Ball Lightning

“Colonel Jiang, it’s hopeless research.” I sighed deeply toward the night and the ocean.

“Lin Yun told me that you were hit hard by that trip to Russia. But you really shouldn’t be frightened by their enormous investment and lengthy time frame. I noticed something in Lin Yun’s explanation after she got back: by applying rigid arms research mechanisms to the study of a basic phenomenon of the natural world, the Soviets left no room for innovative thinking. They lacked imagination and creativity.”

His comment, though brief, was incisive. And categorizing ball lightning research as a basic question showed a measure of foresight.

“Besides, you were once prepared to devote your entire life to the goal of exploring ball lightning. Or that’s what Lin Yun told me, anyway. If that’s the case, then you shouldn’t give up so easily. Take me, for example. My dream was to be a scholar of military strategy, but for various reasons I ended up on this path. Even though I’ve reached the position I’m in, in my heart, I’m still a little disappointed.”

“Let me think it over,” I mumbled.

But our subsequent conversation showed me that things were far more complicated than I had imagined.

“As colleagues for so many years, I’d say I know Lin Yun fairly well. Her thinking contains certain… elements of danger. I’d like you to help her avoid that danger.”

“Do you mean a danger to herself, or to… others?” I asked.

“Both. Let me tell you a story. She could not accept the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines, since she felt mines were anti-invasion weapons. A weapon accessible to the poor. The first year of her doctoral program, she and two classmates developed a new type of mine, using their nano-lab to design it. Her goal was to develop a mine undetectable to soldiers using conventional methods, something strictly banned by the treaty. She accomplished it. Her mine appears very simple.”

I interrupted: “I’ve seen the bamboo segment hanging in her car.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “No, no. That’s just a toy compared to what she created. She invented a liquid mine. It looks like nothing more than a colorless transparent liquid, but it’s actually nitroglycerin altered through nanotechnology to remove the material’s sensitivity to vibration and increase its sensitivity to pressure, so the depth at which the material can be stored is strictly limited. It is carried in vessels divided into lots of non-interconnected layers, to prevent the lower layers from detonating due to pressure from above. Deployment means simply pouring out this liquid on the ground, where it will detonate when stepped on, to incredibly lethal effect. Totally undetectable by conventional soldiers. She recommended the mine to her superiors and requested that troops be equipped with it, but naturally she came under heavy criticism. She swore that she would make them see the potential of the mine on the battlefield.”

“From what I know of her fascination with weapons, new-concept weapons in particular, that’s not hard to imagine.”

“But you might when you hear what happened next. In the first half of last year, those mines turned up in the war between Chile and Bolivia and caused considerable harm.”

I looked at the colonel in surprise as I realized the implications of this information.

“Even harder to believe is the fact that both the Chilean and Bolivian armies were using the mines.”

“What?” I stopped in my tracks, my shock turning to fear. “But she’s only a major. Did she even have access to those channels?”

“Apparently she didn’t tell you much about herself. She doesn’t tell much of this to anyone.” He looked at me, and while I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, I knew it must have been meaningful. “Yes. She had access.”

* * *

Back at the tent, I couldn’t sleep, so I pulled open the flap to look at the lighthouse, hoping that the regular on-off pulsing would have a hypnotic effect. It did, and as my consciousness gradually slipped away, the body of the lighthouse dissolved into the night, until eventually only the on-off blink remained suspended in midair, visible when it was lit, but leaving only infinite night when it was extinguished. I found it somehow familiar, and a small voice sounded in my brain like a bubble floating up from the ocean depths to burst upon the surface. It said: The lighthouse is always there, but you only see it when it’s lit.

A spark went off in my mind. I bolted upright and sat there for a long while as the surf sounded around me. Then I nudged Jiang Xingchen awake. “Colonel, can we go back right away?”

“What for?”

“To study ball lightning, of course!”

General Lin Feng

After landing in Beijing, I gave Lin Yun a call. What Jiang Xingchen had told me had made me inexplicably afraid, but when I heard the major’s gentle voice, something in my heart melted, and I yearned to see her.

“Oh, I knew Xingchen would do it!” she said with excitement.

“It’s mostly because I suddenly had an idea.”