Лю Цысинь - Ball Lightning

“What?”

“In the mine tests, there were no human observers, and no man-made observation equipment, but the ball lightning remained collapsed. This can only mean that there was another, nonhuman, observer.”

This immediately piqued my interest. “It would have to be a very powerful observer to see through the earth’s crust!”

“That’s the only reasonable explanation.”

“Can those two tests be repeated?”

“Not anymore. But the collapsed-state outcome of the tests remained for three full days before the tests started producing quantum-state outcomes again.”

“There’s an explanation for that, too: the super-observer must have detected that you had detected it.”

“Perhaps. So we’re planning even larger-scale tests now, to find more of this phenomenon for study.”

“That’s significant research indeed, Dr. Parker. If you are really able to prove that a super-observer is watching our world, then human activity becomes very indiscreet…. You could say human society is in a quantum state, and a super-observer will force it to collapse to a state of reason again.”

“If we’d found that super-observer a little earlier, maybe war could have been averted.”

Parker’s research prompted me to pay a visit to Ding Yi. To my surprise, he was living with a lover, a dancer who had lost her job in the war. She was clearly a simpleminded type, and I couldn’t say how they ended up together. Evidently Ding Yi had learned how to enjoy life apart from physics. A person like him wouldn’t bother with marriage, of course, but fortunately the woman wasn’t looking for that, either.

When I arrived, Ding Yi wasn’t at home, just the woman. His three-bedroom apartment wasn’t as spare as it was before: to his calculation papers, she had added lots of cute decorations.

The moment the woman heard I was Ding Yi’s friend, she asked me whether he had any other lovers.

“Physics counts as one, I guess. No one can hold the top place in his heart so long as physics is there,” I said frankly.

“I don’t care about physics. I mean, does he have any other women?”

“I don’t think so. He’s got so much stuff in his head I don’t think he could make room for two people.”

“But I heard that during the war, he and a young major were close.”

“Oh, they were just colleagues and friends. Besides, that major isn’t here anymore.”

“I know that. But you know what? He looks at that major’s photograph every day, and rubs it.”

I had been distracted, but this surprised me. “A photo of Lin Yun?”

“Oh, so she’s called Lin Yun. She looks like a teacher, or something. Are there teachers in the army?”

This shocked me even further, and I insisted on seeing the photo. She led me to the study, opened up a drawer in a bookshelf, and took out an exquisite silver-inlaid picture frame. Then, she said, “It’s this one. Every night before he goes to sleep he steals a look at it and dusts it off. Once I told him, ‘Put it on the writing desk, I don’t mind,’ but he still doesn’t leave it out. He just gives it a stealthy look and dusts it off.”

I took the frame and held it facedown in my hand. With eyes half-closed, I steadied my heart—the woman must have been looking at me in amazement—and then I jerked the photo around and stared at it.

At once I understood why the woman had thought Lin Yun was a teacher: she was with a group of students.

She was standing in their midst, more beautiful than ever, still wearing that trim major’s uniform, with a beaming smile on her face. Looking at the children around her, I immediately recognized them as the group that had been incinerated by ball lightning at the nuclear power plant. They, too, were smiling sweetly, and were obviously very happy. I noticed in particular a little girl that Lin Yun was holding tightly, an adorable child smiling so hard her eyes were slits.

But what caught my attention was the girl’s left hand.

It was missing.

Lin Yun and the children were standing on a well-manicured lawn where there were a few small white animals. Behind them, I could see a familiar structure: the macro-electron excitation lab, where we had heard the bleat of a quantum goat. But in the photograph, the warehouse’s long exterior wall was painted in colorful cartoon animals, flowers, and balloons. The brilliant colors made the building look like an enormous toy.

From the photograph, Lin Yun looked at me with her touching smile, and in her limpid eyes I read things I had not seen while she was alive: a happy belonging and a peace from somewhere deep within. It reminded me of a distant, long-forgotten still harbor in which a small boat was moored.

I gently returned the photo to the drawer and walked out to the balcony, unwilling to let Ding Yi’s lover see the tears in my eyes.

Ding Yi never spoke of the photo. He never even mentioned Lin Yun, and I never asked. It was a secret deep in his heart.

And I soon had a secret of my own.

It was two in the morning one night in late autumn. I was at my desk working, and when I looked up, the amethyst vase on the desk caught my eye. It was a lovely wedding gift from Ding Yi, but the flowers that had been placed in it had dried up at some point. I took them out and tossed them into the wastebasket and thought, with a bitter smile, Life’s responsibilities keep getting heavier. I don’t know when I’ll find the time to put fresh flowers in the vase.

Then I leaned back in my chair, shut my eyes, and sat thinking about absolutely nothing. Late every night I would sit for a while at the stillest moment of the day, when it seemed like I was the only one awake in the whole world.

My nose caught a hint of freshness.

It was an aroma absent any sweetness: comforting, slightly bitter, bringing to mind the first sunlight on green grass after a storm has passed, the last wisp of cloud in a clear blue sky, the fleeting chime in a deep mountain valley… only more ethereal this time. By the time I noticed its existence, it had already disappeared, only to reappear once I turned my attention away from my nose.

Do you like this perfume?

Oh… don’t they stop you from wearing perfume in the army?

Sometimes it’s allowed.

“Is it you?” I asked softly, without opening my eyes.

There was no answer.

“I know it’s you,” I said, eyes still closed.

But there was still no answer, only a great stillness.

I opened my eyes with a jerk, and there, in the amethyst vase on the desk, was a blue rose. But no sooner had I seen it than it vanished, leaving the vase empty.

Every detail of the rose had been imprinted on my mind, so full of life, with such a cold aura.

I closed my eyes and opened them again, but the rose did not reappear. But I knew she was there, sitting in the amethyst vase.

“Who are you calling?” my wife asked sleepily, as she sat up in bed.

“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep,” I said gently. I got up and picked up the vase, then carefully filled it halfway with clean water and set it back on the table. Then I sat in front of it until morning.

My wife saw there was water in the vase and brought back a bouquet of flowers on her way home from work. I stopped her as she was about to put it in the vase.

“Don’t. There’s a flower in there.”

She looked at me strangely.

“It’s a blue rose.”

“Oh, the most expensive kind,” she said, laughing, clearly thinking I was joking. Then she reached out to put her flowers in again.

I grabbed the vase from her and returned it gently to the desk, then snatched the flowers out of her hands and tossed them in the wastebasket. “I said there’s a flower in there. What’s wrong with you?”