Лю Цысинь - Hold Up the Sky

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.