Ball Lightning Sneak Peek

  I looked at Zhang Bin, and he motioned for me to turn the page. I turned to page one, and realized why he told me to be gentle: this page was burned, partly turned to ash and lost. Very gently, I turned this burnt page, and the next one was completely intact, its dense data recordings easily visible, as if written yesterday.

  “Turn another page,” he said.

  The third leaf was burned.

  The fourth was intact.

  The fifth was burned.

  The sixth was intact.

  The seventh was burned.

  The eighth was intact.

  As I paged through the notebook, every other page was burned. Some of the burnt pages only had bits close to the binding remaining, but on the neighboring intact pages I could see no burn marks. I looked up and stared at Zhang Bin.

  He said, “Can you believe it? I’ve never shown this to anyone else, since they’d certainly think it’s fake.”

  Looking straight at him, I said, “No, Professor Zhang. I believe!”

  Then I told a second person about my fateful birthday night.

  After hearing my story, he said, “I guessed you had experience in this area, but I never imagined it would be so terrible. You ought to know, after all you personally witnessed, that the study of ball lightning is a foolish thing.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “I realized this fairly late myself. Over the past thirty years, apart from seeking ball lightning in naturally occurring thunderstorms, more of my energies were devoted to theoretical study. Thirty years.” He sighed. “I won’t describe that process to you. See for yourself.” He gestured at the large cardboard boxes surrounding us.

  I opened two of the heavy ones and found they were filled to the top with stacks of calculation books! I pulled out two of them and read the dense differential equations and matrices, then looked around at the low wall of boxes, and sucked in a breath of cold air at the thought of the work he had done in thirty years.

  I asked, “And experiments—what have you done?”

  “Not much. Means were limited. There’s no way the project could get much funding. But more importantly, none of these mathematical models is worth testing. They were not well-founded, and when I got further along I’d find out that I’d taken a wrong first step. In other words, even coming up with a self-consistent mathematical model is still very far from being able to produce ball lightning in the lab.”

  “Are you still carrying out research in this area?”

  Zhang Bin shook his head. “I stopped a few years ago. Odd—it was the same year you first asked me questions about ball lightning. On New Year’s Eve, I was mired in hopeless calculations when I heard the bells ringing out the new year and the joyous cheers of the students. All of a sudden I realized that my life was practically over, and a sadness I had never known before came over me and I came here. Like so many times before, I took the notebook out of the raincoat, and as I carefully turned the pages, I realized a truth.”

  “What?”

  He picked up the notebook and held it before him. “Look at this, and think about the stormy night of your fourteenth birthday. Do you truly believe that all of this is contained within the existing laws of physics?”

  I could say nothing in response.

  “We’re both mortal men. We may have put far more into the search than other people, but we’re still mortal. We can only make deductions within the framework defined by elemental theory, and dare not deviate from it, lest we step out into the airless void. But within this framework, we cannot deduce anything.”

  Listening to him, I felt the same frustration I had on the foggy mountain road on Mount Tai.

  He went on: “In you, I saw another young man like myself, and did my utmost to stop you from going down that dangerous path, although I knew it was of no use. You’ll still take that path. I’ve done everything I can.” He finished, and sat wearily down on a cardboard box.

  I said, “Professor Zhang, you’re being a bad judge of your own work. When you’re captivated by something, striving after it is enough. That’s a kind of success.”

  “Thank you for your consolation,” he said weakly.

  “I’m saying it for myself, too. When I get to your age, that’s how I’ll console myself.”

  He gestured to the boxes. “Take these, and some discs too. Take a look if you’re interested. If you’re not, then forget about it. They’re all meaningless.… And this notebook—take it too. I get scared looking at it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, a little choked up. I pointed at the photo on the wall. “Could I scan a copy of that?”

  “Of course. What for?”

  “Perhaps to one day let the world know that your wife was the first person to directly measure ball lightning.”

  He carefully took the photo down from the wall and handed it to me. “Her name is Zheng Min. Peking University physics department, entering class of ’63.”

