This was the first thought that entered Kang Ming’s mind. Something that had come up countless times in the nightmares of ball lightning researchers had come to pass in the real world.
Kang Ming shouted the command: “All strike teams, abort firing! Destroy your weapons!”
On each boat, a Dawnlight sergeant pressed a red button on the thunderball gun, then, together with the other crew members, shoved it into the ocean. Not long after, the sound of muffled explosions carried up from the depths, and the surface of the ocean roiled, rocking their boats. The superconducting batteries that powered the guns had been shorted out and exploded with a power equivalent to a depth charge. The thunderball guns were now in pieces underwater.
The streams of ball lightning from the fishing boats had been severed simultaneously. Now a large mass of ball lightning floated above the fleet, absent any targets, weaving a shining carpet in the air with their fiery tails. Their sound changed from a uniform whistle to a chaotic buzz or shrill moaning.
Kang Ming saw a flash from a gun on the destroyer, but only in his peripheral vision. When the shell struck the command ship, he was staring straight ahead at the sea, where the ball lightning that had fallen into the water continued to glow faintly, like a school of effervescent fish.
The sound of guns grew thick, and in the ocean on either side of the fleet, huge columns of water bearing pieces of the fishing boats rose and fell. When the firing stopped after three minutes, forty-two of the fifty fishing boats had been taken out. They were so small that most of them hadn’t even sunk, but had been blown to pieces by direct hits from the large guns. The eight remaining ships were locked in a circle of searchlights, as if taking a lonely curtain call at the close of this tragedy on the ocean stage.
The ball lightning released its energy as electromagnetic radiation, and soon went out, ionized air forming a fluorescent canopy in the air above the fleet. The radiation’s effect on the ocean covered it in a layer of thick white steam. Some long-lasting balls of lightning slowly floated away, their sound growing fainter and more ethereal, like lonely ghost lanterns carried by the wind.
How the enemy knew of ball lightning’s existence, and how it had built a system to defend against it, were unanswered questions. But there were some scattered clues: at the test target range in the south the previous year, ball lightning shot from the thunderball gun hadn’t entered a quantum state even in the absence of our observers, which meant that there was another observer present. It was known that the nuclear plant operation could lead to a leak, but it was deemed to be worth the risk. The enemy could hardly have learned the fundamental principles of ball lightning or the technical details of the weapon from observing, but they too had been studying that natural phenomenon for many years. They may even have conducted large-scale R&D, like Project 3141 in Siberia, and if so would not have found it difficult to guess the truth beneath those scattered intelligence reports. And the effect of magnetic fields on ball lightning had long been known to science, independent of the nature of ball lightning itself.
On the transport plane back to base, Lin Yun squatted silently in a corner holding her helmet, her slender body curled up into a ball, looking alone and helpless like a girl lost in the wilderness in the dead of winter. Ding Yi felt a sudden compassion for her, so he went over and sat down next to her with words of comfort:
“You know, our success has been pretty great. Through macro-electrons, we can view the most profound mysteries of matter on a macro scale, something that was once only possible by entering the microscopic world. Compared to this achievement, the military use of ball lightning is insignificant—”
“Professor Ding, do people burned up by ball lightning remain in a quantum state?” Lin Yun interrupted him with a mindless question.
“Yes. Why?”
“You once said that the teacher would come to attack me.”
“That was just random nonsense. Besides, you didn’t believe me, did you?”
Lin Yun rested her chin on the helmet lying on her knees, and looked straight ahead. “After you mentioned it, I slept with a gun with the safety off. I really was afraid, but I was too embarrassed to let anyone know.”
“I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“Do you think it’s really possible?”
“Theoretically… perhaps. But the probability is so low that it’s not going to happen in the real world.”
“But it is possible,” Lin Yun murmured. “And if the teacher can attack me, then I can attack the enemy carrier.”
“What?”
“Professor Ding, I can take another fishing boat close to the enemy fleet.”
“…and do what?”
“Incinerate myself with ball lightning. Wouldn’t that turn me into a quantum soldier?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. In a quantum state, I can sneak into the carrier, and the enemy will have no way to find me, since the moment they notice me, my quantum state will collapse, just like you said. There’s a large arsenal on board, and thousands of tons of fuel. So as long as I can find those, I’ll be able to easily destroy the carrier…. Oh, and I can find Lieutenant Colonel Kang Ming and the other Dawnlight personnel. We could become a quantum unit…”
“This loss has turned you into a child, I see.”
“I never was very old.”
“You should go rest. We still have two hours until Beijing. Get some sleep.”
“Is what I described possible?” Lin Yun turned to look at Ding Yi, with a look of entreaty in her eyes.
“Okay. Let me tell you what a quantum state really is. In a quantum state, you—ah, supposing you’ve already been incinerated by ball lightning—you are just a probability cloud. In that cloud, everything you do is indeterminate. You lack the free will to decide where you will appear. Your position in the probability cloud, and whether you will be alive or dead when you appear, is indeterminate, decided only when God rolls his dice. If you are burned up on the fishing boat, then the probability cloud for quantum-you will be centered on that boat. In the surrounding space, you have a very small probability of appearing in the carrier’s arsenal or fuel storage. You will most likely appear in the water, and if you’re in a live state at that time, you will very quickly drown. Then your quantum state will no longer include the probability of being alive; you will be dead in every probability. Taking a huge step back, even if you hit the probability jackpot and appear in some critical part of the enemy carrier, will you be alive then? How long can you stay there? An hour, or a tenth of a second? Also, the moment one enemy, or one of the enemy’s cameras, catches sight of you, you will immediately collapse into that pile of ash in the center of the probability cloud to await your next jackpot. And when that opportunity comes, the carrier will be eighteen thousand kilometers away and there may no longer be any war left on Earth…. Finally, you’ve forgotten one point: those Dawnlight soldiers died from artillery shells, not ball lightning. Before their sacrifice, the ball lightning weapons were destroyed and sent to the bottom of the sea, so the soldiers did not turn quantum…. Lin Yun, you’re like the little match girl, seeing all kinds of illusions. You really need to rest.”
Lin Yun abruptly flung aside her helmet, then leaned against Ding Yi’s shoulder and started crying as if heartbroken. She cried sorrowfully, her slender frame trembling in Ding Yi’s embrace, as if letting out all of the anguish in her life at once….
“You can imagine how I felt at the time,” Ding Yi said. “I thought I was the sort of person for whom all emotions apart from rational thought were nonessential, and that impression has been reinforced on several prior occasions. But now I know that something else in addition to rationality can occupy a person’s entire mind…. Lin Yun seemed to have shrunk down. The old unshakable, goal-oriented major was now a fragile, helpless little girl. Was that who she really was?”