by Cixin Liu
“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. It
s 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. Everyth
ing 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?”
