Hold Up the Sky

SEA OF DREAMS

FIRST HALF

The Low-Temperature Artist

It was the Ice and Snow Arts Festival that lured the low-temperature artist here. The idea was absurd, but once the oceans had dried, this was how Yan Dong always thought of it. No matter how many years passed by, the scene when the low-temperature artist arrived remained clear in her mind.

At the time, Yan Dong was standing in front of her own ice sculpture, which she’d just completed. Exquisitely carved ice sculptures surrounded her. In the distance, lofty ice structures towered over a snowfield. These sparkling and translucent skyscrapers and castles were steeped in the winter sun. They were short-lived works of art. Soon, this glittering world would become a pool of clear water in the spring breeze. People were sad to see them melt but the process embodied many of life’s ineffable mysteries. This, perhaps, was the real reason why Yan Dong clung dearly to the ice and snow arts.

Yan Dong tore her gaze away from her own work, determined not to look at it again before the judges named the winners. She sighed, then glanced at the sky. It was at this moment that she saw the low-temperature artist for the first time.

Initially, she thought it was a plane dragging a white vapor trail behind it, but the flying object was much faster than a plane. It swept a great arc through the air. The vapor trail, like a giant piece of chalk, drew a hook in the blue sky. The flying object suddenly stopped high in the air right above Yan Dong. The vapor trail gradually disappeared from its tail to its head, as though the flying object were inhaling it back in.

Yan Dong studied the bit of the vapor trail that was the last to disappear. It was flickering oddly, and she decided it had to be from something reflecting the sunlight. She then saw what that it was—a small, ash-gray spheroid. Then quickly realized that the spheroid wasn’t small—it looked small in the distance, but was now expanding rapidly. The spheroid was falling right toward her, it seemed, and from an incredibly high altitude. When the people around her realized, they fled in all directions. Yan Dong also ducked her head and ran, darting in and around the ice sculptures.

An enormous shadow hung over the area, and for a moment, Yan Dong’s blood seemed to freeze. The expected impact never came, though. The artists and judges and festival spectators stopped running. They gazed upward, dumbstruck. She looked up, too. The massive gray spheroid floated a hundred meters over their heads. It wasn’t wholly spheroid, as if the vapor expelled during its high-speed flight had warped its shape. The half in the direction of its flight was smooth, glossy, and round. The other half sprouted a large sheaf of hair, making it look like a comet whose tail had been trimmed. It was massive, well over one hundred meters in diameter, a mountain suspended in midair. Its presence felt oppressive to everyone beneath it.

After the spheroid halted, the air that had driven it charged the ground, sending up a rapidly expanding ring of dirt and snow. It’s said that when people touched something they didn’t expect to be as cold as an ice cube, it’d feel so hot that they’d shout as their hand recoiled. In the instant that the mass of air fell on her, that’s how Yan Dong felt. Even someone from the bitterly cold Northeast would have felt the same way. Fortunately, the air diffused quickly, or else everyone on the ground would have frozen stiff. Even so, practically everyone with exposed skin suffered some frostbite.

Yan Dong’s face was numb from the sudden cold. She looked up, transfixed by the spheroid’s surface. It was made of a translucent ash-gray substance she recognized intimately: ice. This object suspended in the air was a giant ball of ice.

Once the air settled, large snowflakes were fluttering around the floating mountain of ice. An oddly pure white against the blue sky, they glittered in the sunlight. However, these snowflakes were only visible within a certain distance around the spheroid. When they floated farther away, they dissolved. They formed a snow ring with the spheroid as its center, as though the spheroid were a streetlamp lighting the snowflakes around it on a cold night.

“I am a low-temperature artist!” a clear, sharp voice emitted from the ball of ice. “I am a low-temperature artist!”

“This ball of ice is you?” Yan Dong shouted back.

“You can’t see my true form. The ball of ice you see is formed by my freeze field from the moisture in the air,” the low-temperature artist replied.

“What about those snowflakes?”

“They are crystals of the oxygen and nitrogen in the air. In addition, there’s dry ice formed from the carbon dioxide.”

“Wow. Your freeze field is so powerful!”

“Of course. It’s like countless tiny hands holding countless tiny hearts tight. It forces all the molecules and atoms within its range to stop moving.”

“It can also lift this gigantic ball of ice into the air?”

“That’s a different kind of field, the antigravity field. The ice-sculpting tools you all use are so fascinating. You have small shovels and small chisels of every shape. Not to mention watering cans and blowtorches. Fascinating! To make low-temperature works of art, I also have a set of tiny tools. They are various types of force fields. Not as many tools as you have, but they work extremely well.”

“You create ice sculptures, too?”

“Of course. I’m a low-temperature artist. Your world is extremely suitable for the ice- and snow-molding arts. I was shocked to discover they’ve long existed in this world. I’m thrilled to say that we’re colleagues.”

“Where do you come from?” the ice sculptor next to Yan Dong asked.

“I come from a faraway place, a world you have no way to understand. That world is not nearly as interesting as yours. Originally, I focused solely on the art. I didn’t interact with other worlds. However, seeing exhibitions like this one, seeing so many colleagues, I found the desire to interact. But, frankly, very few of the low-temperature works below me deserve to be called works of art.”

“Why?” someone asked.

“Excessively realistic, too reliant on form and detail. Besides space, there’s nothing in the universe. The actual world is just a big pile of curved spaces. Once you understand this, you’ll see how risible these works are. However, hm, this piece moves me a little.”

Just as the voice faded away, a delicate thread extended from the snowflakes around the ball of ice, as if it flowed down following an invisible funnel. The snowflake thread stretched from midair to the top of Yan Dong’s ice sculpture before dissolving. Yan Dong stood on her tiptoes, and tentatively stretched a gloved hand toward the snowflake thread. As she neared it, her fingers felt that burning sensation again. She jerked her hand back, but it was already painfully cold inside the glove.

“Are you pointing to my work?” Yan Dong rubbed her frozen hand with the other. “I, I didn’t use traditional methods. That is, carve it from ready-made blocks of ice. Instead, I built a structure composed of several large membranes. For a long time, steam produced from boiling water rose from the bottom of the structure. The steam froze to the membrane, forming a complex crystal. Once the crystal grew thick enough, I got rid of the membrane and the result is what you see here.”

“Very good. So interesting. It so expresses the beauty of the cold. The inspiration for this work comes from…”

“Windowpanes! I don’t know whether you will be able to understand my description: When you wake during a hard winter’s night just before sunrise, your bleary gaze falls on the windowpane filled with crystals. They reflect the dark blue first light of early dawn, as though they were something you dreamed up overnight….”

“Yes, yes, I understand!” The snowflakes around the low-temperature artist danced in a lively pattern. “I have been inspired. I want to create! I must create!”

“The Songhua River is that way. You can select a block of ice, or…”

“What? Your form of art is as pitiable as bacteria. Do you think my form of low-temperature art is anything like that? This place doesn’t have the sort of ice I need.”