  * * *

  The next day, I moved the boxes from Zhang Bin’s house to my dormitory, as if it were a storage unit. Then I read the stuff day and night. Like an inexperienced climber, I had attempted a summit I supposed no one else had reached. But looking around me, I saw the tents of the people before me, and their footprints leading onward. By this point, I had read through the three mathematical models Zhang Bin had constructed, each superbly fashioned, one of which was along the same lines as my PhD thesis, but completed more than a decade before. What shamed me even more was that on the final pages of his manuscript, he pointed out the error of the model, something that I, Gao Bo, and all of the committee members had missed. At the close of the other two models, he likewise pointed out errors. Where I had seen incomplete mathematical models, Zhang Bing had, during their construction, discovered errors.

  That night, as I was buried in the pile of manuscripts, Gao Bo dropped by. He looked around at the mountain of calculations and shook his head. “I say, are you really thinking of living your whole life like he did?”

  I chuckled, and said, “Professor Gao…”

  He waved me off. “I’m no longer your professor. With luck, we’ll end up colleagues.”

  “So it’s even better that I say this. Honestly, Professor Gao, I’ve never seen you so brilliant. That’s not a compliment. Forgive me for being blunt, but I feel that you lack perseverance. Like how recently, in that structural lightning protection system CAD—a wonderful project—you spent just a minimum of effort to complete it, and after completing the pioneering work, you foisted the rest of the work onto others because you felt it was too much trouble.”

  “Ah, perseverance. Spending a lifetime on one thing isn’t how things are done any longer. In this age, apart from basic science, all other research should be surgical strikes. I’ve come to further demonstrate to you my lack of perseverance: Do you still remember what I said? If your dissertation was rejected, then I’d resign.”

  “But I passed.”

  “And I’m still resigning. You see now that the promise was a trap!”

  “Where will you go?”

  “The Lightning Institute at the Academy of Atmospheric Sciences has recruited me as director. I’m tired of universities! What about you? Do you have plans for the future? Come with me!”

  I said I’d think about it, and two days later I agreed. I had no particular desire to go there, but it was the country’s largest institution of lightning research.

  * * *

  Two nights before leaving the university, I was still reading those calculation manuscripts when I heard a knock at the door. Zhang Bin.

  “You’re leaving?” He looked over my packed bags.

  “Yes. The day after tomorrow. I heard you retired.”

  He nodded. “It came through yesterday. I’ve reached an age where all I want to do is rest. I’ve had such a tiring life.”

  He sat down. I lit him a cigarette, and we stayed quiet a while before he said, “I’ve come to tell you another thing, something I’m afraid only y
ou will understand. Do you know what the most painful thing in my life is?”

  “I know, Professor. Extricating yourself from this fixation is no easy thing. It’s been thirty years, after all. But this hasn’t been the only thing you’ve done in that time. Besides, there are probably more than a few people over the past century who have studied ball lightning their entire lives, and none of them have been as fortunate as you.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You misunderstand. I’ve been through far more than you have, and have a deeper understanding of science and human life. I regret nothing about these three decades of research, much less feel any pain about it. And, like you say, I’ve exhausted my efforts. It’s not a block for me.”

  So what was it, then? I thought about the many years since his wife died.

  As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “Zheng Min’s death was a blow, but I think you’ll understand that for people like us whose mind and body are occupied so completely that the obsession becomes a part of you, anything else in life will always come second.”

  “Then what could it be?” I asked in confusion.

  Again, he shook his head with a smile. “It’s difficult to admit.” He went on smoking. My thoughts were jumbled. Was he ashamed of something? Then, due to the common pursuit that made our minds think alike, I realized what it was. “I believe you once said that you’ve spent these thirty years on an unending search for ball lightning in the field.”

  He let out a long stream of smoke, and said, “That’s right. After Zheng Min died, my health declined and my legs got worse, and I didn’t get out as much. But I never interrupted my search, and, at least in the surrounding area, I’ve practically never let any thunderstorm slip by.”

