Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu

  Lin Yun said, “I can imagine how excited you must have been.”

  Gemow shook his head. “Wrong again. To us, that ball lightning was just an ordinary electromagnetic phenomenon. Project 3141 was not intended to be so large-scale at first, so at the time, everyone from the senior leaders in the military and the Academy to the scientists and engineers on the project believed that a country that had sent a man into space merely needed to focus its research efforts and artificial ball lightning would only be a matter of time. In fact, three years without any success already came as a surprise to many people. With the appearance of that ball lightning we felt only a sense of relief. No one could have predicted the ensuing twenty-seven years and the ultimate failure that awaited us.

  “Our confidence at the time appeared well-grounded: unlike natural lightning, the conditions and parameters for the lightning we generated had all been recorded in detail. I can write them out perfectly even today. The lightning current was twelve thousand amps, voltage eighty million volts, discharge time 119 microseconds. Entirely ordinary lightning. At the time of discharge, airflow was 2.4 meters per second, microwaves at 550 watts of power, and an external magnetic field.... And loads of other parameters, from ordinary ones like air temperature and pressure, to the more particular, like ultra-high-speed imaging of the lightning path, and instrument recordings of the strength and shape of the electromagnetic field and radioactive indices. On and on, all of it recorded into reference material I recall as being at least as thick as War and Peace, and all of it top secret. It was right at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I remember Niernov holding up that stack of material and saying, ‘It’s no big deal if we recall the missiles. We’ve got something that will send a bigger shock into imperialism!’ We all thought that by repeatedly generating lightning according to those parameters, we could make ball lightning in quantity.”

  “You couldn’t?” I asked.

  “I said you were thinking too simplistically. Nobody expected what happened next: when the test was repeated using the same set of parameters, nothing happened. Niernov, extremely irritated, continued the experiments throughout the following year in strict accordance with the recorded parameters, producing lightning fifty thousand times, but there was never any trace of ball lightning.

  “I should explain that in the Soviet scientific community in those days, mechanistic determinism held sway over all other approaches. Researchers believed that the natural world was governed by the iron law of cause and effect. This mentality was a product of the political environment. Renegades like Gamow† were still rare. This was the case even in basic science and pure theory. For ball lightning, which was classified as an applied project at the time, people’s minds were even more constrained by traditional linear thinking. They were unable to accept the outcome of the tests, believing that if they successfully produced ball lightning once, they should be able to produce it in subsequent tests using the same parameters. And so Niernov arrived at the obvious conclusion about the fifty thousand tests: the data for the ball lightning test had been recorded incorrectly.

  “It wasn’t a big deal at first. Entirely solvable within the normal scope of work, and the most anyone would be penalized for would be for dereliction of duty. But Niernov made it political. His dictatorial style had made him lots of enemies, and now he was presented with an opportunity to get rid of dissent. In an alarmist report he submitted to the supreme leadership, he said that Project 3141 had been sabotaged by imperialist spies. And since Project 3141 was a key national weapons research program, his report received swift attention, and a large-scale investigation was launched.

  “The investigation team was made up largely of GRU ‡ personnel, with Niernov a key member. To explain the ensuing experimental failures, he came up with a theory inspired by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The protagonist of that book prepared a drug that could split a person’s personality, but when he made a second batch, the drug was ineffective. He assumed that the new ingredients he had bought were impure, but later he found out that the ingredients in his successful batch had been impure, and it was those impurities that made it a success. Niernov believed that in every test, the saboteur had caused the system to deviate from the preset parameters, but as luck would have it, one of the deviations ended up producing ball lightning. Of course, there was no record of what the deviation was, since only the preset parameters were recorded.

  “The explanation may have been a little unusual, but it was the only one the investigation team was able to accept at the time. The next issue was which parameter experienced a deviation. Tests had been performed using four systems: the lightning simulator, the external magnetic field, the microwave emitter, and aerodynamics, each of which was formed of mostly independent personnel. This made it unlikely that a saboteur would have been able to penetrate several at once, so at first, deviation in only one system was considered. The mostly unanimous thinking at the time was that the key parameter was the discharge value in the lightning simulation system. The person in charge of the design and operation of this system was none other than me.

  “This wasn’t the prewar Great Purge era, when unsupported speculation could convict a man. However, right at that time, when attending an academic conference in East Germany, my father defected to the West. He was a biologist, and a staunch geneticist, but genetics still rated as treachery in the USSR. At the time, Lysenko’s shadow still loomed large over the academic world, and even though it might not be as dangerous as before if you diverged from the mainstream, it at least meant the termination of your own academic career. My father’s viewpoint was suppressed and his spirit was mired in a deep depression. I imagine that was the main factor in his defection. For me, the consequences of his action were disastrous. The investigation focused itself on my person. They soon discovered that during an academic visit to Western Europe, I had had an affair with a British woman. Some of the members of my team, out of self-preservation and at Niernov’s behest, directed all manner of false accusations at me. Ultimately, I was convicted of espionage and received a twenty-year sentence.