The ice sculptors on the ground looked bewildered at the interstellar low-temperature artist. Yan Dong said, blankly, “Then, you want to go…”

“I want to go to the ocean!”

Collecting Ice

An immense fleet of airplanes flew at an altitude of five kilometers along the coastline. This was the most motley collection of airplanes in history. It was composed of all types, ranging from Boeing jumbo jets to mosquito-like light aircraft. Every major press service in the world had dispatched news planes. In addition, research organizations and governments had dispatched observation planes. This chaotic air armada trailed closely behind a short wake of thick white vapor, like a flock of sheep chasing after its shepherd. The wake was left by the low-temperature artist. It constantly urged the planes behind it to fly faster. To wait for them, it had to endure a rate of flight slower than crawling. (For someone who jumped through space-time at will, light speed was already crawling.) The whole way, it grumbled that this pace would kill its inspiration.

In the airplanes behind it, reporters rattled away, asking endless questions over the radio. The low-temperature artist had no desire to answer any of them. It was only interested in talking to Yan Dong, sitting in the Harbin Y-12 that China Central Television had rented. As a result, the reporters grew quiet. They listened carefully to the conversation between the two artists.

“Is your home within the Milky Way?” Yan Dong asked. The Harbin Y-12 was the plane closest to the low-temperature artist. She could see the flying ball of ice intermittently through the white vapor. This wake trailing it was formed from oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere condensing in the ultralow temperatures around the ice ball. Sometimes, the plane would accidentally brush the wake’s billows of white mist. A thick coat of frost would immediately coat the plane’s windows.

“My home isn’t part of any galaxy. It sits in the vast and empty void between galaxies.”

“Your planet must be extremely cold.”

“We don’t have a planet. The low-temperature civilization developed in a cloud of dark matter. That realm is indeed extremely cold. With difficulty, life snatched a little heat from the near-absolute-zero environment. It sucked in every thread of radiation that came from distant stars. Once the low-temperature civilization learned how to leave, we couldn’t wait to go to the closest warm planet in the Milky Way. On this world, we had to maintain a low-temperature environment to live, so we became that warm planet’s low-temperature artists.”

“The low-temperature art you’re talking about is sculpting ice and snow?”

“Oh, no. No. Using a temperature far lower than a world’s mean temperature to affect the world so as to produce artistic effects, this is all part of the low-temperature art. Sculpting ice and snow is just the low-temperature art that suits this world. The temperature of ice and snow is what this world considers a low temperature. For a dark-matter world, that would be a high temperature. For a stellar world, lava would be considered low-temperature material.”

“We seem to overlap in what art we consider beautiful.”

“That’s not unusual. So-called warmth is just a brief effect of an equally brief spasm produced after the universe was born. It’s gone in an instant like light after sunset. Energy dissipates. Only the cold is eternal. The beauty of the cold is the only enduring beauty.”

“So you’re saying the final fate of the universe is heat death?!” Yan Dong heard someone ask over her earpiece. Later, she learned the speaker was a theoretical physicist sitting in one of the planes following behind.

“No digressions. We will discuss only art,” the low-temperature artist scolded.

“The ocean is below us!” Yan Dong happened to glance out the porthole. The crooked coastline passed below.

“Further ahead, we’ll reach the deepest part of the ocean. That will be the most convenient place to collect ice.”

“Where will there be ice?” Yan Dong asked, uncomprehending, as she looked at the vast, blue ocean.

“Wherever a low-temperature artist goes, there will be ice.”

The low-temperature artist flew for another hour. Yan Dong stared out the window as they traveled. The view had long become a boundless surface of water. At that moment, the plane suddenly pulled up. She nearly blacked out from acceleration.

“We almost hit it!” the pilot shouted.

The low-temperature artist had stopped suddenly. Taken by surprise, the planes behind it scrambled to change direction.

“Damn it! The law of inertia doesn’t apply to the fucker. Its speed seemed to drop to zero in an instant. By all rights, this sort of deceleration should have cracked the ball of ice into pieces,” the pilot said to Yan Dong.

As he spoke, he steered the plane around. The other pilots did the same. The ball of ice, rotating majestically, lingered in midair. It produced oxygen and nitrogen snowflakes, but due to strong wind at the altitude, the snowflakes were all blown away. They seemed like white hair whirling in the wind around the ball of ice.

“I am about to create!” the low-temperature artist said. Without waiting for Yan Dong to respond, it suddenly dropped straight down as if the giant invisible hand that had held it suddenly let it go. It free-fell faster and faster until it disappeared into the blue backdrop that was the ocean, leaving only a faint thread of atoms stretching down from midair. A ring of white spray shot up from the sea surface. When it fell, a wave spread out in a circle on the water.

“This alien threw itself into the ocean and committed suicide,” the pilot said to Yan Dong.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Yan Dong stretched out her Northeastern accent and glared at the pilot. “Fly a little lower. The ball of ice will float back up any moment now.”

But the ball of ice didn’t float back up. In its place, a white dot appeared on the ocean. It quickly expanded into a disk. The plane descended and Yan Dong could observe in detail.

The white disk was actually a white fog that covered the ocean. Soon, between its quick expansion and the airplane’s continued descent, the only ocean she could see oozed a white fog from its surface. A noise from the sea covered the roaring of the plane’s engine. It sounded both like rolling thunder and the cracking of the plains and mountains.

The airplane hovered close to sea level. Yan Dong peered at the surface of the ocean below the fog. The light the ocean reflected was mild, not like moments ago when glints of gold had slashed Yan Dong’s eyes. The ocean grew deeper in color. Its rough waves grew level and smooth. What shocked her, though, was the next discovery: The waves became solid and motionless.

“Good heavens. The ocean froze!”

“Are you crazy?” The pilot turned his head to look at Yan Dong.

“See for yourself…. Hey! Why are you still descending? Do you want to land on the ice?!”

The pilot yanked the control stick. Once again, the world in front of Yan Dong grew black. She heard the pilot say, “Ah, no, fuck, how strange…” The pilot looked as though he were sleepwalking. “I wasn’t descending. The ocean, no, the ice is rising by itself!”

At that moment, Yan Dong heard the low-temperature artist’s voice: “Get your flying machine out of the way. Don’t block the path of the rising ice. If there weren’t a colleague in the flying machine, I would simply crash into you. I can’t stand disruptions to my inspiration while I’m creating. Fly west, fly west, fly west. That direction is closer to the edge.”

“Edge? The edge of what?” Yan Dong asked.

“The cube of ice I’m taking!”

Planes took off like a flock of startled birds, climbing into the sky and heading in the direction the low-temperature artist indicated. Below, because the white fog created by the temperature drop had dissipated, the dark blue ice field stretched to the horizon. Even though the plane was climbing, the ice field climbed even faster. As a result, the distance between the planes and the ice field continued to shrink.

“The Earth is chasing us!” the pilot screamed.

The plane now flew pressed against the ice field. Frozen dark blue waves roiled past the plane’s wings.

