He still remembered how he felt the first time he saw the Mount Siyun Astronomical Observatory thirty-four years ago. After his ambulance crossed the mountain ridge, Mount Siyun’s highest peak emerged in the distance. Its observatories’ spherical roofs reflected the golden light of the setting sun like pearls inlaid into the mountain peak.

At the time, he’d just graduated from medical school. A brain-surgery intern assisting the chief of surgery, he’d been rushed here to save a visiting research scholar from England who’d fallen on a hike. The scholar had injured his head too seriously to be moved. Once the ambulance arrived, they drilled a hole in the patient’s skull, then drained some blood out to reduce brain swelling. Once the patient had been stabilized enough to move, the ambulance took him to the hospital for surgery.

It was late at night by the time they could leave. Out of curiosity, while others carried the patient into the ambulance, he examined the several spherical observatories that surrounded him. How they were laid out seemed to imply some sort of hidden message, like a Stonehenge in the moonlight. Spurred on by some mystical force that he still didn’t understand even after a lifetime of contemplation, he walked to the nearest observatory, opened its door, then walked inside.

The lights inside were off except for numerous small signal lamps. He felt as though he’d walked from a moonlit starry sky to a moonless starry sky. The only moonlight was a sliver that penetrated the crack in the spherical roof. It fell on the giant astronomical telescope, partially sketching out its contours in silver lines. The telescope looked like a piece of abstract art in a town square at night.

He stepped silently to the bottom of the telescope. In the weak light, he saw a large pile of machinery. It was more complex than he’d imagined. He searched for an eyepiece. A soft voice came from the door:

“This is a solar telescope. It doesn’t have an eyepiece.”

A figure wearing white work clothes walked through the door, as though a feather had drifted in from the moonlight. The woman walked over to him, bringing a light breeze along with her.

“A traditional solar telescope casts an image onto a screen. Nowadays, we usually use a monitor…. Doctor, you seem to be very interested in this.”

He nodded. “An observatory is such a sublime and rarefied place. I like how it makes me feel.”

“Then why did you go into medicine? Oh, that was very rude of me.”

“Medicine isn’t just some trivial skill. Sometimes, it, too, is sublime, like my specialty of brain medicine, for example.”

“Oh? When you use a scalpel to open up the brain, you can see thoughts?” she said.