  “But Niernov couldn’t handle the technology without me, so he advised the higher-ups to have me returned to the base for the sentence period to continue my former work. Back at work, I led a menial life. No personal freedom, and the scope of my activities was confined to the base. I even had to wear a different color uniform than everyone else. Worst of all was the loneliness. Outside of work, no one wanted to have contact with me, apart from one college graduate who had just been placed onto our team who treated me as an equal. She gave me lots of warmth, and later became my wife.

  “As a form of escape, I poured myself entirely into research. My hatred for Niernov is difficult to describe in words. Oddly, I basically agreed with his Jekyll and Hyde hypothesis, although I didn’t believe it was deliberate sabotage. I truly thought that a deviation in some unknown parameter was the cause of the experiment’s success. This frustrated me, because if I did end up discovering the one or several deviations, it would only make it harder for me to prove my innocence. But I gave this no thought, instead working as hard as I could, looking forward to producing ball lightning a second time.

  “The subsequent research path was quite clear: The deviation could not be too large without being detected by other instruments or even the naked eye at the time of discharge. Thus tests ought to be run on minor fluctuations around the recorded value for each parameter in succession. Taking into account the possibility of deviations in multiple parameters simultaneously gave a large combination set that required a huge number of tests. The process only increased my certainty that Niernov was framing me, since if he really believed I’d sabotaged the experiment, he naturally would have tried to find a way to get me to reveal which parameters I had altered. But he never even asked. The others, run ragged repeating experiments without a break, hated me. But at the time, everyone, me included, believed that producing ball lightning again was just a matter of time.<
br />
  “How things developed was another surprise for everyone: after all of the parametric deviations had been tested, there had still been no success, unexpectedly demonstrating my innocence. This was right as Brezhnev was taking office. He struck a far more cultivated image than that pig farmer who preceded him and was much more acceptable to the intelligentsia. My case was retried, and although in the end I was not cleared of guilt, I was nevertheless released and provided with the chance to return to teach at Moscow State University, a highly desirable opportunity for someone working at this remote base. But I stayed. Ball lightning had become part of my life, and I couldn’t leave it.

  “Now the one in trouble was Niernov. He had to accept responsibility for the failure of the research, and although he didn’t get it as bad as I had, his future in academia and politics was over. He struggled on a while in his Jekyll and Hyde hypothesis, only this time with the notion that the deviation had occurred in one of the other three systems. And so he launched a huge number of tests, far more this time than the last. Who knows how long they’d have lasted, if not for an unexpected interruption.

  “Base 3141 had the world’s largest lightning simulator, and while ball lightning research was being conducted, it was also being used for some other civilian and military research projects. One test of an anti-lightning project unexpectedly produced ball lightning. The parameters this time were far different from those in our first successful test. No overlap. No external factors like magnetic field and microwave radiation in this test. Just pure lightning.

  “And so we started another round of that infernal cycle, repeating their test using their parameters more than ten thousand times. But the outcome was the same as the first round: no ball lightning. There was no question of a saboteur altering the parameters this time, and even Niernov had to admit that his Jekyll and Hyde hypothesis was mistaken. He was transferred to a branch facility in Siberia, where he occupied a nonessential administrative role until his retirement.

  “By this point, Project 3141 had been running for fifteen years. After Niernov left, the base changed its experimental direction and began conducting tests using different sets of parameters, producing ball lightning nine more times during the following decade. For each success, at least seven thousand duplication attempts were made, and in some cases tens of thousands. Parameters were different each time ball lightning was produced, diverging quite widely in most cases.

  “In the mid-eighties, spurred on by America’s Star Wars program, the Soviet Union increased its own investment in high technology and new-concept weapons, including the study of ball lightning. The base was dramatically enlarged and tests multiplied, with the aim of discovering through sheer quantity of tests a rule governing the conditions for ball lightning production. In the final five years, ball lightning was produced a total of sixteen times, but as before, we were unable to discover any rule for its production.”

  Gemow finished his story, led us to the platform, and shone his flashlight on it. “I made this into a memorial. When I’m tormented by memories of the past, I come here and make inscriptions on it.”

  I looked at the steps. In the flashlight circles I could see lots of lines, like a pack of slithering snakes.

  “In three decades of experiments, ball lightning was produced a total of twenty-seven times. These lines sketch the main parameters for those tests. This line is the lightning’s current radiation value. This line, the strength of the external magnetic field...”

  I looked closely at the lines, each made up of twenty-seven points. They looked like segments of white noise, or the painful spasms of some dying creature. There was no order at all.

  We followed Gemow to another side of the platform, which was covered in carved text. “These are the people who sacrificed themselves to Project 3141 over the course of three decades, and who lost their lives to the horrible working conditions. This is my wife, who died after long exposure to discharge radiation gave her a peculiar illness marked by skin ulcers. She died in terrible agony. A fair number of these people died of that condition. This is my son. He was killed by the final ball lightning the base produced, one of three people killed by the twenty-seven times ball lightning was produced here. The stuff can penetrate anything. No one can predict where or when it will release its energy. But we didn’t think that conducting these experiments was anything dangerous. Since the chances of producing it were so low, people gradually dropped their guard. And that’s when ball lightning would appear, causing a disaster. The final time it appeared, everyone at the test site was unharmed, but it passed through solid rock and incinerated my son in the central control room. He was a computer engineer at the base.”