The pilot yelled, “We have no choice but to land on the ice field. My god, climbing and landing at the same time. That’s just too strange.”

Just at that moment, the Harbin Y-12 reached the end of the ice. A straight edge swept past the fuselage. Below them, liquid sea reemerged, rippling and shimmering. It was like what a fighter jet saw the instant it leapt off the deck of an aircraft carrier, except the “aircraft carrier” was several kilometers tall.

Yan Dong snapped her head around. Behind them, an immense, dark blue cliff could be seen. The bottom of the massive block of ice had cleared the ocean.

As the chunk of ice continued to rise, Yan Dong finally understood what the low-temperature artist had meant: This was literally a giant block of ice. The dark blue cube occupied two-thirds of the sky. Afterward, radar observation indicated that the block of ice was sixty kilometers long, twenty kilometers wide, and five kilometers tall, a thin and flat cuboid. Its flat surface reflected the sunlight, like streaks of eye-piercing lightning high in the sky.

The giant block of ice kept rising, casting an unimaginably large shadow onto the sea. And when it shifted, it revealed the most terrifying sight since the dawn of history.

The planes were flying over a long, narrow basin, the empty space in the ocean that was left once the giant block of ice was removed. On each side was a mountain of seawater five kilometers high. Hundred-meter-high waves surged at the bottom of these liquid cliffs. At the top, the cliffs were collapsing, advancing as they did. Their surface rippled, but they remained perpendicular to the seafloor. As the seawater cliffs advanced, the basin shrank.

This was the reverse of Moses parting the Red Sea.

What startled Yan Dong the most was how slow the entire process seemed. This was, she assumed, due to the scale. She’d seen the Huangguoshu waterfalls. The water had seemed to fall slowly there, too. And these cliffs of seawater before her were magnitudes larger than those waterfalls. Watching them felt like an endless moment of unparalleled wonder.

The shadow cast by the block of ice had completely disappeared. Yan Dong looked up. The block of ice was now just the size of two full moons.

As the two seawater cliffs advanced, the basin shrank into a canyon. Then the two seawater cliffs, tens of kilometers long, five thousand meters high, crashed into each other. An incredible roar echoed between the sea and sky. The space in the ocean the ice block left was gone.

“We aren’t dreaming, are we?” Yan Dong said to herself.

“If this were a dream, everything would be fine. Look!”

The pilot pointed below. Where the two cliffs had crashed into each other, the sea hadn’t yet settled. Two waves as long as those cliffs rose, as if they were the reincarnation of those two seawater cliffs on the sea’s surface. They parted, heading in opposite directions. From high above, the waves weren’t that impressive, but careful measurements showed they were over two hundred meters tall. Viewed from up close, they’d seem like two moving mountain ranges.

“Tidal waves?” Yan Dong asked.

“Yes. Could be the largest ever. The coast is in for a disaster.”

Yan Dong looked up. She could no longer see the frozen block in the blue sky. According to radar, it had become an ice satellite of Earth.

For the rest of the day, the low-temperature artist removed, in the same way, hundreds of blocks of ice of the same size from the Pacific Ocean. It sent them into orbit around the Earth.

By nightfall, a cluster of twinkling points could be seen flying across the sky every couple of hours. You could distinguish them from the usual stars because, on careful inspection, someone could make out the shape of each point. They were each a small cuboid. They all, in their own orientations, spun on their own axes. As a result, they reflected the sunlight and twinkled at different rates.

People thought for a long time, but were never quite able to adequately describe these small objects in space. Finally, a reporter came up with an analogy that got some traction.

“They’re like a handful of crystalline dominoes scattered by a space giant.”

A Dialogue Between Two Artists

“We ought to have a chat,” Yan Dong said.

“I asked you to come just to do that, but only about art,” the low-temperature artist said.

Yan Dong stood on a giant block of ice suspended five thousand meters in the air. The low-temperature artist had invited her here. The helicopter that had brought her had landed and now waited to the side. Its rotors were still spinning, ready to take off at any moment.

Ice fields stretched to the horizon on all sides. The ice surface reflected the dazzling sunlight. The layer of blue ice below her seemed bottomless. At this altitude, the sky was clear and boundless. The wind blew stiffly.

This was one of the five thousand giant blocks of ice the low-temperature artist had taken from the oceans. Over the past five days, it had taken, on average, one thousand blocks a day from the oceans and sent them into orbit. All across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, giant blocks of ice were being frozen and then carried into the air to become one of an increasing number of glittering “space dominoes.” Tidal waves assaulted every major city along the world’s coasts. Over time, though, these disasters became less frequent. The reason was simple: The sea level had dropped.

Earth’s oceans had become blocks of ice revolving around it.

Yan Dong stamped her feet on the hard ice surface. “Such a large block of ice, how did you freeze it in an instant? How did you do it in one piece without it cracking? What force are you using to send it into orbit? All of this is beyond our understanding and imagination.”

The low-temperature artist said, “This is nothing. In the course of creation, we’ve often destroyed stars! Didn’t we agree to discuss only art? I, creating art in this way, you, using small knives and shovels to carve ice sculptures, from the view from the perspective of art, aren’t all that different.”

“When those ice blocks orbiting in space are exposed to intense sunlight, why don’t they melt?”

“I covered every ice block with a layer of extremely thin, transparent, light-filtering membrane. It only allows cold light, whose frequencies don’t generate heat, to get into the block of ice. The frequencies that do generate heat are all reflected. As a result, the block of ice doesn’t melt. This is the last time I’ll answer this sort of question. I didn’t stop work to discuss these trivial things. From now on, we’ll discuss only art, or else you might as well leave. We’ll no longer be colleagues and friends.”

“In that case, how much ice do you ultimately plan to take from the oceans? This is surely relevant to the creation of art!”

“Of course, I’ll only take as much as there is. I’ve talked to you before about my design. I’d like to realize it perfectly. Initially, I planned to take ice from Jupiter’s satellites if it had turned out that Earth’s oceans aren’t enough, but it seems there’s enough to make do.”

The wind mussed Yan Dong’s hair. She smoothed it back into place. The cold at this altitude made her shiver. “Is art important to you?”

“It’s everything.”

“But… there are other things in life. For example, we still need to work to survive. I’m an engineer at the Changchun Institute of Optics. I can only make art in my spare time.”

The low-temperature artist’s voice rumbled from the depths of the ice. The vibrating ice surface tickled Yan Dong’s feet. “Survival. Ha! It’s just the diaper of a civilization’s infancy that needs to be changed. Later, that’s as easy as breathing. You’ll forget there ever was a time when it took effort to survive.”

“What about societal and political matters?”

“The existence of individuals is also a troublesome part of infant civilizations. Later, individuals melt into the whole. There’s no society or politics as such.”

“What about science? There must be science, right? Doesn’t a civilization need to understand the universe?”

“That is also a course of study infant civilizations take. Once exploration has carried out to the proper extent, everything down to the slightest will be revealed. You will discover that the universe is so simple, even science is unnecessary.”

“So that just leaves art?”

