Ball Lightning(72)
When the first ball lightning exploded, a strong EM pulse cut off the camera image. When it returned several seconds later, the place was empty, except for a few remaining excited lightning balls that drifted until they gradually went out. As their energy levels dropped, their sound grew less terrifying and more mournful, requiem-like.
On the roof of the guesthouse, I heard the explosions from the reactor. The sound rattled all of the glass in the building, but we heard it not through our ears, but in our very organs. It was so nauseating that it must have had infrasonic elements.
*
I felt like I wouldn’t be able to hold myself together if I entered the reactor room, but I still went in alongside Lin Yun, my psyche so weak that my legs shook and I could scarcely stand still. More than a decade after seeing my parents turned to ash, I stood among the ashes of children. Apart from a very few charred remains, the majority of the deceased had been burned up entirely, but their clothing was basically unharmed. Ball lightning had incinerated them in an instant, with an internal temperature of more than ten thousand degrees and a matter wave resonance that caused its energy to release evenly into every cell.
Several police officers ringed the teacher’s ashes, searching for something in her pockets. The other seven terrorists had also been tidily taken care of, including the two who were preparing to detonate the red pills.
I stepped gingerly among the children’s ashes. Those blooms of life were now white piles beneath as many sets of children’s clothing. Many of them retained the shape of children fallen on the ground, heads and limbs clearly distinguishable. The control room floor had become a huge painting, a work of art describing life and death executed by ball lightning. For a moment I even sensed something transcendent and ethereal.
Lin Yun and I stopped before a small pile of ash which, judging by the undamaged clothing, must have been a girl. Her final position was preserved excellently in ash, and it looked as if she had leaped into a different world with a dance of joy. Unlike the other ash piles, part of her body had escaped destruction: a hand. Her hand was small and white, the wrinkles on each finger unmistakable, as if it still belonged to a living body. Lin Yun squatted down and gently lifted the hand, then held it in both palms. I stood beside her, and we remained motionless; time had stopped for us. I genuinely wished I could become an unfeeling statue and remain with the ashes of the children forever.
After a while, I realized that there was someone else beside us, the operational commander. Lin Yun noticed him too, and gently set down the hand before standing up. “Sir, let me visit the children’s parents. I was the one who conducted the weapon attack.”
The commander slowly shook his head. “The decision was mine. The consequences are not your responsibility. They aren’t the responsibility of any comrade who took part in the action. You did well. I will request commendation for Dawnlight. Thank you all. Thank you.” After saying this, he took steady footsteps toward the door. We knew that no matter what assessment this operation received from various quarters, his political career was over.
After a few steps, he stopped, and without turning around, uttered a sentence that Lin Yun was sure to remember for the rest of her life: “Also, Major, thank you for your counsel about the situation.”
*
I handed in my resignation as soon as we returned to base. Everyone tried to make me stay, but my mind was made up.
Ding Yi said, “Chen, man, you’ve got to think about this rationally. Without ball lightning weapons, those kids would have died anyway. And they’d have died far more horribly, taking tens of thousands of other people with them. Deaths from radiation sickness and leukemia. And the next generation would have deformities....”
“That’s enough, Professor Ding. I don’t have your pure scientific rationality. Or Lin Yun’s military cool. I don’t have anything. So I’ve got to leave.”
“If it’s because of something I did...,” Lin Yun said slowly.
“No, no. You did nothing wrong. It’s me. Like Professor Ding says, I’m too sensitive. Maybe it’s because of what I experienced as a child. I just don’t have the courage to see anyone else get burned to ash by ball lightning. No matter who they are. I don’t have the emotional strength that’s needed for weapons research.”
“But we’re still collecting chip-burning macro-electrons. Those weapons will end up reducing personnel casualties on the battlefield.”
“They’re the same thing, as far as I’m concerned. At this point I don’t ever want to see ball lightning again.”
I was in the records room, returning all of the confidential material I had used in the course of my work. I had to sign my name onto each document, the last bit of paperwork I had to complete before leaving the base. With each name I signed, I took another step away from this world unknown to the outside where I had spent the most unforgettable period of my waning youth. I knew that when I left this time, I would never return.
When I left, Lin Yun accompanied me for quite a ways. When we parted, she said, “Research on civilian uses of ball lightning may start quite soon. We may have another opportunity to work together then.”
“It will be nice when that day comes,” I said. It was indeed a comforting thought. But a different feeling prompted me not to wait for that possible future reunion, and instead say the words I had long wanted to tell her.
“Lin Yun, the first time I met you on Mount Tai, I felt something I’d never felt before....” I looked off at the distant mountains separating us from Beijing.