“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.