“Yes. Art is the only reason for a civilization to exist.”

“But we have other reasons. We want to survive. The several billion people on this planet below us and even more of other species want to survive. You want to dry our oceans, to make this living planet a doomed desert, to make us all die of thirst.”

A wave of laughter propagated from the depths of the ice. Again, it tickled Yan Dong’s feet.

“Colleague, look, once the violent surge of creative inspiration had passed, I talked to you about art. But, every time, you gossip with me about trivialities. It disappoints me greatly. You ought to be ashamed. Go. I’m going to work.”

Yan Dong finally lost her patience. “Fuck your ancestors!” she shouted, then continued to swear in a Northeastern dialect of Chinese.

“Are those obscenities?” the low-temperature artist asked placidly. “Our species is one where the same body matures as it evolves. No ancestors. As for treating your colleague like this…” It laughed. “I understand. You’re jealous of me. You don’t have my ability. You can only make art at the level of bacteria.”

“But, you just said that our art requires different tools but there’s no essential difference.”

“I’ve just now changed my perspective. At first, I thought I’d run into a real artist, but, as it turns out, you’re a mediocre, pitiful creature who chatters on about the oceans drying, ecological collapse, and other inconsequential things that have nothing to do with art. Too trivial, too trivial, I tell you. Artists cannot be like this.”

“Fuck your ancestors anyway.”

“Yes, well. I’m working. Go.”

For a moment, Yan Dong felt heavy. She fell ass-first onto the slick ice as a gust of wind swept down from above. The ice block was rising again. She scrambled into the helicopter, which, with difficulty, took off from the nearest edge of the block of ice, nearly crashing in the tornado produced as the block of ice rose.

Communication between humanity and the low-temperature artist had failed.

Sea of Dreams

Yan Dong stood in a white world. The ground below her feet and the surrounding mountains were covered in a silvery white cloak. The mountains were steep and treacherous. She felt as though she were in the snow-covered Himalayas. But in fact, it was the opposite; she was at the lowest place on Earth. The Marianas Trench. Once the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. The white material that covered everything was not snow but the minerals that had once made the water salty. After the seawater froze, these minerals separated out and were deposited on the seafloor. At the thickest, these deposits were as much as one hundred meters deep.

In the past two hundred days, the oceans of the Earth were exhausted by the low-temperature artist. Even the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica were completely pillaged.

Now, the low-temperature artist invited Yan Dong to participate in its work’s final rite of completion.

In the ravine ahead lay a surface of blue water. The blue was pure and deep. It seemed all the more touching among so many snow-white mountain peaks. This was the last ocean on Earth. It was about the area of Dianchi Lake in Yunnan. Its great waves had long ceased. Only gentle ripples swayed on the water, as though it were a secluded lake deep in the mountains. Three rivers converged into this final ocean. These were great rivers that had survived by luck, trudging through the vast, dehydrated seafloor. They were the longest rivers on Earth. By the time they’d arrived here, they’d become slender rivulets.

Yan Dong walked to the oceanfront. Standing on the white beach, she dipped her hand into the lightly rippling sea. Because the water was so saturated with salt, its waves seemed sluggish. A gentle breeze blew Yan Dong’s hand dry, leaving a layer of white salt.

The sharp sound that Yan Dong knew so well pierced the air. It tore through the air whenever the low-temperature artist slid toward the ground. Yan Dong spotted it in the sky as it approached.

The low-temperature artist didn’t greet Yan Dong. The ball of ice fell into the middle of this last ocean, causing a tall column of water to spout. Afterward, once again, a familiar scene emerged: A disk of white fog oozed out from the point where the low-temperature artist hit the water. Rapidly, the white fog covered the entire ocean. The water quickly froze with a loud cracking sound. Once again, the fog dissipating revealed a frozen ocean surface. Unlike before, this time, the entire body of water was frozen. There wasn’t a drop of liquid water left. The ocean surface also didn’t have frozen waves. It was as smooth as a mirror. Throughout the freezing process, Yan Dong felt a cold draft on her face.

The now-frozen final ocean was lifted off the ground. At first, it was lifted only several careful centimeters off the ground. A long black fissure emerged from the edge of the ice field between the ice and white salt beach. Air, forming a strong wind low to the ground, rushed into the long fissure, filling the newly created space. It blew the salt around, so that it now buried Yan Dong’s feet. The rate the lake was rising at increased. In the blink of an eye, the final ocean was in midair. So much volume rising so quickly produced violent, chaotic winds. A gust swirled up the salt into a white column in the ravine. Yan Dong spit out the salt that flew into her mouth. It wasn’t salty like she’d imagined. It tasted bitter in a way that was hard to express, like the reality that humanity was up against.

The final ocean wasn’t a cuboid. Its bottom was an exact impression of the contours of the seafloor. Yan Dong watched it rise until it became a small point of light that dissolved into the mighty ring of ice.

The ring of ice was about as wide as the Milky Way in the sky. Unlike the rings of Uranus and Neptune, the surface of the ring of ice was neither perpendicular nor parallel to the surface of the Earth. It was like a broad belt of light in space. A broad belt composed of two hundred thousand blocks of ice completely surrounding the Earth. From the ground, one could clearly make out every block of ice. Some of them rotated while others seemed static. Throughout the day, the ring of ice varied with dramatic changes in brightness and color. The two hundred thousand points of light, some twinkling, some not, formed a majestic, heavenly river that flowed solemnly across the Earth’s sky.

Its colors were the most dramatic at dawn and dusk. The ring of ice changed gradually from the orange-red of the horizon to a dark red and then to dark green and dark blue, like a rainbow in space.

During the daytime, the ring of ice assumed a dazzling silver color against the blue sky, like a great river of diamonds flowing across a blue plain. The daytime ring of ice looked most spectacular during an eclipse, when it blocked the sun. Massive blocks of ice refracted the sunlight. Like a strange and magnificent fireworks show in the sky.

How long the sun was blocked by the ice ring depended on whether it was an intersecting eclipse or a parallel eclipse. What was known as a parallel eclipse was when the sun followed the ring of ice for some distance. Every year, there was one total parallel eclipse. For a day, the sun, from sunrise to sunset, followed the path of the ice ring for its entire journey. On this day, the ring of ice seemed like a belt of silver gunpowder set loose on the sky. Ignited at sunrise, the dazzling fireball burned wildly across the sky. When it set in the west, the sight was magnificent, too difficult to put into words. Some people proclaimed, “Today, God strolled across the sky.”

Even so, the ring of ice’s most enchanting moment was at night. It was twice as bright as a full moon. Its silver light filled the Earth. It was as though every star in the universe had lined up to march solemnly across the night sky. Unlike the Milky Way, in this mighty river of stars, one could clearly make out every cuboid star. Of these thickly clustered stars, half of them glittered. Those hundred thousand twinkling stars formed a ripple that surged, as though driven by a gale. It transformed the river of stars into an intelligent whole….

