my heart. Back at my residence, I opened the lid of that container and watched the liquid nitrogen evaporate into white fog and disperse into the air. During the chaos of the Institute’s dissolution, more than a million attack-bee embryos died due to poor management, and the container you saw held the last remaining ones.

“ ‘I wanted to sit there all night until the liquid evaporated entirely; even in the bitter cold of the Russian winter, the cells would die quickly. I was destroying two decades of hard work, destroying the dreams of my youth, all because a Chinese woman dearer to me than even my own daughter hated them. As the nitrogen fog dissipated, my cold home turned even colder. The cold clarified my thinking, and all of a sudden I understood that the material inside the container did not belong to me as an individual. It had been developed at the cost of billions of rubles eked out by the hard labor of the Soviet people. At this thought, I replaced the lid and closed it tightly. Then I protected it with my life, and at last gave it to the appropriate people.

“ ‘Yun, for the sake of our ideals and our faith, for the sake of our homeland, we two women have trodden a lonely road no woman ought to follow. I have been on it longer than you, so I know a little more of its dangers. All the forces of the natural world, including those that people believe are the most gentle and harmless, can be turned into weapons to destroy life. The horror and cruelty of some of these weapons is beyond imagination, unless you have seen them yourself. But I, a woman you believe resembles your mother, can tell you that we are not on the wrong road. Fearsome things may fell your countrymen and your family, or strike the tender flesh of the child in your arms, but the best way to prevent this from happening is to create them yourselves, before the enemy or potential enemy has that chance! So I have no regret for the life I’ve lived, and I hope that you won’t either, when you reach my age.

“ ‘Child, I’ve moved to a place you don’t know, and I won’t contact you anymore from now on. Before I say goodbye, I won’t offer any vacant blessings, which are useless for a soldier. I’ll just leave you with a warning: beware the attack bees! Instinct tells me that they will appear on the battlefield again, and the next time it won’t be just one swarm of a thousand or two, but a mega-swarm of tens or hundreds of millions, blotting out the sky and covering the sun like a storm cloud, enough to annihilate an entire field army. May you never meet them in battle. This is the only blessing I can give you, child.’ ”

Now that Lin Yun had opened up about the psychological world she had long kept deeply hidden, she appeared to feel some sort of release, even as her listeners remained in shocked silence. The sun was setting. Another dusk had come to the Gobi. The glow reflected in the mirror plated everyone standing near it with a layer of gold.

“What’s happened has happened, child. All we can do about it is to accept our own responsibility,” the general said slowly. “Now take off your badge and epaulets. You’re a criminal now, not a soldier.”

The sun dipped beneath the horizon and the mirror darkened, like Lin Yun’s eyes. Her sorrow and despair were no doubt as boundless as the Gobi at night.

As Ding Yi looked at her, he heard the words she had said at Zhang Bin’s gravesite: I grew up in the army. I don’t know if I could entirely belong anywhere else. Or to anyone else.

Lin Yun raised her right hand and reached over to the major’s epaulet on her left shoulder—not to take it off, but to rub it.

Ding Yi noticed that her finger dragged an afterimage behind it.

When Lin Yun’s hand touched the epaulet, it was as if time stopped. This was the final image she left in the world. Her body began to turn transparent, swiftly turning into a crystalline shadow, and then the quantum-state Lin Yun vanished.

Victory

It was bright outside when Ding Yi finished his tale. The war-ravaged city had welcomed another morning.

“You tell a good story. If the purpose was to comfort me, then you succeeded,” I said.

“Do you think I’d be able to invent all that you just heard?”

“How did she remain in a quantum state for so long without collapsing with all of you observing her?”

“There’s one thing I’ve been pondering ever since I first posited the existence of the macro-quantum state: a sentient quantum individual is different from an ordinary non-sentient quantum particle in one important way, and we overlooked an important parameter for the wave function describing the former. Specifically, we overlooked an observer.”

“An observer? Who?”

“The individual itself. Unlike ordinary non-sentient quantum particles, sentient quantum individuals can engage in self-observation.”

