Лю Цысинь - Ball Lightning

“Prepare to attack! We will determine the number of shots ourselves, but we must ensure that all living targets inside the reactor structure are destroyed.”

“Let Major Lin decide the number of shots to fire,” Colonel Xu said.

“Two hundred dissipative shots, one hundred from each gun,” Lin Yun said, evidently having thought it over already. All of the macro-electrons currently loaded in the weapons were dissipative. Once all of the targets in the structure had been destroyed, the remaining ball lightning would drain their energy in the form of EM radiation, going out gradually, no longer destructive. Other varieties of ball lightning would release excess energy as an explosion, causing random damage to targets other than their selective target type.

“First and second shooting teams, come forward,” Lieutenant Colonel Kang said as he pushed through the group. He pointed ahead and said, “The PAP squad will advance on the reactor, up to the hundred-meter safe line. They will stop there, then we will commence firing.”

My heart seized up as I looked out at the huge nuclear column reflecting the blinding white light of the sun, preventing me from looking at it directly. For a moment I heard voices, as if the sound of the children was being blown over the roof by the wind.

The tarps were taken off the two thunderball guns, and the metal shells of their accelerator rails gleamed in the sunlight.

“Allow me,” Lin Yun said, taking the shooter’s seat at one of the thunderball guns. Lieutenant Colonel Kang and Colonel Xu exchanged a glance, but did not oppose her. I saw in her expression and movement an excitement she could not suppress, like a child finally getting her hands on a coveted toy. It gave me the chills.

Down on the ground, the PAP’s skirmish line had started moving toward the reactor. It already seemed tiny against that massive structure. The line moved quickly, rapidly approaching the reactor’s hundred-meter safety line. Then the thunderball guns ignited the excitement arcs in their accelerator rails, the crisp crackle turning heads down below the building, and even causing the PAP troops to glance backward.

When the line was a hundred meters from the reactor, they halted, then two lines of ball lightning flew off the roof toward the reactor. The deadly hurricane whooshed across two hundred meters. As the first ball lightning struck the reactor structure, more ball lightning was issuing in an unending stream from the accelerator rails, joined into a continuous thread by fiery tails that connected the guesthouse and the reactor with a river of flame.

I watched a video recording afterward of what happened in the control room.

At the time the ball lightning flew in, the teacher had already stopped her class and was stretched across the control station messing with something, while the children, still clustered together, were being guarded by an assault-rifle-wielding terrorist. The ball lightning was unobserved for a short time after it entered the structure and entered a probability cloud state. By the time the reappearance of an observer caused the probability cloud to collapse, the ball lightning had lost its speed and now drifted slowly on a random path. Everyone looked up in fear and confusion at the wandering fireballs, which screamed the cries of a multitude of ghosts as their tails painted a complicated, shifting picture in the air. In the images recorded by the cameras in the control room, the teacher’s face was the clearest. Her glasses reflected the yellow and blue of the ball lightning, but, unlike the others, there was no fear in her eyes, only confusion. She was even smiling, perhaps to let herself relax, or maybe because she genuinely found the fireballs interesting. That was the last expression she wore in this world.

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.”