Ball Lightning

The next step in the research was naturally to collect macro-electrons. Ding Yi did not need many for his theoretical research, but the base required an enormous number for weapons research. This initially seemed like a difficult task, since the conventional electric arc collection method was highly dangerous and could hardly be used again.

People dreamed up all kinds of solutions, but the one that received the most support was remote aircraft. Although this would solve the safety problem, it would be costly and highly inefficient to use it to collect the huge number of macro-electrons needed.

Instead, Lin Yun considered detecting unexcited macro-electrons directly, believing that if they were visible to the naked eye up close, they ought to be detectable by highly sensitive optics from farther away. She designed an atmospheric optical detection system that could detect transparent objects that refracted light over a vast range of space. The system used two lasers perpendicular to each other to scan the atmosphere, while on the ground there was a highly sensitive image capture and recognition system that turned the refractions of the lasers in the atmosphere into a 3-D image, similar to how a CT scanner works.

For a while, the base was crawling with non-uniformed personnel: software engineers, optics specialists, pattern-recognition experts, and even a telescope maker.

When the system was complete, rather than macro-electrons, the screen displayed atmospheric turbulence and gas streams, movement that was ordinarily invisible, but was clear as day to the sensitive system. The atmosphere typically appeared as calm as still water, when in actuality it was astonishingly agitated, like water sloshing in a gigantic washing machine. I realized that the system would be quite useful in meteorology, but since our focus was on detecting macro-electrons, I didn’t put much thought in that direction. The macro-electrons showed up amid the complicated airflow disturbances, but since they had a round shape, the pattern-recognition software could easily pick them out of the chaos. And so a large number of macro-electrons were located in the air.

Collection was far easier once we began locating them this way, since, unexcited, they posed no danger. The feeler was no longer necessary, and was replaced by a net formed out of superconducting wires, and we switched to capturing macro-electrons by blimp to save money. Sometimes multiple macro-electrons were collected at once, like trawling for fish in the sky.

Now it was far easier to capture ball lightning and turn it into a human collectible. Looking back on humanity’s arduous process of studying it, the people like Zhang Bin who spent a lifetime on it without anything to show for it, and the grand tragedy of Base 3141 in the Siberian forest, we felt the heartache of knowing that we had taken such a long and winding road that had ended up being an enormous detour.

Colonel Xu said, “That’s what scientific research is. Every step you’ve taken, no matter how absurd, is a necessary one.”

He said this while sending off the helicopter group. After we began using blimps to capture the macro-electrons, the base no longer had any use for helicopters. We bade farewell to the two aviators who had been with us through hardship and danger. Those endless nights of towing the blinding arc would become one of our lives’ most treasured memories and, we believed, part of scientific history.

Before leaving, Captain Liu said to us, “Work hard! We’ll be waiting to install your thunderball machine gun!”

The aviators had come up with another new term, which we actually used in the field of ball lightning weapons.

* * *

The success of optical detection of unexcited macro-electrons kindled our hopes for more progress, but turned out only to demonstrate the shallowness of our physics knowledge. After the system’s first success, Lin Yun and I made a beeline for Ding Yi.

“Professor Ding, now we should be able to find the nuclei of macro-atoms!”

“What gives you that impression?”

“We haven’t been able to find them because macro-protons and macro-neutrons aren’t excitable like macro-electrons. But now we can locate bubbles directly by optical means.”

Ding Yi laughed and shook his head, as if forgiving two school pupils for their error. “The primary reason we can’t find macro-atom nuclei isn’t because they aren’t excitable, but because we have no idea what they’re like.”

“What? They’re not bubbles?”

“Who told you they were bubbles? The theory postulates that their shape is completely different from macro-electrons, as different as ice and fire.”

I had a hard time imagining that other forms of macro-particles could be floating around us. It lent an eerie feeling to the surrounding space.