Ball Lightning(92)

“Are you crazy?” Ding Yi shouted sharply, startling Lin Yun and the pilot. He pointed at the two coils and their strings. “I’ll say it again: the coils must be kept at least five meters apart. Do you understand?”

Lin Yun looked at Ding Yi thoughtfully for a few seconds, and said, “There’s something you’re not telling me about macro-nuclei...?for example, you’ve never been willing to explain what that last line on the gravestone means.”

“For something this important, I wanted to go directly to the higher-ups,” Ding Yi said, avoiding Lin Yun’s eyes.

“You don’t trust me?”

“That’s right. I don’t trust you.” Finding his resolve, Ding Yi looked straight at Lin Yun and said, “I can trust Colonel Xu and the others at the base, but I don’t trust you. The other person I don’t trust is myself. We’re actually quite alike. Both of us might use macro-nuclei without considering the consequences, albeit for different reasons. I would act out of a burning curiosity about the universe, but you—you would act out of an infatuation with weapons, driven by your failures.”

“Again with the weapons,” Lin Yun shook her head in confusion. “This pliable, infinitely thin string can pass through our bodies without us feeling anything, and it can’t be excited into a high-energy state. It’s got nothing to do with weapons....?Your refusal to explain is affecting our work.”

“With your training, you should be able to figure it out.”

“I don’t get it. Why is putting two of them together so frightening?”

“They’ll get tangled.”

“So what?”

“Think about what happens to two atomic nuclei that get tangled up in our world.”

Ding Yi knew he had peeled back the last layer of wrapping, and he watched her closely, hoping to see signs of shock and terror on her face. There were traces at first, but they were quickly replaced by excitement—the excitement of discovering a new toy.

“Fusion!”

Ding Yi nodded in silence.

“Would it release a lot of energy?”

“Of course. A ball lightning discharge is like a chemical reaction in the macro-world. Fusion would yield at least a hundred thousand times the energy of a chemical reaction of the same number of particles.”

“Macro-fusion—that’s what we’ll call it. Would its energy release have target selectivity like ball lightning?”

“In theory, yes, since they have identical energy release channels. They both experience quantum resonance with our world.”

Lin Yun turned back to look at the two hanging strings. “That’s brilliant. We used to require temperatures of a billion degrees for fusion, but now we can achieve it simply by tangling two strings!”

“It’s not that simple. The separation I’m insisting on is merely a cautionary measure. If you put those two strings together, they wouldn’t get tangled, since electrical repulsion would prevent them from coming into contact.” Ding Yi extended a hand to rub an incorporeal dancing string. “Combining strings requires a certain amount of relative speed to overcome that repulsion. You should now be able to understand the inscription from the gravestone.”

“Inciting F requires a speed of just 426.831 meters per second....?F is fusion?”

“That’s right. Two strings need to strike each other at that relative speed in order to become entangled. That’s fusion.”

Lin Yun’s engineering mind began working at top speed. “Since the strings carry a positive charge, it wouldn’t be hard to get each of them to two-hundred-some meters per second on two EM accelerator rails of sufficient length.”

“Don’t head off in that direction. Our primary task now is to think of a safe way to store them.”

“We should begin building two accelerators immediately—”

“I said, don’t go in that direction!”

“I’m just saying, we should make preparations. If we don’t, we won’t be ready when the higher-ups decide on macro-fusion tests...,” Lin Yun said. Then, suddenly she got angry, and paced urgently inside the narrow cabin. “What’s the matter with you? You’re so neurotic and shortsighted. It’s like you’re a different person compared to when you first came!”

Ding Yi gave a strange laugh. “Major, I’m just carrying out my pitiful little duty. Do you think I really care? I don’t. No physicist really cares about anything. Last century, when they turned over the formulas and techniques for atomic energy release to engineers and soldiers, then struck a pose of injured innocence at the price paid by Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Such hypocrites. They wanted to see the results, believe me. They wanted a demonstration of the power they had discovered. It was determined by their nature—by our natures. The only difference between them and me is that I’m not a hypocrite. I really want to see what will happen when those two strings of singularities get tangled together. Do I care about anything else? Hell no!”

Ding Yi had begun to pace as he spoke, and now the blimp rocked from their restless movement. The pilot turned back curiously to watch them fight.

“Then let’s go back and build rails,” Lin Yun murmured, her head down. She seemed momentarily drained of energy, as if something Ding Yi said had hurt her. And he soon found out the answer. On the flight back to base, sitting with him between the two dancing strings, Lin Yun said softly, “Do you really not care about anything apart from the mysteries of the universe?”