“Okay. But what does self-observation imply?”

“You’ve seen it. It can counteract other observers, and maintain the quantum state uncollapsed.”

“And how is that self-observation conducted?”

“No doubt by some highly complicated emotional process that we’re unable to even imagine.”

“So will she return again like that?” I asked, full of hope for the answer to this critical question.

“Probably not. Objects that experience resonance with macro-fusion energy will, for a period of time after the resonance is complete, have an existence-state probability higher than their destroyed state. That’s why we were able to see all of those probability clouds of chips as the fusion was going on. But the quantum state will decay as time moves onward, and eventually the destroyed state will be more probable than the existence state.”

“Oh—” I exclaimed, the sound coming from deep within my heart.

“But the existence-state probability, no matter how small, is still there.”

“Like hope,” I said, doing my best to throw off my fragile emotional state.

“Yes. Like hope,” Ding Yi said.

As if to answer him, we heard a commotion out on the street. I went to the window and looked down to see lots of people outside. More were streaming out of the buildings, gathering excitedly in threes and fives. What surprised me most were their expressions: everyone was beaming like the sun had risen early. This was the first time I had seen this sort of smile since the start of the war, and now it was on so many faces.

“Let’s go down,” Ding Yi said, picking up the half-finished bottle of Red Star from the table.

“What’s the booze for?”

“We might need it when we get down there. Of course, in the unlikely event I’m wrong, don’t laugh at me.”

We had just exited the building when someone from the crowd ran over to us. It was Gao Bo. I asked him what was up.

“The war is over!” he shouted.

“We surrendered?”

“We won! The enemy alliance dissolved, and they’ve declared unilateral ceasefires. One by one, they’ve begun to pull back. Victory!”

“You’re dreaming.” I turned from Gao Bo to Ding Yi, who didn’t seem surprised at all.

“You’re the one who’s dreaming. Everyone’s been focused on the progress of the talks the whole night. Where have you been? Zonked out?” Gao Bo said, then ran off joyfully to join an even bigger crowd.

“Did you anticipate this?” I asked Ding Yi.

“I don’t have that foresight. But Lin Yun’s father predicted it. After Lin Yun disappeared, he told us that macro-fusion would probably end the war.”

“Why?”

“It’s simple, really. When the truth about the chip burn-out catastrophe got out, the whole world was frightened.”

I smiled, but shook my head. “How? Not even our thermonuclear weapons frighten anyone that much.”

“There’s a difference between this and thermonuclear weapons—a possibility you may not have realized.”

I looked at him, baffled.

“Think about it. If we detonated all of our nuclear bombs on our own soil, what would happen?”

“Only an idiot would do that.”

“But supposing that we have lots of macro-nuclei that can fry chips, a hundred or more, and we keep conducting macro-fusion on our own territory. Is that still idiotic?”

At Ding Yi’s prompting, I soon understood his point. If a second, identical macro-fusion took place on the same spot, the fact that the first had fried all the chips in the vicinity would mean the energy of the second would not be drained. It would pass through the region cleared by the first and destroy chips in a larger region beyond that until it, too, was drained by the chips it encountered. Proceeding in that manner with multiple macro-fusions on the same spot, fusion energy could propagate throughout the world. The Earth would be transparent to it. Perhaps fewer than a hundred strings of that type would be enough to temporarily return the entire world to an agricultural age.

There was one other important point: indiscriminate use of conventional nuclear weapons would take humanity out with them, so under no circumstances would politicians with even a shred of reason make such a decision. And even if some crazed strategist gave an order, it was unlikely to be executed. But macro-fusion was different. It could achieve strategic objectives without killing a single person. Hence the decision to use it was a relatively easy one, compared to conventional nukes, and when a country was backed into a corner, it was very likely to do so.

Chip-frying macro-fusion would reformat the world’s enormous hard drive, and the more advanced the country was, the harder it would be hit. The road to recovery back to the Information Age would lead to an undetermined new world order.