With a sharp squeal, the low-temperature artist returned from space for the last time. The ball of ice was suspended over Yan Dong. A ring of snowflakes appeared and wrapped itself tightly around it.

“I’ve completed it. What you do think?” it asked.

Yan Dong stayed silent for a long time, then said only one short phrase: “I give up.”

She had truly given up. Once, she’d stared up at the ring of ice for three consecutive days and three nights, without food or drink, until she collapsed. Once she could get out of bed again, she went back outside to stare at the ice ring again. She felt she as if she could gaze at it forever and it wouldn’t be enough. Beneath the ring of ice, she was sometimes dazed, sometimes steeped in an indescribable happiness. This was the happiness of when an artist found ultimate beauty. She was completely conquered by this immense beauty. Her entire soul was dissolved in it.

“As an artist, now that you’re able to see such work, are you still striving for it?” the low-temperature artist asked.

“Truly, I’m not,” Yan Dong answered sincerely.

“However, you’re merely looking. Certainly, you can’t create such beauty. You’re too trivial.”

“Yes. I’m too trivial. We’re too trivial. How can we? We have to support ourselves and our children.”

Yan Dong sat on the saline soil. Steeped in sorrow, she buried her head in her hands. This was the deep sorrow that arose when an artist saw beauty she could never produce, when she realized she would never be able to transcend her limitations.

“So, how about we name this work together? Call it—Ring of Dreams, perhaps?”

Yan Dong considered this. Slowly, she shook her head. “No, it came from the sea or, rather, was sublimated from the sea. Not even in our dreams could we conceive that the sea possessed this form of beauty. It should be called—Sea of Dreams.”

“Sea of Dreams… very good, very good. We’ll call it that, Sea of Dreams.”

Then, Yan Dong remembered her mission. “I’d like to ask, before you leave, can you return Sea of Dreams to become our actual seas?”

“Have me personally destroy my own work? Ridiculous!”

“Then, after you leave, can we restore the seas ourselves?”

“Of course you can. Just return these blocks of ice and everything should be fine, right?”

“How do we do that?” Yan Dong asked, her head raised. All of humanity strained to hear the answer.

“How should I know?” the low-temperature artist said indifferently.

“One final question: As colleagues, we all know that works of art made from ice and snow are short-lived. So Sea of Dreams…”

“Sea of Dreams is also short-lived. A block of ice’s light-filtering membrane will age. It’ll no longer be able to block heat. But they will dissolve differently than your ice sculptures. The process will be more violent and magnificent. Blocks of ice will vaporize. The pressure will cause the membrane to burst. Every block of ice will turn into a small comet. The entire ring of ice will blur into a silver fog. Then Sea of Dreams will disappear into that silver fog. Then the silver fog will scatter and disappear into space. The universe can only look forward to my next work on some other distant world.”

“How long until this happens?” Yan Dong’s voice quavered.

“The light-filtering membrane will become ineffective, as you reckon time, hm, in about twenty years. Oh, why are we talking about things other than art again? Trivial, trivial! Okay, colleague. Goodbye. Enjoy the beauty I have left you!”

The ball of ice shot into the air, disappearing into the sky. According to the measurements of every major astronomical organization in the world, the ball of ice flew rapidly along a perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. Once it had accelerated to half the speed of light, it abruptly disappeared thirteen astronomical units away from the sun, as if it’d squeezed into an invisible hole. It never returned.

SECOND HALF

Monument and Waveguide

The drought had already lasted for five years.

Withered ground swept past the car window. It was midsummer and there was not a bit of green anywhere on the ground. The trees were all withered. Cracks like black spiderwebs covered the ground. Frequent dry, hot winds kicked up sand that concealed everything. Quite a few times, Yan Dong thought she saw the corpses of people who had died of thirst along the railroad tracks, but they might have just been fallen, dry tree branches, nothing to be afraid of. This harsh, arid world contrasted sharply with the silver Sea of Dreams in the sky.

Yan Dong licked her parched lips. She couldn’t bring herself to drink from her water flask. That was four days’ rations for her entire family. Her husband had forced it on her at the train station. Yesterday, her workmates had protested, demanding to be paid in water. In the market, nonrationed water grew scarcer and scarcer. Even the rich weren’t able to buy any…. Someone touched her shoulder. It was the person in the seat beside her.

“You’re that alien’s colleague, aren’t you?”

Since she’d become the low-temperature artist’s messenger, Yan Dong had also become a celebrity. At first, she was considered a role model and a hero. However, after the low-temperature artist left, the situation changed. One way of looking at things is, it was her work that had inspired the low-temperature artist at the Ice and Snow Arts Festival. Without that, none of this would have happened. Most people understood that this was utter nonsense, but having a scapegoat was a good thing. So, in people’s eyes she was eventually seen as the low-temperature artist’s conspirator. But fortunately, after the artist had left, there were bigger issues to worry about. People gradually forgot about Yan Dong. However, this time, even though she was wearing sunglasses, she had been recognized.

“Ask me to drink some water!” the man beside her said, his voice rasping. Two flakes of dry skin fell from his lips.

“What are you doing? Are you robbing me?”

“Be smart, or else I’ll scream!”

Yan Dong felt obliged to hand over her water flask. The man drained the flask in one swallow. The people around them watched this with shock on their faces. Even the train attendant who had been passing by stopped in the aisle and stared at him, stupefied. That anyone could be so wasteful was nearly beyond belief. It was like back in the Oceaned Days (what people called the age before the arrival of the low-temperature artist), watching a rich person eat a sumptuous dinner that cost one hundred thousand yuan.

The man returned the empty flask to Yan Dong. Patting Yan Dong’s shoulder again, the man said in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter. Soon, it’ll all be over.”

Yan Dong understood what the man meant.

The capital seldom had cars on its streets anymore. The rare few had all been retrofitted to be air-cooled. Using a conventional liquid-cooled car was strictly prohibited. Fortunately, the Chinese branch of the World Crisis Organization had sent a car to pick her up. Otherwise, she’d absolutely have had no way to reach their offices. On the way, she saw that sandstorms had covered all the roads with yellow sand. She didn’t see many pedestrians. For anyone dehydrated, walking around in the hot, dry wind was too dangerous.

The world was like a fish out of water, already begging for a breath.

When she arrived at the World Crisis Organization, Yan Dong reported to the bureau chief. The bureau chief brought her to a large office and introduced her to the group she would be working with. Yan Dong looked at the office door. Unlike the other ones, this one had no nameplate. The bureau chief said:

“This is a secret group. Everything done here is strictly confidential. In order to avoid social unrest, we call this group the Monument Division.”

Entering the office, Yan Dong realized the people here were all somewhat eccentric: Some had hair that was too long. Some had no hair at all. Some were immaculately dressed, as if the world weren’t falling apart around them. Some wore only shorts. Some seemed dejected, others abnormally excited. Many oddly shaped models sat on a long table in the middle of the office. Yan Dong couldn’t guess what they might be for.

