The being known as Star Diaz materialized itself upon normal space. The tendrils of its consciousness extended themselves and began its survey of the local galactic cluster.

It found itself mourning, as it often did, in this twilight of the universe. Once, billions of years ago, when she was young, the universe had been a vibrant place, filled with majestic, gigantic stars that pierced the darkness and cold and filled the universe with light. Starlight. With as many colours as existed in the spectrum. Blue stars, yellow stars...red stars.

But most of them were gone now. What few were left were small, little pinpoints of pale red light. Darkness and cold filled the universe and death followed soon after. Entropy was running its course, and soon all life would be gone.

Well, unless the Plan worked. The Plan, a project that began so long ago, back when Star Diaz was still a creature of flesh and blood. A bold and hopeless plan, or so it seemed to the beings that birthed it, in their profound limitations.

But those limitations had been lifted, slowly, year upon year, decade upon decade, century upon century. First flesh was complement by metal and plastic, then replaced by it entirely. Eventually all bonds to the material were cast out, and thus, had the being known as Star Diaz became what it was today.

And now, the Plan could be finally completed. Today was the day, Star Diaz would destroy the universe.

Father Time stretched. This was regarded by many as being quite the spectacle. "Imagine a cat, right? Now, imagine it's like a pig...no it doesn't look like a pig, it just acts around mud like one, right? Now, figure that this cat-pig, who looks like a giant, has quite literally the weight of the fullness of time...that's what it looks like. Also the giant pig-cat is blue," What this means, and for that matter whom, if anyone, has actually ever said it, is a subject of heated debate amongst many scholars. Albeit, admittedly, most of said scholars hail from institutions of learning of a lesser reputable nature such as those that offer their students courses on "Liberal arts", "Creative writing" and "Philosophy of lactic fermentation", because while, on the whole, it is true that many a man had many great thoughts on the art of cheese making, it wasn't really an area with a lot of practical use.

But regardless of what this actually looked like, Father Time stretched. As he did so he gazed upon the Wheel of Progress, and smiled. It had been such a clever idea. Clockwork time hamsters. All you had to do is turn the handle for say...300 years and the thing kept the Wheel going for over 10.000. This meant he had a lot of time, as it was, in his hands. Thus he was able to stretch, sleep, play with the hamsters, play with mud and work on his writing. Sadly he was a big believer in the old axiom of writing what you know about, thus making his books a bit of a dry read.

Which isn't to say that stuff never happened in the Time dimension. In fact he was about to receive a visit.

"And thus, the cycle is completed, one more time. As it was spoken, in the beginning of all things, I have come to collect".

Father Time looked around, puzzled that he could understand, but not actually hear, the voice. Almost as if it had come from inside of his own mind. "Hello?" He asked uncertainly

"Good tidings to you" And suddenly he was there. A tall, lean figure wrapped in a dark cloak that covered his whole body, except his face. His skin was pale white, but the most striking aspect of his appearance was that where his eyes should have been, only two dark, empty holes were present. He was holding a schinth.

Father time surveyed the intruder, "Who are you?"

A moment of silence stretched between the two…"I...I don't hold much track with humor", the figure spoke, Father Time noticed, without moving his lips. "Humor?" He asked, feeling increasingly confused.

"Are you not making one of those..." He gestured vaguely, "...jokes?"

Silence continued to stretch between the two. "Do you really not remember me? I was there when you were born, and I told you in the end I would return".

"Well, that was like...a really, really long time ago" Father Time retorted. "In fact, nothing happened a longer time ago, me having been born when time began and all".

"Death"

"What?"

"That's what I am"

"Oh…" Father Time started to shuffle his feet awkwardly. "So was there something you needed or…?"

Death closed his eyes and took a deep breath, an accomplishment worthy of note, considering he had neither eyes nor breath. "You know, your predecessors had a lot more dramatic sense. Take that" He pointed towards the Heel of Progress. "That is the very thing that tells time what it is. Your predecessor created it out of cosmic string. I could cleave entire galaxies apart. Yours looks like an oversized hamster wheel." He stared for a moment, his face assuming a mask of anger and disbelief "Is that a clockwork hamster!?"

"What's cosmic string?"

"Huh? Oh...Well, when in 3 dimensional space if you decompress a small portion of the fabric of space you can…" Death couldn't help but notice a certain glassy haze setting over the expression of his interlocutor. Fortunately he had been around for a very long time and knew how to deal with this type of situation, "It's because of quantum".

At this Father Time brightened up. He knew about quantum. It's the thing with the cat in the box where it is both alive and dead until you open the aforementioned box.

"Well, let's just get on with it shall we?" Death turned around and stabbed the air in front of him with his scythe, creating a dimensional rift.

"Where are we going?"

"To the end of all things"

"But…"

"GET A MOVE ON!"

Star navigated through the magnetic fields and currents of plasma in the interior of its namesake. She enjoyed the sensations. In here, in this place, with its heat and energy you could pretend the universe was still young. But it was not, and that was why she had to do this.

Her destination was very near the very core of the star. It was a machine, no bigger than an atom, at least not in this tridimensional space, but through subspace it extended itself to other similar machines in the hearts of many other stars, spanning the full length and width of the universe itself.

Suddenly she felt tendrils from a different, but familiar conscience reaching her. Following them she eventually reached her destination. She slipped inside the machine.

"Hello Marco"

"Hi Star. Shall we get to work?"

Father Time followed Death through a room filled with shelves. Oddly enough they seemed to stretch forever both vertically and horizontally. In the shelves were clocks. Digital, rounded clocks, with red numbers. The only distinguishing feature was that all of them possessed an unique inscription. All of them contained a similar countdown that should be over in a few minutes.

"I know, I know..."

Father Time stared at the figure ahead as it continued to move forward without facing him.

"I know it's not traditional. But you try to stand around a billion hourglasses, with all that sand scraping on glass. The sound adds up, you know?"

Father Time had no idea what Death meant, but as far as he could tell he seemed to be a bit defensive about it so he decided to leave it alone. They walked in silence for a while and eventually Death stopped. Father Time followed his stretched hand and to his surprise, where he could have sworn he had seen only more clocks and shelving before, was an hourglass. The oddest thing was its size. It was right before him, and he could see the totality of it, suggesting it couldn't be more than two or so meters tall. And yet he could tell that somehow it was larger than any galaxy. As he watched, the final grains of sand fell from the top and came to a rest, just as the clocks in the shelves finished their countdown. The last thing Father Time noticed before the schinth filled his vision was that there was an inscription on the hourglass too. It read: "Space-Time"

As the machines in the core of the surviving stars activated, the bonds between them increased, and space began to compress. First it was just a slight bent in the shape of the universe, but as the bonds increased in strength exponentially so did the changes in the shape of the universe. And thus, just as soon as the final grain of sand on the hourglass came to a stop, so did all matter and energy in the universe came to be compressed to a single point.