Now that I understood this, I knew I wasn’t dreaming. The war really was over. As if a string on my body had been plucked out, my legs crumpled beneath me and I sat on the ground watching the sky dumbly until the sun rose. In the deceptive warmth of the first ray of sunlight on that day, I covered my face and wept.

Around me, the sounds of celebration rolled on in waves. Still crying, I stood up. Ding Yi had disappeared into the reveling crowd, but someone immediately hugged me, and then I went and hugged someone else. I lost count of the people I hugged on that grand morning. As the dizzy joy ebbed somewhat, I found myself hugging a woman. When we let go, we happened to look each other over for a moment, and I froze.

We knew each other. She was the pretty student who had said I had a strong sense of purpose on that late night in the university library so many years ago. It took me a while, but I remembered her name: Dai Lin.

The Quantum Rose

Two months later, Dai Lin and I got married.

After the war, people’s lives turned far more traditional. Single people got married, and childless families had children. The war had made people cherish things they used to take for granted.

During the slow economic recovery, times were hard, but they were warm. I never told Dai Lin of my experiences after graduation, and she never spoke of hers. Clearly all of us had a past in those lost times that it was hard to look back on. The war told us what was truly valuable: the present and the future.

Half a year later, we had a child.

During that time, the only interruption to this plain but busy life was a visit from an American. He introduced himself as Norton Parker, an astronomer, and said I ought to recognize him. When he mentioned the SETI@home project, it came to me at once: he had been in charge of the project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence whose distributed processing server Lin Yun and I had invaded to swap in the mathematical model for ball lightning. That experience seemed a world away. Now that the early research on ball lightning was known to the world, it would not have been hard for him to find me.

“There was also a woman involved, I believe.”

“She’s no longer on this earth.”

“Dead in the war?”

“…You could say that.”

“Damn the war…. I came to tell you about an applied ball lightning project I’m heading up.”

With the secret of ball lightning now unlocked, collecting macro-electrons and exciting them into ball lightning had become an industrialized operation, and research on civil applications was making swift progress. It had many unbelievable uses, including burning away cancer cells in sick patients without harming other organs. But Parker said his project was more surreal.

“We’re searching for and observing a particular phenomenon of ball lightning: sometimes it maintains a collapsed state, not a quantum state, even without an observer.”

I was unimpressed. “We encountered that a number of times, but ultimately we were able to find one or several undetected observers. The one I remember most clearly was on a target range. We later learned that the observer was a reconnaissance satellite in space that had caused the ball lightning to collapse.”

Parker said, “And that’s why we chose to conduct tests in places where all observers could absolutely be screened out. Places like abandoned deep mines. We removed all personnel and observation equipment, so there shouldn’t have been any observers inside. We set the accelerators to automatic, conducted target tests, and then used the hit rate to ascertain whether or not the ball lightning was in a collapsed state.”

“And the results showed…?”

“We have performed tests in thirty-five mines. The outcome of the majority of them was normal. But on two occasions, the ball lightning reached a collapsed state in the mine without any observer.”

“So do you think that the outcome raises doubts about quantum mechanics?”

Parker laughed. “No, quantum mechanics isn’t wrong. But you’ve forgotten my specialty. We’re using ball lightning to search for aliens.”

“What?”

“In the mine tests, there were no human observers, and no man-made observation equipment, but the ball lightning remained collapsed. This can only mean that there was another, nonhuman, observer.”

This immediately piqued my interest. “It would have to be a very powerful observer to see through the earth’s crust!”

“That’s the only reasonable explanation.”

“Can those two tests be repeated?”

“Not anymore. But the collapsed-state outcome of the tests remained for three full days before the tests started producing quantum-state outcomes again.”

“There’s an explanation for that, too: the super-observer must have detected that you had detected it.”

“Perhaps. So we’re planning even larger-scale tests now, to find more of this phenomenon for study.”

“That’s significant research indeed, Dr. Parker. If you are really able to prove that a super-observer is watching our world, then human activity becomes very indiscreet…. You could say human society is in a quantum state, and a super-observer will force it to collapse to a state of reason again.”

“If we’d found that super-observer a little earlier, maybe war could have been averted.”