“Welcome, Ice Sculptor.” The head of the Monument Division enthusiastically shook Yan Dong’s hand after the bureau chief’s introduction. “You’ll finally have the opportunity to elaborate on the inspiration you received from the alien. Of course, this time, you can’t use ice. What we want to build is a work that must last forever.”

“What for?”

The division head looked at the bureau chief, then back at Yan Dong. “You still don’t know? We want to establish a monument to humanity!”

Yan Dong felt even more at a loss with this explanation.

“It’s humanity’s tombstone,” an artist to her side said. This person had long hair and tattered clothes, and gave the impression of decadence. One hand held a bottle of sorghum liquor that he’d drunk until he was somewhat tipsy. The liquor was left over from the Oceaned Days and now much cheaper than water.

Yan Dong looked all around, then said, “But… we’re not dead yet.”

“If we wait until we’re dead, it’ll be too late,” the bureau chief said. “We ought to plan for the worst case. The time to think about this is now.”

The division head nodded. “This is humanity’s final work of art, and also its greatest work of art. For an artist, what can be more profound than to join in its creation?”

“Fucking, actually…. Much more,” the long-haired artist said, waving the bottle. “Tombstones are for your descendants to pay homage to. We’ll have no descendants, but we’ll still erect a fucking tomb?”

“Pay attention to the name. It’s a monument,” the division head corrected solemnly. Laughing, he said to Yan Dong, “However, the idea he put forth is very good: He proposed that everyone in the world donate a tooth. Those teeth can be used to create a gigantic tablet. Carving a word on each tooth is sufficient to engrave the most detailed history of human civilization on the tablet.” He pointed at a model that looked like a white pyramid.

“This is blasphemy against humanity,” a bald-headed artist shouted. “The worth of humanity lies in its brains, but he wants to commemorate us with our teeth!”

The long-haired artist took another swig from his bottle. “Teeth…. Teeth are easy to preserve.”

“The vast majority of people are still alive!” Yan Dong repeated solemnly.

“But for how long?” the long-haired artist said. As he asked this question, his enunciation suddenly became precise. “Water no longer falls from the sky. The rivers have dried. Our crops have utterly failed for three years now. Ninety percent of the factories have stopped production. The remaining food and water, how long can that sustain us?”

“You heap of waste.” The bald-headed artist pointed at the bureau chief. “Bustling around for five years and you still can’t bring even one block of ice back from space.”

The bureau chief laughed off the bald-headed artist’s criticism. “It’s not that simple. Given current technology, forcing down one block of ice from orbit isn’t hard. Forcing down one hundred, up to one thousand blocks of ice is doable. But forcing back all two hundred thousand blocks of ice orbiting the Earth, that’s another matter completely. If we use conventional techniques, a rocket engine could slow a block of ice enough that it would fall back into the atmosphere. That would mean building a large number of reusable high-power engines, then sending them into space. That’s a massive-scale engineering project. Given our current technology level and what resources we’ve stockpiled, there are many insurmountable obstacles. For example, in order to save the Earth’s ecosystem, if we start now, we’d need to force down half the blocks of ice within four years, an average of twenty-five thousand per year. The weight of rocket fuel required would be greater than the amount of gasoline humanity used in one year during the Oceaned Days! Except it isn’t gasoline. It’s liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, dinitrogen tetroxide, unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, and so on. They need over a hundred times more energy and natural resources to produce than gasoline. Just this one thing makes the entire plan impossible.”

The long-haired artist nodded. “In other words, doomsday is not far away.”

The bureau chief said, “No, not necessarily. We can still adopt some nonconventional techniques. There is still hope. While we’re working on this, though, we must still plan for the worst.”

“This is exactly why I came,” Yan Dong said.

“To plan for the worst?” the long-haired artist asked.

“No, because there’s still hope.” She turned to the bureau chief. “It doesn’t matter why you brought me here. I came for my own purpose.” She pointed to her bulky travel bag. “Please take me to the Ocean Recovery Division.”

“What can you do in the Ocean Recovery Division? They’re all scientists and engineers there,” the bald-headed artist wondered.

“I’m a research fellow in applied optics.” Yan Dong’s gaze swept past the artists. “Besides daydreaming along with you, I can also do some practical things.”

After Yan Dong insisted, the bureau chief brought her to the Ocean Recovery Division. The mood here was completely different from the Monument Division. Everyone was tense, working on their computers. A drinking fountain stood in the middle of the office. They could take a drink whenever they wanted. This was treatment worthy of kings. But considering that the hope of the world rested on the people in this room, it wasn’t so surprising.

When Yan Dong saw the Ocean Recovery Division’s lead engineer, she told her, “I’ve brought a plan for reclaiming the ice blocks.”

As she spoke, she opened her travel bag. She took out a white tube about as thick as an arm, followed by a cylinder about a meter long. Yan Dong walked to a window that faced the sun. She stuck the cylinder out the window, then shook it back and forth. The cylinder opened like an umbrella. Its concave side was plated with a mirror coating. That turned it into something like a parabolic reflector for a solar stove. Next, Yan Dong pushed the tube through a small hole at the bottom of the paraboloid, then adjusted the reflector so that it focused sunlight at the end of the tube. Immediately, the other end of the tube cast an eye-stabbing point of light on the floor. Because the tube lay flat on the floor, the point was an exaggerated oval.

Yan Dong said, “This uses the latest optical fiber to create a waveguide. There’s very little attenuation. Naturally, an actual system would be much larger than this. In space, a parabolic reflector only about twenty meters in diameter can create a point of light at the other end of the waveguide with a temperature of over three thousand degrees.”

Yan Dong looked around. Her demonstration hadn’t produced the reaction she’d expected. The engineers took a look, then returned to their computer screens, paying her no mind. It wasn’t until a stream of dark smoke rose from the point of light on the antistatic floor that the nearest person came over and said, “What did you do? I doubt it’s hot.”

At the same time, the person nudged back the waveguide, moving the light coming through the window away from the focal length of the parabolic reflector. Although the point was still on the floor, it immediately darkened and lost heat. Yan Dong was surprised at how adept the person was at adjusting the thing.

The lead engineer pointed at the waveguide. “Pack up your gear and drink some water. I heard you took the train. The one to here from Changchun is still running? You must be extremely thirsty.”

Yan Dong desperately wanted to explain her invention, but she truly was thirsty. Her throat burned and it was painful to speak.

“Very good. This is a really practical plan.” The lead engineer handed Yan Dong a glass of water.

Yan Dong drained the glass of water in one gulp. She looked blankly at the lead engineer. “Are you saying that someone has already thought of this?”

The lead engineer laughed. “Spending time with aliens has made you underestimate human intellect. In fact, from the moment the low-temperature artist sent the first block of ice into space, many people have come up with this plan. Afterward, there were lots of variants. For example, some used solar panels instead of reflectors. Some used wires and electric heating elements instead of waveguides. The advantage is that the equipment is easy to manufacture and transport. The disadvantage is the efficiency is not as high as waveguides. We’ve been researching this for five years now. The technology is already mature. The equipment we need has mostly been manufactured.”

