Ball Lightning

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:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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.