“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.