Not long after the birth of the ball lightning weapon, Zhang Bin came to the base. He was in much weaker health, but he still stayed the entire day. In a trance, he watched the macro-electrons confined by the magnetic field, and watched as each was excited into ball lightning. He was thrilled, as if an entire lifespan was concentrated in that one day.
After meeting Ding Yi, he said excitedly, “I knew that someone like you would solve the riddle of ball lightning. You and my wife, Zheng Min, graduated from the same department. She was a genius like you. If she were still alive today, these discoveries wouldn’t have been yours to make.”
Before leaving, Zhang Bin said, “I know I don’t have much time left. My only wish now is to be cremated by ball lightning when I die.”
I wanted to say some words of comfort, but, realizing that he didn’t need any, I just nodded silently.
Observers
A ball lightning weapons force was established, only a company at first, under the leadership of an unflappable lieutenant colonel named Kang Ming. The force was code-named Dawnlight, a name Lin Yun and I came up with, since the first excitation of ball lightning had been an unforgettable moment, when it turned the surrounding wisps of clouds red like a miniature sunrise.
Dawnlight began intensive training immediately. The core of the training was live fire target practice. To get as close as possible to actual combat conditions, training was conducted outdoors, but it had to be carried out on overcast days to prevent satellite detection. For this reason, several target ranges were chosen in the rainy south, and exercises switched constantly among them.
Across those target ranges flew lines of ball lightning fired from thunderball guns, in lines or fanned out toward their target. The balls made noise as they flew, like a shrill trumpet, or a gale across the wilderness. The sound of the thunderball explosion was very peculiar, with no directionality, as if it came from all of space, or even from within your own body.
One day, we followed Dawnlight as it moved to a new target range. Ding Yi had come; but as he was in charge of theory, there was nothing much for him to do here.
“I came to prevent you from making an error, and to demonstrate something weird,” he said.
As the force was preparing for live firing, Ding Yi asked us, “Do you often engage in philosophical speculation?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Never,” Lin Yun said.
Ding Yi glanced at Lin Yun, and said, “Not surprising. You’re a woman.” When she glared back at him, he added, “It doesn’t matter. Today I’m going to force you to think philosophically.”
We looked around us. The target range was a damp forest clearing under an overcast sky. At the other end were temporary buildings and junked vehicles that served as targets. We couldn’t see anything that could be connected to philosophy.
Lieutenant Colonel Kang came over dressed in camos, and asked Ding Yi about his requests for the shooting.
“They’re simple. First, shut down all monitoring equipment at the site. Second, and most importantly, during the firing, close your eyes as soon as you aim at the target, and don’t open them until my command. This applies to everyone, including the commanders.”
“You… may I ask you why?”
“I will explain, Lieutenant Colonel. First I’d like to ask you a question. At this distance, what is the target hit rate of the ball lightning you fire?”
“Nearly one hundred percent, Professor. Since thunderballs aren’t affected by air movement, their paths are steady after acceleration.”
“Very good. Now begin. Remember, after aiming, everyone must close their eyes!”
When I heard the shout “Target set,” I closed my eyes. Soon afterward, I heard the crackle of the excitation arcs in the thunderball acceleration rails, which caused my flesh to crawl. Then the thunderballs started whistling. It felt like they were being fired at me, and my scalp tightened, but I fought to keep my eyes closed.
“Good. Now you all can open your eyes,” Ding Yi choked out through the ozone produced by the ball lightning explosions.
I opened my eyes and felt a momentary lightheadedness, and listened to the target reporter’s voice on the radio: “Shots fired: ten. Hits: one. Misses: nine.” Then in a softer voice, “What the hell!” A number of soldiers, I noticed, were scrambling to put out brush fires started by the errant ball lightning explosions.
“How did that happen?” Lieutenant Colonel Kang demanded of the shooter behind the thunderball weapon. “Didn’t you aim properly before you shut your eyes?”
“We did! The aim was dead-on!” the sergeant said.
“Then… inspect the weapon.”
“That’s not necessary. There’s nothing wrong with the weapon or the shooter,” Ding Yi said with a wave of his hand. “Don’t forget, ball lightning is an electron.”
“You mean it exhibits a quantum effect?” I asked.
Ding Yi nodded. “Indeed it does. In the presence of an observer, its state collapses to a determined value. This value is consistent with our experience in the macro-world, so it strikes the target. But without an observer, it exhibits a quantum state where nothing is determined, and its position can only be described as a probability. In such circumstances, all of this ball lightning exists in the form of an electron cloud—a probability cloud. And a strike on the target location is very improbable.”
“So you mean that the thunderballs can’t strike anything we can’t see?” the lieutenant colonel asked in disbelief.
“That’s right. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“It’s a little too… anti-materialistic,” Lin Yun said, shaking her head in confusion.
“See, now that’s philosophy. It may have been forced, but you’ve done it.” Ding Yi made a face at me, and then said to Lin Yun, “Don’t try to school me in philosophy.”
“Right. I’m not qualified. The world would be a terrible place if everyone shared your ultimate line of thinking,” Lin Yun said, shrugging.
“You surely know a little bit of the principles of quantum mechanics,” Ding Yi said.
“Yes, I do. More than just a little. But…”
“But you never expected to see it in the macro-world, right?”
The lieutenant colonel said, “Do you mean to say that if the thunderballs are to strike a target, we must watch them from start to finish?”
Ding Yi nodded, and said, “Or the enemy could watch them. But there must be an observer.”
“Let’s do it again, and see what a probability cloud looks like,” Lin Yun said excitedly.
Ding Yi shook his head. “That’s impossible. The quantum state is only exhibited in the absence of an observer. Once the observer appears, it collapses into our experienced reality. We will never be able to see a probability cloud.”
“Can’t we just put a camera onto a drone?” the lieutenant colonel said.
“A camera is an observer, too, and will likewise collapse the quantum state. This is why I had all of the monitoring equipment shut off.”
“But the cameras don’t have consciousness,” Lin Yun said.
“Now who’s being anti-materialistic? The observer doesn’t need consciousness.” Ding Yi grinned devilishly at her.
“This can’t be right,” I said, feeling like I’d found a flaw in his thinking. “If it’s as you say, then wouldn’t anything in the vicinity of ball lightning be an observer? Just like they leave an image of themselves in the camera’s photoreceptive system, ball lightning also leave ionized traces behind in the air. The light they give off causes a response in the surrounding plants, and their sound vibrates the sand…. The surrounding environment retains traces of them to some extent. There’s no difference between this and the images taken by the camera.”