Parker’s research prompted me to pay a visit to Ding Yi. To my surprise, he was living with a lover, a dancer who had lost her job in the war. She was clearly a simpleminded type, and I couldn’t say how they ended up together. Evidently Ding Yi had learned how to enjoy life apart from physics. A person like him wouldn’t bother with marriage, of course, but fortunately the woman wasn’t looking for that, either.

When I arrived, Ding Yi wasn’t at home, just the woman. His three-bedroom apartment wasn’t as spare as it was before: to his calculation papers, she had added lots of cute decorations.

The moment the woman heard I was Ding Yi’s friend, she asked me whether he had any other lovers.

“Physics counts as one, I guess. No one can hold the top place in his heart so long as physics is there,” I said frankly.

“I don’t care about physics. I mean, does he have any other women?”

“I don’t think so. He’s got so much stuff in his head I don’t think he could make room for two people.”

“But I heard that during the war, he and a young major were close.”

“Oh, they were just colleagues and friends. Besides, that major isn’t here anymore.”

“I know that. But you know what? He looks at that major’s photograph every day, and rubs it.”

I had been distracted, but this surprised me. “A photo of Lin Yun?”

“Oh, so she’s called Lin Yun. She looks like a teacher, or something. Are there teachers in the army?”

This shocked me even further, and I insisted on seeing the photo. She led me to the study, opened up a drawer in a bookshelf, and took out an exquisite silver-inlaid picture frame. Then, she said, “It’s this one. Every night before he goes to sleep he steals a look at it and dusts it off. Once I told him, ‘Put it on the writing desk, I don’t mind,’ but he still doesn’t leave it out. He just gives it a stealthy look and dusts it off.”

I took the frame and held it facedown in my hand. With eyes half-closed, I steadied my heart—the woman must have been looking at me in amazement—and then I jerked the photo around and stared at it.

At once I understood why the woman had thought Lin Yun was a teacher: she was with a group of students.

She was standing in their midst, more beautiful than ever, still wearing that trim major’s uniform, with a beaming smile on her face. Looking at the children around her, I immediately recognized them as the group that had been incinerated by ball lightning at the nuclear power plant. They, too, were smiling sweetly, and were obviously very happy. I noticed in particular a little girl that Lin Yun was holding tightly, an adorable child smiling so hard her eyes were slits.

But what caught my attention was the girl’s left hand.

It was missing.

Lin Yun and the children were standing on a well-manicured lawn where there were a few small white animals. Behind them, I could see a familiar structure: the macro-electron excitation lab, where we had heard the bleat of a quantum goat. But in the photograph, the warehouse’s long exterior wall was painted in colorful cartoon animals, flowers, and balloons. The brilliant colors made the building look like an enormous toy.

From the photograph, Lin Yun looked at me with her touching smile, and in her limpid eyes I read things I had not seen while she was alive: a happy belonging and a peace from somewhere deep within. It reminded me of a distant, long-forgotten still harbor in which a small boat was moored.

I gently returned the photo to the drawer and walked out to the balcony, unwilling to let Ding Yi’s lover see the tears in my eyes.

Ding Yi never spoke of the photo. He never even mentioned Lin Yun, and I never asked. It was a secret deep in his heart.

And I soon had a secret of my own.

It was two in the morning one night in late autumn. I was at my desk working, and when I looked up, the amethyst vase on the desk caught my eye. It was a lovely wedding gift from Ding Yi, but the flowers that had been placed in it had dried up at some point. I took them out and tossed them into the wastebasket and thought, with a bitter smile, Life’s responsibilities keep getting heavier. I don’t know when I’ll find the time to put fresh flowers in the vase.

Then I leaned back in my chair, shut my eyes, and sat thinking about absolutely nothing. Late every night I would sit for a while at the stillest moment of the day, when it seemed like I was the only one awake in the whole world.

My nose caught a hint of freshness.

It was an aroma absent any sweetness: comforting, slightly bitter, bringing to mind the first sunlight on green grass after a storm has passed, the last wisp of cloud in a clear blue sky, the fleeting chime in a deep mountain valley… only more ethereal this time. By the time I noticed its existence, it had already disappeared, only to reappear once I turned my attention away from my nose.