“Then why haven’t you carried the plan out?”

An engineer next to them said, “With this plan, the Earth will lose twenty-one percent of its water. Either during propulsion as vaporized steam or during reentry from high-temperature dissociation.”

The lead engineer turned to that engineer. “We don’t know that yet. The latest American simulations show, below the ionosphere, the hydrogen produced by high-temperature dissociation during reentry will immediately recombine with the surrounding oxygen into water. We overestimated the high-temperature-dissociation loss. The total loss estimate is around eighteen percent.” She turned back to Yan Dong. “But this percentage is high enough.”

“Then do you have a plan to bring back all of the water from space?”

The lead engineer shook her head. “The only possibility is to use a nuclear fusion engine. But, right now, on Earth, controlled nuclear fusion isn’t within our capabilities.”

“Then why aren’t you acting more quickly? You know, if you dither around, the Earth will lose one hundred percent of its water.”

The lead engineer nodded. “So, after a long time of hesitation, we’ve decided to act. Soon, the Earth will be in for the fight of its life.”

Reclaiming the Oceans

Yan Dong joined the Ocean Recovery Division, in charge of receiving and checking the waveguides that had been produced. Although this wasn’t a core posting, she found it fulfilling.

One month after Yan Dong arrived at the capital, humanity’s project to reclaim the oceans started.

Within one short week, eight hundred large-scale carrier rockets shot into the sky from every launch site in the world, sending fifty thousand tons of freight into Earth orbit. Then, from the North American launch site, twenty space shuttles ferried three hundred astronauts into space. Because launches generally followed the same route, the skies above the launch sites all had a single rocket contrail that never dispersed. Viewed from orbit, it seemed like threads of spider silk stretching up from every continent into space.

These launches increased human space activity by an order of magnitude, but the technology used was still twentieth-century technology. People realized, under existing conditions, if the entire world worked together and risked everything on one attempt, it could do anything.

On live television, Yan Dong and everyone else witnessed the first time a deceleration propulsion system was installed on a block of ice.

To make things less difficult, the first blocks of ice they forced back weren’t the ones that rotated about their own axes. Three astronauts landed on a block of ice. They brought with them the following equipment: an artillery-shell-shaped vehicle that could drill a hole into the block of ice, three waveguides, one expeller tube, and three folded-up parabolic reflectors. It was only now that anyone could get the sense of the immense size of a block of ice. The three people seemed to land on a tiny crystalline world. Under intense sunlight in space, the giant field of ice under their feet seemed unfathomable.

Near and far, innumerable similar crystalline worlds hung in the black sky. Some of them still rotated about their own axes. The surrounding rotating and nonrotating blocks of ice reflected and refracted the sunlight. On the ice the three astronauts stood on, they cast a dazzling pattern of ever-changing light and shadow. In the distance, the blocks of ice in the ring looked smaller and smaller, but gathered closer and closer together, gradually shrinking into a delicate, silver belt twisting toward the other side of the Earth. The closest block of ice was only three thousand meters away from this one. Because it rotated about its minor axis, in their eyes, such a rotation had a breathtaking momentum, as though they were three tiny ants watching a crystalline skyscraper collapsing over and over again. Due to gravity, these two ice blocks would eventually crash into each other. The light-filtering membranes would rupture and the blocks of ice would disintegrate. The smashed blocks of ice would quickly evaporate in the sunlight and disappear. Such collisions had already happened twice in the ring of ice. This was also why this block was the first block of ice to be forced back.

First, an astronaut started the driller vehicle. As the drill head spun, crumbs of ice flew out in a cone-shaped spray, twinkling in the sunlight. The driller vehicle broke through the invisible light-filtering membrane. Like a twisting screw, it dug into the ice, leaving a round hole in its wake. Along with the hole that stretched into the depths of the ice, a faint white line could be seen in the ice itself. Once the hole reached the prescribed depth, the vehicle headed out toward another part of the ice. It then bored another hole. At last, it drilled four holes in total. They all intersected at one point deep in the ice.

The astronauts inserted the three waveguides into three of the holes, then inserted the expeller into the wider fourth hole. The expeller tube’s mouth was pointed in the direction of the motion of the block of ice. After that, the astronauts used a thin tube to caulk the gap the three waveguides and the expeller tube left against their holes’ walls with a fast-sealing liquid to create a good seal. Finally, they opened the parabolic reflectors. If the initial phase of ocean reclamation employed the latest technology, it was these parabolic reflectors. They were a miracle created by nanotechnology. Folded up, each was only a cubic meter. Unfolded, each formed a giant reflector five hundred meters in diameter. These three reflectors were like three silver lotus leaves that grew on the block of ice. The astronauts adjusted each waveguide so that its receiver coincided with the focal point of its reflector.

A bright point of light appeared where the three holes intersected deep in the ice. It seemed like a tiny sun, illuminating within the block of ice spectacular sights of mythic proportions: a school of silver fish, dancing seaweed drifting with the waves… Everything retained its lifelike appearance at the instant it was frozen. Even the strings of bubbles spat from fishes’ mouths were clear and distinct. Over one hundred kilometers away, inside another ice block being reclaimed, the sunlight that the waveguides led into the ice revealed a giant black shadow. It was a blue whale over twenty meters long! This had to be the Earth’s seas of old.

Deep in the ice, steam soon blurred the point of light. As the steam dispersed, the point changed into a bright white ball. It swelled in size as the ice melted. Once the pressure had built up to a predetermined level, the expeller mouth cover was broken open. A violent gush of turbulent steam exploded out. Because there were no obstructions, it formed a sharp cone that scattered in the distance. Finally, it disappeared in the sunlight. Some portion of the steam entered another ice block’s shadow and condensed into ice crystals that seemed like a swarm of flickering fireflies.

The deceleration propulsion system in the first batch of one hundred blocks of ice activated. Because the blocks of ice were so massive, the thrust the system produced was, relatively speaking, very small. As a result, they needed to orbit fifteen days to a month before they could slow the blocks of ice down enough for them to fall into the atmosphere. Later, reclaiming ice blocks that rotated was much more complicated. The propulsion system had to stop the rotation first, then slow down the block of ice.

Before the blocks of ice entered the atmosphere, astronauts would land on them again to recover the waveguides and reflectors. If they wanted to force all two hundred thousand blocks down, this equipment had to be reused as much as possible.

Ice Meteors

Yan Dong and members of the Crisis Committee arrived together at the flatlands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to watch the first batch of ice meteors fall.

The ocean bed of former days looked like a snowy white plain, reflecting the intense sunlight—no one could open their eyes unless they were wearing sunglasses. But the white plain before them didn’t make Yan Dong think of the snowfields of her native Northeast because, here, it was as hot as hell. The temperature was near fifty degrees Celsius. Hot winds kicked up salty dirt, which hurt when it hit her face. A hundred-thousand-ton oil tanker was in the distance. The gigantic hull lay tilted on the ground. Its propeller, several stories tall, and rudder completely covered the salt bed. An unbroken chain of white mountains stood even farther in the distance. That was a mountain range on the seafloor humanity had never seen until now. A two-sentence poem came to Yan Dong’s mind: The open sea is a boat’s land. Night is love’s day.