  Gemow switched off his flashlight and turned back toward the vast darkness in the cavern. He gave a long sigh. “When I entered the control center, it looked as calm as ever. Under the soft glow of the overhead lights, everything seemed clean and bright. All of the computer equipment was quiet and operating normally. Except, in the middle of a white anti-static floor pad, stood the remains of my son, burned almost entirely to ash, as if he was an apparition projected there from some other place.... Right then I surrendered. After thirty years of struggling against this natural or supernatural force, I was completely beaten. My life ended at that moment. What came after was just existence.”

  *

  When we returned to the surface, the snow had stopped. The setting sun was visible over the crest of the forest in the west, painting the snowscape blood red. On heavy feet I trudged back to the plane, feeling that my life was over.

  Back at Gemow’s place, the three of us drank through the night. The fierce Siberian wind called outside the window as volume after volume of Perestroika turned to ash in the stove. Ball lightning, infinite in number, circled me on the walls and ceiling, revolving faster and faster, as if I was caught in the center of a vortex of white balls of light.

  Gemow slurred, “Children, find something else to do. There are lots of interesting things in the world, but you only live once. Don’t waste it on an illusion.”

  When I went to sleep later on a pile of books, I dreamed I was back on the night of my fourteenth birthday, in that small room during the thunderstorm, sitting alone before the birthday cake and lit candles. No father, no mother, and no ball lightning. My dreams of them had ended.

  The next morning, Gemow took us straight to the airport. Before he left, Lin Yun said, “I know that you’ve told us lots of things you shouldn’t have. But please rest assured: You have our word that we won’t divulge any of it—”

  Gemow cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, Major. The reason I invited you was so you would tell it to the world. I want people to know that in that tragic, romantic era a group of Communist Youth League members went deep into the dense Siberian forest to chase a ghost, and for this sacrificed their lives.”

  We embraced tightly, tears on our faces.

  *

  After takeoff, I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes in exhaustion, my mind a total blank. A passenger next to me gave me a poke and asked, “Chinese?” I nodded, and he pointed to the screen in front of my seat, as if it was weird for a Chinese person not to be watching TV. The news was on. The situation between China and its adversaries was getting tense, and the clouds of war were thickening. I was tired, and my numb heart couldn’t care for anything, not even war. I turned toward Lin Yun, who was watching the screen intently. I envied her: ball lightning was just one part of one stage of her life, so losing it would not be a mortal blow. Soon I fell asleep, and when I awoke the plane was about to land.

  The spring wind in Beijing that evening was heady and warm, and for the time being the global situation cast no shadow. The snow and ice of Siberia already seemed infinitely far off, like a world that only existed in a dream.

  On second thought, my life up till then had been a dream that I was now waking up from.

  The streetlights on Chang’an Avenue had just turned on. Lin Yun and I looked at ea
ch other without speaking. We were from vastly different worlds, following different roads. It was ball lightning that had brought us together, but now that bond no longer existed. Zhang Bin, Zheng Min, Gemow... so many people had been dismembered on that altar that adding me would have little significance. The flame of hope in my heart had already extinguished, but I felt cold water pour onto it, leaving nothing but submerged ash. Farewell, my beautiful major.

  “Don’t give up,” she said, looking at me.

  “Lin Yun, I’m just an ordinary person.”

  “So am I. But don’t give up.”

  “Goodbye.” I held out my hand. Under the streetlights I saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

  Callously I released her soft, warm hand, then turned and walked off with brisk steps. I did not look back.

  * Plans for the Sanmenxia Dam, a gravity dam on the Yellow River in Henan Province near the border with Shanxi Province, were drawn up in the mid-1950s with the help of Soviet engineers. Construction lasted from 1957 to 1960, and the reservoir began to silt up immediately afterward, causing flooding on the Wei River that required decades of renovation work to control.

  † George Gamow (1904–1968), theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He defected in 1933 and ended up in the United States.

  ‡ “Main Intelligence Directorate,” the foreign military intelligence agency under the General Staff of the Soviet Army.

  Part 2

  Lighthouse Inspiration

  I strove to adapt to my new life. I started playing online games, going to ball games, and playing basketball, or playing cards late into the night. I returned all my specialist books to the library, and checked out a pile of DVDs. I started playing the stock market, and thought about getting a puppy. I maintained the booze habit I picked up in Siberia, sometimes alone, other times with the growing number of friends of all sorts I was now making.... I even thought of finding a girlfriend and starting a family, although I hadn’t found a candidate yet. I no longer had to stare blankly at a pile of differential equations until two in the morning, or tend a computer for ten-plus hours at a stretch, waiting for what was certain to be a disappointing outcome. Where time had once been infinitely precious to me, now I couldn’t spend it all. For the first time I knew what it meant to relax and take it easy. For the first time I saw that life was full of richness. For the first time I had the realization that everyone I had looked down on and pitied in the past had it better than me. What they were living was the most reasonable of lives.