Do you like this perfume?

Oh… don’t they stop you from wearing perfume in the army?

Sometimes it’s allowed.

“Is it you?” I asked softly, without opening my eyes.

There was no answer.

“I know it’s you,” I said, eyes still closed.

But there was still no answer, only a great stillness.

I opened my eyes with a jerk, and there, in the amethyst vase on the desk, was a blue rose. But no sooner had I seen it than it vanished, leaving the vase empty.

Every detail of the rose had been imprinted on my mind, so full of life, with such a cold aura.

I closed my eyes and opened them again, but the rose did not reappear. But I knew she was there, sitting in the amethyst vase.

“Who are you calling?” my wife asked sleepily, as she sat up in bed.

“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” I said gently. I got up and picked up the vase, then carefully filled it halfway with clean water and set it back on the table. Then I sat in front of it until morning.

My wife saw there was water in the vase and brought back a bouquet of flowers on her way home from work. I stopped her as she was about to put it in the vase.

“Don’t. There’s a flower in there.”

She looked at me strangely.

“It’s a blue rose.”

“Oh, the most expensive kind,” she said, laughing, clearly thinking I was joking. Then she reached out to put her flowers in again.

I grabbed the vase from her and returned it gently to the desk, then snatched the flowers out of her hands and tossed them in the wastebasket. “I said there’s a flower in there. What’s wrong with you?”

She stared at me for a moment, then said, “I know you’ve got a place of your own deep in your heart. I have one, too. It’s been so many years, after all…. You can keep it, but you shouldn’t bring it into our lives!”

“There really is a flower in that vase. A blue rose,” I stammered, in a much softer voice.

My wife ran out, covering her tears with her hand.

And so the invisible rose in the amethyst vase caused a fracture between Dai Lin and me.

“You’ve got to tell me what imaginary person put that imaginary rose in the vase, or I’m not going to be able to take it!” my wife said many times.

“It’s not imaginary. There really is a rose in the vase. A blue one,” I answered every time.

Eventually, when the rift between us was almost beyond being patched over, it was our son who saved our marriage. Early one morning, he woke up, yawned, and said, “Mom, that amethyst vase on the writing desk has a rose in it, a blue one. It’s pretty! But it’s gone as soon as you look at it.”

My wife looked at me in alarm. The first time we had argued about it, he hadn’t been born yet, and our later quarrels hadn’t been in front of him, so he couldn’t have known about the blue rose.

A few days later, my wife fell asleep at the desk while writing a paper late at night. When she awoke, she roused me with a nudge, and there was fear in her eyes. “I woke up just now and I smelled… the scent of a rose. It came from that vase! But when I tried to smell it more closely, it disappeared. I mean it. There’s no mistake. It really was a rose scent. I’m not lying to you!”

“I know you’re not lying. There really is a rose there. A blue rose,” I said.

From then on, my wife never brought up the matter again, just left the vase there. Sometimes she would carefully wipe it, keeping it upright, as if she was afraid the rose inside would fall out. And on several occasions, she filled it with distilled water.

I never saw the blue rose again, but it was enough to know it was there. Sometimes in the still of the night I would move the amethyst vase to the window, then stand with my back to it. On these occasions, I could always smell that ethereal aroma, and I knew the rose was there. With my heart’s eye I could clearly see every detail, I could caress every petal, I could watch it sway slightly in the night breeze from the window….

It was a flower I could only see with my heart.

But I still held out the hope of getting another glimpse of that blue rose in my lifetime. Ding Yi said that, from the perspective of quantum mechanics, death is the process of transitioning from a strong observer to a weak observer, and then to a non-observer. When I become a weak observer, the rose’s probability cloud will collapse to a destroyed state more slowly, giving me the hope of seeing it again.

When I come to death’s door and open my eyes for the final time, all of my intellect and memories will be lost into the abyss of the past, and I will return to the pure feeling and fantasies of childhood. At that moment, I’m sure the quantum rose will smile at me.