Лю Цысинь - Ball Lightning

“Oh, that’s what we call the PLA National Defense University’s New Concept Weapons Development Center. I’ve worked here since graduating.”

Gao Bo pushed me to visit Lin Yun before I’d even reported to my new workplace.

Half an hour’s drive beyond the Fourth Ring Road, wheat fields had sprung up along the highway. Quite a few military research institutions were clustered in this area, most of them plain buildings behind high perimeter walls with no signs on the gates. But the New Concept Weapons Development Center was an eye-catching, modern-looking twenty-story building that resembled an office for some multinational corporation. Unlike the nearby agencies, it had no guards at the gate, so people could freely go in and out.

I entered through the automatic door into a large, bright lobby and took the elevator up to Lin Yun’s office. The place was like a civilian-side administrative agency. Looking into the half-opened doors lining the corridor, I saw a modern modular office layout, with lots of people busy at computers or amid piles of papers. If they hadn’t been in uniform, I would have imagined I had walked into a large corporate office building. I saw a few foreigners, two of whom were wearing their own country’s uniforms, talking and laughing with Chinese soldiers in an office.

I found Lin Yun in an office labeled “System Review Dept. 2.” When she walked over, wearing a major’s uniform and a glittering smile on her face, she rocked my heart with a beauty that transcended fashion, although I was aware at once that she was in the military.

“Different from what you imagined?” she asked me, after we exchanged greetings.

“Very. What is it that you do here?”

“What the name suggests.”

“What are new-concept weapons?”

“Well, for example, in the Second World War, the Soviet army strapped explosives onto trained dogs and had them slip beneath German tanks. That was a new-concept weapon, and an idea that still counts as a new concept even today. But there are lots of variations, like strapping explosives to dolphins and having them attack submarines, or training a flock of birds to carry small bombs. Here’s the latest thing—” She bent over her computer and pulled up an illustrated article that looked like a page from an entomology website. “Attaching tiny sacks of corrosive fluid to cockroaches and other insects so they can destroy the circuits of the enemy’s weapons systems.”

“Interesting,” I said. Looking at the computer screen, I stood close to Lin Yun and caught an elusive fragrance: a scent stripped of all sweetness, a comfortable, slightly bitter scent that reminded me of a grassy meadow under the first sun after a rainstorm….

“And take a look at this: a liquid that, when sprayed on roads, will turn them slippery and impassible. And this: a gas that can kill the engine of a car or tank. This one’s not very interesting—a laser that can scan an area like a CRT’s electron gun so that everyone in that area is temporarily or permanently blinded….”

I was a little surprised that they seemed to allow outsiders to see anything pulled up from their information system.

“We’re producing new concepts. Most of them are useless, and some might even look ridiculous, but one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, may become a reality, and that’s what’s significant.”

“So this is a think tank.”

“You could call it that. The job of the department I’m in is to figure out which of these ideas are workable, and to conduct preliminary research. Sometimes this research can advance quite a ways, like the lightning weapon system we’re just about to discuss.”

That she brought up Gao Bo’s topic of interest so quickly was a good sign, but I still wanted to ask her about something I was very curious about: “What are the Western officers doing here?”

“They’re visiting scholars. Weapons research is an academic discipline, and it requires communication. A new-concept weapon is very far from practicality. In this field, we need nimble minds, huge quantities of information, and the clash of a range of ideas. Exchanges are beneficial to both sides.”

“So that means you also send visiting scholars to the other side?”

“When I came back from Mount Tai two years ago, I went to Europe and North America and spent three months as a visiting scholar at a leading new-concept weapons development institution called the Weapons Systems Advanced Evaluation Committee. How have you been the past two years? Still chasing ball lightning every day?”

I said, “Of course. What else can I do? But right now my chase is on paper.”

“Let me give you a gift,” she said, mousing through directories on her computer. “This is an eyewitness account of ball lightning.”

Dismissively, I said, “I’ve seen a thousand of these things.”

“But this one’s different.” As she spoke, a video clip appeared on screen. It appeared to have been shot in a forest clearing with a military helicopter parked in it. In front of it stood two people: Lin Yun, wearing an Army training uniform, and the other, evidently the pilot, wearing a light flight suit. In the background were several air balloons in mid-rise. Lin Yun said, “This is Captain Wang Songlin, an Army Aviation Corps helicopter pilot.”

Then I heard her voice in the recording saying, “Tell it again. I’ll record it for a friend of mine.”

The captain said, “Sure. I said that what I saw that time is without a doubt the thing you’re talking about. It was during the Yangtze River flood of 1998. I flew out toward the disaster area for an airdrop. I was at an altitude of seven hundred meters when I carelessly flew into a thundercloud. Totally a no-fly zone, but for a while I couldn’t get out. The air currents in the cloud buffeted the aircraft like a leaf, and my head kept bumping against the hatch. Most of the instruments were jittering randomly, and nothing was clear on the radio. It was pitch black outside. Suddenly a bolt of lightning lit up, and then I saw it: about the size of a basketball, giving off orange light, and when the bolt appeared the static on the radio grew even worse…”

“Listen carefully to what he says next,” Lin Yun told me.

“…The ball of light floated around the craft, not too fast, first from the nose to the tail, and then vertically up through the rotors, and then back down through the rotors into the cabin again. It floated for about half a minute, and then it suddenly disappeared.”

“Wait. Replay that last part!” I shouted. Like Lin Yun had said, this eyewitness account was unusual.

The video rewound, and after it replayed that section, it continued with Lin Yun asking the question I wanted to: “Were you hovering or flying?”

“Could I hover in a thundercloud? Of course I was flying. Speed at least four hundred. I was looking for an exit from the cloud.”

“You must have remembered incorrectly. You must have been hovering. It’s not right otherwise.”

“I know what you’re thinking. That’s what’s so weird about it. The airflow had no effect on it at all! Even if I’m misremembering, or had the wrong impression at the time and I really was hovering, the rotors were still rotating constantly, and that airflow was enormous. Besides, wouldn’t there be wind? But the fireball just turned very slowly around the helicopter. Taking relative speeds into account, it was moving very fast, but it wasn’t affected at all by the air.”

“This is really important information!” I said. “There’s evidence of this in lots of previous records, like eyewitness accounts saying that when ball lightning entered a room through a window or door, wind was blowing in, or other accounts that straight-out describe ball lightning as moving against the wind, but none of them are as believable as this. If the motion of ball lightning really isn’t affected by air currents, then the plasma theory is untenable. But that’s what the majority of current ball lightning theory is based on. Can I talk to the pilot?”