She laughed bitterly then. She’d experienced this tragedy, yet she still couldn’t shake off thinking like an artist.

Cheers erupted. Yan Dong raised her head and looked to where everyone was pointing. In the distance, a bright red point had appeared in the silver ring of ice that traversed the sky. The point of light drifted out of the ring. It swelled into a fireball. A white contrail dragged behind the fireball. This contrail of steam grew ever longer and thicker. Its color became even denser, even whiter. Soon, the fireball split into ten pieces. Each piece continued to split. A long white contrail dragged behind every small piece. This field of white contrails filled half the sky, as though it were a white Christmas tree and a small, bright lamp hung on the tip of every branch….

Even more ice meteors appeared. Their sonic booms shook the earth like rumbles of spring thunder. As old contrails gradually dissipated, new contrails appeared to replace them. They covered the sky in a complex white net. Several trillion tons of water now belonged to the Earth again.

Most of the ice meteors broke apart and vaporized in the air, but one large fragment of ice fell to the ground about forty kilometers from Yan Dong. The loud crash shook the flatlands. A colossal mushroom cloud rose from somewhere in the distant mountain range. The water vapor shone a dazzling white in the sunlight. Gradually, it dispersed in the wind and became the sky’s first cloud layer. The clouds multiplied and, for the first time, blocked the sun that had been scorching the earth for five years. They covered the entire sky. For a while, Yan Dong felt a pleasant coolness that oozed into her heart and lungs.

The cloud layer grew thick and dark. Red light flickered within it. Maybe it was lightning or the light from the continuous waves of ice meteors falling toward the earth.

It rained! This was a downpour so heavy it would have been rare even in the Oceaned Days. Yan Dong and everyone else there ran around screaming wildly in the storm. They felt their souls dissolve in the rain. Then they retreated into their cars and helicopters because, right now, people would suffocate in the rain.

The rain fell nonstop until dusk. Waterlogged depressions appeared on the seafloor flatlands. A crack in the clouds revealed the golden, flickering rays of the setting sun, as though the Earth had just opened its eyes.

Yan Dong followed the crowd, stepping through the thick salty mud. They ran to the nearest depression. She cupped some water in her hands, then splashed that thick brine on her face. As it fell, mixed with her tears, she said, choking with sobs:

“The ocean, our ocean…”

Epilogue

Yan Dong walked onto the frozen-over Songhua River. She was wrapped in a tattered overcoat. Her travel bag held the tools that she’d kept for fifteen years: several knives and shovels of various shapes, a hammer, and a watering can. She stamped her feet to make sure that the river had truly frozen. The Songhua River had water as early as five years ago, but this was the first time it had frozen, and during the summer, no less.

Due to the arid conditions and, at the same time, the potential energy of the many ice meteors converting into thermal energy in the atmosphere, the global climate had stayed hotter than ever. But in the final stage of ocean reclamation, the largest blocks of ice were forced down. These blocks of ice broke into larger fragments. Most of them crashed onto the ground. This not only destroyed a few cities but also kicked up dust that blocked the sun’s heat. Temperatures fell rapidly all over the world. Earth entered a new ice age.

Yan Dong looked at the night sky. This was the starscape of her childhood. The ring of ice had disappeared. She could only make out the vestiges of the remaining small blocks of ice from their rapid motion against the background of stars. Sea of Dreams had turned back into actual seas again. This magnificent work of art, its cruel beauty as well as nightmare, would forever be inscribed in the collective memory of humanity.

Although the ocean-reclamation effort had been a success, Earth’s climate would be a harsh one from now on. The ecosystem would take a long time to recover. For the foreseeable future, humanity’s existence would be extremely difficult. Nevertheless, at least existence was possible. Most people felt content with that. Indeed, the Ring of Ice Era made humanity learn contentment, and also something even more important.

The World Crisis Organization would change its name to the Space Water Retrieval Organization. They were considering another great engineering project: Humanity intended to fly to distant Jupiter, then take water from Jupiter’s moons and the rings of Saturn back to Earth in order to make up for the 18 percent lost in the course of the Ocean Reclamation Project.

At first, people intended to use the technology for propelling blocks of ice that they’d already mastered to drive blocks of ice from the rings of Saturn to Earth. Of course, that far away, the sunlight was too weak. Only using nuclear fusion to vaporize the cores of the blocks of ice could provide the necessary thrust. As for the water from Jupiter’s moons, that required even larger and more complex technology to acquire. Some people had already proposed pulling the whole of Europa out of Jupiter’s deep gravity well, pushing it to Earth, and making it Earth’s second moon. This way, Earth would receive much more water than 18 percent. It could turn Earth’s ecosystem into a glorious paradise. Naturally, this was a matter for the far future. No one alive hoped to see it during their lifetime. However, this hope made people in their hard lives feel a happiness they’d never felt before. This was the most valuable thing humanity received from the Ring of Ice Era: Reclaiming Sea of Dreams made humanity see its own strength, taught it to dream what it had never before dared to dream.

Yan Dong saw in the distance a group of people gathered on the ice. She walked to them, gliding with each step. When they spotted her, they began to run toward her. Some slipped and fell, then picked themselves up and raced to catch up with the others.

“Our old friend! Hello!” The first one to reach Yan Dong wrapped her in a warm hug. Yan Dong recognized him. He was one of the ice sculpture judges from so many ice and snow festivals before the Ring of Ice Era.

As they neared, she recognized the others, most of them ice sculptors from before the Ring of Ice Era. Like everyone else of this era, they wore tattered clothes. Suffering and time had dyed the hair on their temples white. Yan Dong felt as though she’d come home after years of wandering.

“I heard that the Ice and Snow Arts Festival has started back up again?” she asked.

“Of course. Otherwise, what are we all doing here?”

“I’ve been thinking. Times are so hard…”

Yan Dong wrapped her large overcoat tighter around herself. She shivered in the cold wind, constantly stamping her numb feet against the ice. Everyone else did the same, shivering, stamping their feet, like a group of begging refugees.

“So what if times are hard? Even in hard times, you can’t not make art, right?” an old ice sculptor said through chattering teeth.

“Art is the only reason for a civilization to exist!” someone else said.

“Fuck that, I have plenty of reasons to go on,” Yan Dong said loudly.

Everyone laughed, then fell silent as they thought back on ten years of hard times. One by one, they counted their reasons to go on. Finally, they changed themselves from survivors of a disaster back to artists again.

Yan Dong took a bottle of sorghum liquor from her bag. They warmed up as each one took a swig then passed it on to the next. They built a fire on the vast riverbank and heated up a chainsaw until it would start in the bitter cold. They all stepped onto the river, and the chainsaw growled as it cut into the ice. White crumbs of ice fell around them. Soon, they pulled their first block of glittering, translucent ice from the Songhua River.