Ball Lightning

“In the mid-eighties, spurred on by America’s Star Wars program, the Soviet Union increased its own investment in high technology and new-concept weapons, including the study of ball lightning. The base was dramatically enlarged and tests multiplied, with the aim of discovering through sheer quantity of tests a rule governing the conditions for ball lightning production. In the final five years, ball lightning was produced a total of sixteen times, but as before, we were unable to discover any rule for its production.”

Gemow finished his story, led us to the platform, and shone his flashlight on it. “I made this into a memorial. When I’m tormented by memories of the past, I come here and make inscriptions on it.”

I looked at the steps. In the flashlight circles I could see lots of lines, like a pack of slithering snakes.

“In three decades of experiments, ball lightning was produced a total of twenty-seven times. These lines sketch the main parameters for those tests. This line is the lightning’s current radiation value. This line, the strength of the external magnetic field…”

I looked closely at the lines, each made up of twenty-seven points. They looked like segments of white noise, or the painful spasms of some dying creature. There was no order at all.

We followed Gemow to another side of the platform, which was covered in carved text. “These are the people who sacrificed themselves to Project 3141 over the course of three decades, and who lost their lives to the horrible working conditions. This is my wife, who died after long exposure to discharge radiation gave her a peculiar illness marked by skin ulcers. She died in terrible agony. A fair number of these people died of that condition. This is my son. He was killed by the final ball lightning the base produced, one of three people killed by the twenty-seven times ball lightning was produced here. The stuff can penetrate anything. No one can predict where or when it will release its energy. But we didn’t think that conducting these experiments was anything dangerous. Since the chances of producing it were so low, people gradually dropped their guard. And that’s when ball lightning would appear, causing a disaster. The final time it appeared, everyone at the test site was unharmed, but it passed through solid rock and incinerated my son in the central control room. He was a computer engineer at the base.”

Gemow switched off his flashlight and turned back toward the vast darkness in the cavern. He gave a long sigh. “When I entered the control center, it looked as calm as ever. Under the soft glow of the overhead lights, everything seemed clean and bright. All of the computer equipment was quiet and operating normally. Except, in the middle of a white anti-static floor pad, stood the remains of my son, burned almost entirely to ash, as if he was an apparition projected there from some other place…. Right then I surrendered. After thirty years of struggling against this natural or supernatural force, I was completely beaten. My life ended at that moment. What came after was just existence.”

* * *

When we returned to the surface, the snow had stopped. The setting sun was visible over the crest of the forest in the west, painting the snowscape blood red. On heavy feet I trudged back to the plane, feeling that my life was over.

Back at Gemow’s place, the three of us drank through the night. The fierce Siberian wind called outside the window as volume after volume of Perestroika turned to ash in the stove. Ball lightning, infinite in number, circled me on the walls and ceiling, revolving faster and faster, as if I was caught in the center of a vortex of white balls of light.

Gemow slurred, “Children, find something else to do. There are lots of interesting things in the world, but you only live once. Don’t waste it on an illusion.”

When I went to sleep later on a pile of books, I dreamed I was back on the night of my fourteenth birthday, in that small room during the thunderstorm, sitting alone before the birthday cake and lit candles. No father, no mother, and no ball lightning. My dreams of them had ended.

The next morning, Gemow took us straight to the airport. Before he left, Lin Yun said, “I know that you’ve told us lots of things you shouldn’t have. But please rest assured: You have our word that we won’t divulge any of it—”

Gemow cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, Major. The reason I invited you was so you would tell it to the world. I want people to know that in that tragic, romantic era a group of Communist Youth League members went deep into the dense Siberian forest to chase a ghost, and for this sacrificed their lives.”

We embraced tightly, tears on our faces.

* * *