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.”