  “Then…” I paused, realizing in that instant all of his pain.

  “Yes, you’ve guessed it. In thirty years, I’ve never seen ball lightning a second time.”

  Unlike other mysteries of nature, ball lightning was not particularly rare. Surveys showed that at least one percent of people claimed to have seen it. But its appearance was accidental and random, following no rules, and it was entirely possible to spend thirty years in an arduous search during thunderstorms and never come across it, with only the cruelty of fate to blame.

  He continued, “Long ago I read a Russian story that described a wealthy lord of a manor whose sole joy in life was drinking wine. Once, from a mysterious stranger, he bought a bottle, hauled up from an ancient shipwreck, that still contained a few drops of wine. Once he’d drunk that wine he was intoxicated with it, body and soul. The stranger told him that two bottles had been found in the wreck, but the whereabouts of the second bottle was unknown. At first the lord put no thought to this, but later the memory of that wine kept him up day and night, until at last he sold off the manor and all of his property and went off in search of the second bottle. Through untold hardships he wandered the earth, and grew old. Finally he found it, when he was now an old beggar on his deathbed. He drank the bottle, and then passed away happy.”

  “He was fortunate,” I said.

  “Zheng Min was fortunate, too, in a sense.”

  I nodded, and fell deep into thought.

  After a while, he said, “So about that pain—can you still maintain your detached attitude?”

  I stood up, went to the window, and looked out at the campus in the darkness. “No, Professor. I can’t be detached. What you feel is not just pain, but a kind of fear! If you’re trying to show me how evil this road of ours can be, this time you’ve done it.”

  Yes, he had done it. I could bear a lifetime of exhausted fruitlessness; I could bear abandoning everything in my life, living out my days alone; I could even sacrifice my life if necessary; but I could not stand it if I never had another glimpse of it. My first encounter determined the path for my entire life, and I could not stand not seeing it again. Other people might not understand, but could a sailor stand never seeing the sea again? Or a mountaineer never seeing a snowcap? Or a pilot never seeing the sky?

  “Perhaps you can show it to us again.”

  Staring blankly out the window, I said, “I don’t know, Professor Zhang.”

  “But this is my final wish in life,” Zhang Bin said, standing up. “I have to go. Have you scanned that photograph?”

  I recovered myself. “Oh, yes. I ought to have returned it to you before, but I broke the frame while taking it out and wanted to buy a new one, and I haven’t had time in the past few days.”

  “That’s not necessary. The old one’s okay.” He took the photo. “The place feels like it’s missing something.”

  I returned to the window and watched my advisor’s figure vanish into the darkness, his leg more hobbled than usual, his footsteps more labored.

  STRANGE PHENOMENA II

  When Zhang Bin left, I turned off the lights to go to bed, but couldn’t fall asleep, so when it happened, I’m certain I remained absolutely clearheaded.

  I heard a soft sigh.

  I couldn’t tell which direction it had come from; it seemed almost to fill the entire dark space of the dorm room. Alert, I lifed my head from the pillow.

  I heard another sigh, very quiet, but audible.

  It was a school holiday and the dormitory was practically empty. I sat up sharply and scanned the dark room, but all I saw were those boxes, which in the dark resembled a haphazard pile of stones. I flipped the switch, and as the fluorescent bulb was flickering to light, I saw a faint shadow on the boxes, white. It lasted only an instant before it vanished, so I couldn’t make out its shape. I can’t be certain it wasn’t an illusion, but as the shadow vanished I saw it move in the direction of the window leaving a trail behind it, obviously a stream of fleeting images, like an afterimage.

  I thought about that strand of my mother’s hair.

