Ball Lightning(2)

I could see inside the translucent red blaze. It seemed infinitely deep, and a cluster of blue stars streamed out of the bottomless haze, like a star field seen by a spirit rocketing across space faster than the speed of light.

Later, I learned that the internal energy density of this mass could have reached twenty thousand to thirty thousand joules per cubic centimeter, compared to just two thousand joules per cubic centimeter for TNT. But while its internal temperature might have exceeded ten thousand degrees, its surface would be cool.

My father lifted his hand, more to protect his head than to try to touch the thing. Fully extended, his arm seemed to exert an attractive force that pulled the thing toward it like a leaf’s stomata absorb a drop of dew.

With a blinding flash and a deafening boom, the world around me exploded.

What I saw after the flash blindness lifted from my eyes would stay with me for the rest of my life. It was like someone had switched the world to grayscale mode in an image editor: instantaneously, the bodies of my mom and dad had turned black and white. Or, rather, gray and white, because the black was the result of shadows cast by lamplight playing off the creases and folds of their bodies. The color of marble. Dad’s hand was raised, and Mom clutched at his other arm with both hands. There still seemed to be life in the two pairs of eyes that stared petrified out of the faces of these two statues.

A strange odor was in the air, which I later learned was the smell of ozone.

“Dad!” I shouted. No answer.

“Mom!” I shouted again. No answer.

Approaching the two statues was the most frightening moment in my life. In the past, my terrors had mostly been in dreams. I had been able to avoid a mental breakdown in the world of my nightmares because my subconscious was still awake, shouting to my consciousness from a remote corner, “This is a dream!” Now, it took that voice shouting with all its might to keep me moving toward my parents. I reached out a trembling hand to touch my father’s body. As I made contact with the gray-and-white surface of his shoulder, it felt like I was pushing through an extremely thin and extremely brittle shell. I heard a soft cracking, like a glass crackling when it is filled with boiling water in the winter. The two statues collapsed right before my eyes in a miniature avalanche.

Two piles of white ash settled on the carpet, and that’s all that was left of them.

The wooden stools they had been sitting on were still there, covered with a layer of ash. I brushed away the ash to reveal a surface that was perfectly unharmed and icy cold to the touch.

I knew that crematorium ovens must heat bodies at nearly two thousand degrees Fahrenheit for two hours to render them to ash, so this must be a dream.

As I looked vacantly around me, I saw smoke issuing from a bookcase. Behind the glass door, the bookcase was full of white smoke. I went over and opened the bookcase door, and the smoke dissipated. About a third of the books had turned to ash, the same color as the two piles on the carpet, but the bookcase itself showed no signs of fire. This was a dream.

I saw a puff of steam escape the half-opened refrigerator. I pulled back the door to find a frozen chicken, cooked through and smelling delicious, and shrimp and fish that were cooked as well. But the refrigerator, rattling as the compressor restarted, was completely unharmed. This was a dream.

I felt a little weird myself. I opened my jacket and ashes fell off my body. The tee shirt I was wearing had been completely incinerated, but the outer jacket was perfectly fine, which was why I hadn’t noticed anything until now. I checked my pockets and burned my hand on an object that turned out to be my PDA, now a hunk of melted plastic. This had to be a dream, a most peculiar dream!

Woodenly, I returned to my seat. Although I could not see the two small piles of ash on the carpet on the other side of the table, I knew they were there. Outside, the thunder had let up and the lightning had slackened. Eventually the rain stopped. Later, the moon poked through a gap in the clouds, beaming an unearthly silvery light through the window. Still I sat numbly in a fog. In my mind, the world had ceased to exist and I was floating in a vast emptiness.

How much time passed before the rising sun outside the window woke me, I do not know, but when I got up mechanically to leave for school, I had to fumble around to find my book bag and open the door because I was still staring dumbly into that boundless emptiness....

A week later, when my mind had mostly returned to normal, the first thing I remembered was that it had happened on the night of my birthday. There should have been only one candle on the cake—no, no candles at all, because on that night my life started anew. I was no longer the person I once was.

Like Dad had advised in the last moments of his life, I was now fascinated with something, and I wanted to experience the wonderful life he had described.





Part 1





College


Major courses: Higher Mathematics, Theoretical Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Principles and Applications of Computers, Languages and Programming, Dynamic Meteorology, Principles of Synoptic Meteorology, Chinese Meteorology, Statistical Forecasting, Long-Term Weather Forecasting, Numerical Forecasting.

Elective courses: Atmospheric Circulation, Meteorological Diagnostic Analysis, Storms and Mid-Scale Meteorology, Thunderstorm Prediction and Prevention, Tropical Meteorology, Climate Change and Short-Term Climate Prediction, Radar and Satellite Meteorology, Air Pollution and Urban Climatology, High-Altitude Meteorology, Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions.