Лю Цысинь - Ball Lightning

“As we’re all aware, the technology for missile strikes and oil firebombs is not new. This isn’t really a precision strike, either, since the precision we require is a level less than is used for military uses. That lessens the cost. What we’re using are all obsolete, decommissioned missiles. The key technology in the Tornado Hunter system is Dr. Chen’s atmospheric optical detection system. That’s the innovation that allows us to determine the advance positioning of the egg. It’s what makes the artificial destruction of tornadoes possible. Let us pay him our deep respect!”

The next day, Oklahoma City, the state capital, made me an honorary citizen of the city. When I accepted the citation from the governor, a young blonde woman presented me with the Oklahoma state flower, mistletoe, which I had never seen before. She told me that a tornado had taken her parents the previous year. It had been a terrifying night. An F3 tornado had ripped off the roof of her house and flung everything inside more than a hundred meters into the air. She had only survived because she had landed in a pond. Her account reminded me of the night I lost my parents, and gave me a sense of pride in my work. It was this kind of work that finally rid me of the shadow of ball lightning, and let me start on a new life in the sun.

After the ceremony, I congratulated Dr. Ross. Even though I had been the one to make the breakthrough in forecasting tornadoes, they had been the ones who ultimately conquered them.

“It was TMD that finally conquered tornadoes,” he said absently.

“Theater missile defense?”

“That’s right. It was adopted practically without modification. It was only a matter of replacing the system’s incoming missile identification module with your egg positioning system. TMD seems purpose-built to destroy tornadoes.”

I realized then that the two were indeed similar: they both automatically identified targets, and then used guided missiles for precise interception.

“My original field of study had nothing to do with meteorology. I was in charge of TMD and NMD software systems for many years. When I realized that the weapons systems I’d developed could be used to benefit society, I felt a joy I’d never had before. Dr. Chen, you have my special thanks for that.”

“I feel the same way,” I said sincerely.

“Swords can be made into plowshares,” Ross said. But then in a much lower voice, he added, “But some plowshares can be cast back into swords. Weapons researchers like us sometimes have to accept blame and loss for this in the course of carrying out our duties…. Can you understand that, too, Dr. Chen?”

I had heard similar words from Gao Bo, and so I nodded silently, but my mind grew wary. When he said “us,” did he include me? Did they really know about the work I used to do?

“Thank you. You have my sincere gratitude,” Ross said. He was looking at me with a peculiar expression, which betrayed a glimpse of sorrow. Later I realized I was thinking too much, and that his words had nothing to do with me. I only learned later what his expression really meant.

I was among the final group of visiting scholars to go abroad. Ten days after I returned home, war broke out.

Life grew tense. Apart from daily attention to the war, work also took on a new level of meaning, since the joys and cares that had previously occupied a primary position in my life no longer seemed so important.

One day I received a telephone call from the military instructing me to attend a meeting. A naval ensign would come to pick me up by car.

As the war escalated, I sometimes thought about the ball lightning weapons project. These were unusual times, and if the research base needed me to go back, I would abandon all of my personal feelings and do my utmost to fulfill my duty, but I never heard from them. The war news I read never had anything related to ball lightning weapons. This should have been the best opportunity for them to come out, but it was as if they had never even existed. I tried calling the base, but found that all their numbers were disconnected. Ding Yi was similarly nowhere to be found. All that I had been through was like a dream, and it had left no traces behind.

It was only after I arrived at the military meeting and discovered that most of the people there, none of whom I recognized, were from the navy that I realized that this had nothing to do with ball lightning weapons. Everyone looked grim, and the atmosphere of the meeting was depressive.

“Dr. Chen, first off we’d like to explain to you something that happened in naval combat yesterday,” a senior colonel in the navy said, getting down to business without any opening remarks. “You don’t need to know the specific location and circumstances of the battle, so I’ll only tell you the pertinent information. At around three p.m. yesterday, the Zhufeng carrier battle group was attacked by a large number of cruise missiles—”

My heart jumped when I heard the name.

“—Forty of them. The group immediately switched on defensive systems, but they soon discovered the method of attack was peculiar: under ordinary circumstances, cruise missiles attacking a sea target will fly close to the surface of the ocean to break through anti-missile defenses, but these flew at an altitude of one thousand meters, as if they didn’t care about being shot down. And sure enough, the missiles didn’t directly attack targets in the group. Instead, all of them exploded outside our defensive perimeter at altitudes of five hundred to one thousand meters. The force of each explosion was small, just enough to disperse a large quantity of white powder. Please have a look at the recording.”

Empty sky appeared on the projection screen. There were lots of clouds, and it looked about to rain. Then lots of small white dots appeared and gradually expanded, as if dripping dozens of drops of milk onto the water.

“Those are the cruise missiles’ explosion points,” the senior colonel said, pointing at the expanding dots on the screen. “What’s strange is that we really didn’t know what the enemy was doing. That white material—”

“Were there any other unusual signs at that location?” I interrupted, a foreboding fear rising in my heart.

“What do you mean? There was nothing that seemed relevant.”

“Unrelated, then. Can you take a look?” I asked urgently.

The colonel and several other officers exchanged glances, and a bespectacled lieutenant colonel said, “An enemy early warning aircraft flew through that airspace. That doesn’t seem unusual.”

“Anything else?”

“Hmm… the enemy emitted a high-energy laser at that region of the ocean from a low-orbit satellite, perhaps to coordinate submarine detection with the plane…. Is that related to the missile attack under discussion? Dr. Chen, are you okay?”

I hope to God it’s submarine detection. May the lord make it submarine detection . My heart prayed in a panic as I said, “Not really…. That white powder, do you have a rough idea of what it was?”

“I was about to tell you,” the senior colonel said as he flipped the scene on the screen. Now it was an image formed from a small number of brilliant colors, like a well-used painter’s palette. “This is a false-color infrared image of that region of space. See, the explosion points are rapidly turning into low-temperature zones.” He pointed at a patch of brilliant blue, and said, “So we guess that the white powder might be a highly efficient refrigerant.”

I felt like I had been struck by lightning, and the world had turned upside down. I had to grip the table to bring myself to earth. “Hurry! Get the fleet out of there!” I said to the senior colonel, while pointing at the screen.