  With the light still on, I went back to bed, but it was even harder to fall asleep. It would be a long night, so I simply got up, opened one of the boxes, and went on reading Zhang Bin’s calculations. After I got through a dozen pages, a page caught my eye: half of the derivations on the page had been crossed out with an X written in ink a different color from the original manuscript. In the white space on the page, a simpler formula had been written, obviously in place of the part that had been crossed out. The formula and the X were written in identical ink. What attracted my attention was the formula’s handwriting, delicate and graceful, clearly distinct from Zhang Bin’s original. I took out the notebook of alternating burnt pages he had given me, carefully opened it, and compared the handwriting to the formula.

  It was an unbelievable outcome, but one that I had expected. Zhang Bin was a meticulous man, and each set of calculations was dated. The date on this portion was April 7, 1983, twelve years after his wife’s death.

  But this was Zheng Min’s handwriting.

  I looked closely at the simple formula, which applied to boundary conditions for low-dissipative-state plasma, and realized it replaced the cumbersome crossed-out derivations with a plug-in parameter obtained by a Mitsubishi Electric lab in 1985 while researching the use of plasma streams as a rotor replacement in high-efficiency generators. The project ultimately failed, but one of its by-products was a plasma parameter that had subsequently been widely adopted. But that was after 1985.

  At once I opened up the as-yet-unopened boxes and skimmed the other notebooks. I discovered five manuscript pages with edits in the same hand, and I would probably find more if I looked more thoroughly. In each of them, Zhang had done his calculations no earlier than the 1980s.

  I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, quiet enough to clearly hear the beating of my heart. My eyes fell on the laptop on the desk. I turned it on, and opened up the scanned photo of Zheng Min saved on the hard drive. I’d scanned it using the highest resolution available, and now I inspected it carefully, trying to hide from the lifelike gaze of the photo’s subject. There seemed to be something there, and so I hurriedly started up a photo editor. I had lots of them installe
d on this machine because I often had to process a large quantity of lightning photographs; the one I fired up this time could automatically convert black-and-white photos to color. In no time the software had completed the conversion, and although the color was somewhat distorted, it gave me what I wanted. People always look younger in black and white. In this photo, taken a year before Zheng Min was killed, the color revealed the truth that had been hidden by the monochrome: the Zheng Min portrayed in the photo was far older than the age she had been when it was taken.

  She wore a white lab coat. The left breast pocket contained a flat object. The pocket fabric was thin enough that it revealed the shape and some of the details of the object within. It caught my eye immediately, and so I cropped that part of the image and opened it in another image program to try and extract more detail. I was fairly adept at this, due to my frequent processing of fuzzy lightning photos, and I soon exposed the outline and details of the object.

  What I now saw clearly was a 3½-inch diskette.

  It was not until the ’80s that 5¼-inch disks became widely used in China, and 3½-inch disks were adopted even later than that. It should have been a roll of black punch tape in her pocket.

  I ripped out the computer’s power cord, but forgot that it was still powered by a battery, so I had to move the mouse with a trembling hand to shut it down. I closed the case immediately after I clicked the button. It felt like Zheng Min’s eyes were piercing the closed computer case to look at me, and the silence of the night clutched me in its giant icy hand.

  A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

  When I informed Gao Bo of my decision to follow him to the Lightning Institute in Beijing, he said, “Before you make your final decision, I need to make one thing clear: I know that your head is filled with ball lightning, and even though our starting points are different, I’m optimistic about the project too. But you ought to be clear that at the beginning, I can’t put a ton of the Institute’s resources into your project. Do you know why Zhang Bin failed? He buried himself in theory and couldn’t dig out! Still, you can’t blame him, given the limitations of his situation. If the past two years have given you the impression that I ignore experimentation, you’re wrong—I didn’t consider experiments for your PhD because they would have had too high a cost and would have been impossible for us to do well. Inaccurate or false results would have dragged down the theory, and in the end neither theory nor experiment would have amounted to anything. I recruited you so you can do ball lightning research—there’s no question about that—but you must acquire all the necessary experimental fundamentals before you can start in earnest. The three things we need now are money, money, and more money. You’ve got to work with me to get money, understand?”