Out of Nothing...

"Oh Univend, must you wake me from my dream. My simulation was so enjoyable."

"I apologize, Captain Igvald, but you must return to the ship to deal with reality for a moment."

"Why, what's wrong? Is the ship damaged again."

"Not at all, the ship is not the issue."

"Then what is."

"The heat death of the universe is approaching a new phase that I cannot handle. The ramjet can no longer acquire enough particles to maintain life support. Please, you must assume a physical avatar and do something."

Captain Igvald somberly exited the beautiful, green landscape that reminded him of distant Earth, a planet which had died oh so long ago. It had been 10^1000 years ago that the Univend had to leave the influence of the last black hole, from which it had derived energy for 10^100 years after the last of the red dwarfs had died out oh so long ago. When the black hole that had once made up the center of an ancient galaxy called Andromeda had finally evaporated, the Starship Univend had no choice but to take it's Ramjet and start collecting hydrogen from the empty space of the now dead universe.

For so long, this process of collection and nuclear transfusion had served the needs of 5 trillion sentient beings, all living their dreams in the collective consciousness of the ship's computer system in whatever VR simulation they chose to live in, for trillions upon trillions of years after the effective heat death of the universe, as the fate of the other starships that left the remains of the Andromedan Black Hole's central hub oh so long ago would remain forever unknown.

Now the S.S. Univend was facing it's latest, and most inevitable problem. Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics was finally taking it's toll on the structural integrity of atomic bonds throughout the universe as many of the scattered particles that existed in the vast, empty, starless void were beginning to break down into the more basic quarks.

Captain Ingvald would have to be inventive if he was to extend the lifespan of the Univend to a possible additional 10^10000 years, and exponential growth based on whether or not he could figure out some way to modify the ramjets to take quarks such as electrons and actually fuse them into the more complex hydrogen atoms. Perhaps he could even find a way to modify the substrate of the ship itself to be composed of something other than the atoms that made up most of the matter in the ancient universe and still maintain the sentience of the population of the ship? Who knows. However, as it stood, the Univend had maybe a year before the resources of the ship would be diminished to the point of having to shut down certain computational systems that would result in the death of millions of sentient beings alive within the computational matrix of the ship.

Either way, Captain Ingvald wasted no time in accessing the instructions he had nested within his mind to print a humanoid robot in the interior of the ship with which he could access the hardware that made up the interior of the ship.

Walking now to the bridge of the ship, Ingvald looked at the data that Univend had collected about the state of space around it. The ancient viewport that offered a view into the blackness outside served no purpose as there were no stars in the universe to be seen anymore. For countless aeons, the Univend had not known a destination, only the endless scooping of scattered atoms for the mere process of transfusion for the survival of the sentience onboard.

Ingvald stood, staring out the window with his artificial receptors in somber silence as he recalled a time when he could stare at a vast, splendid sea of constellations or the majestic disk of a galaxy from the view of intergalactic space. Now, there was nothing but the eternal void and the small, diminishing resources that the Univend endlessly struggled with all it's might to squeeze out of this space it flew through. One small bastion of maintained enthalpy in an eternal sea of growing entropy, destined to a doom predicted by ancient scientists trillions of years before the this time.

As Ingvald delved into the equations of string theory and particle physics, he began to think about the universal trend of entropy and the very nature of the flow of time itself.

Realizing at once that the basic structure of matter was resultant from higher vibrations of strings, a Planck unit of energy vibrating at a higher level than the empty space around it, a thought occurred to Ingvald.

One concept proposed by an ancient theoretical physicist of the ancient home galaxy of humanity whose name was not remembered was the idea that the big bang wasn't a release of energy at all, that no energy was input, but rather that the space-time continuum actually froze, resulting in the solid, or somewhat solid fabric of spacetime that actually allowed particles and matter to form. In this model, more energized parts of this substrate maintained themselves as vibrating strings that took on relational properties to each other and became particles, which eventually evolved into atoms, stars, galaxies, planets, and eventually life. Perhaps the conditions of that early substrate could be recreated in a region of space and space itself could be melted? What information could be derived about the hyperspace outside of this universe if this was done, and what vital data would that reveal to help save the Univend from the otherwise inevitable claws of entropy?

After three months of careful design and construction, Captain Ingvald finally had a working model set up outside of the Univend. This specialized gun would shoot an intense burst of the highest frequency gamma radiation at a specified point in space until the heat became so intense that the very essence of the space in that region would be energized to the point of liquifying space.

An intense burst of radiation became apparent as a strange rift became visible nearby. The human retinas of aeons long past would not be capable of withstanding the glare of this light, but these robotic eyes had no issue staring into the brilliance.

Scanners aboard the Univend quickly took data as a special probe was dipped into the rift. Ingvald watched from the vacuum outside of the ship as the probe was swiftly retracted, a piece of it's material being completely burned off. The very same material could easily withstand being dipped into the corona of a neutron star and come out intact.

Ingvald returned into the Univend to run the data from this experiment in order to see what he could learn.

"This is very interesting, Captain." said the Univend's AI. "I am scanning the probe, and the data taken seems to show that the melting of this space as produced a vast quantity of quarks. It seems that the very fabric of space is made of a lower vibration of energy than the fabric of spacetime, and that heating up a region actually produced a large number of strings vibrating at levels sufficient to create particles. What's more, the very flow of time completely reversed itself and my calculations have shown that there is actually a way for entropy to be reversed. If my calculations are correct, I should be able to create another such field at any point in the universe and actually create enough energy and resources to more than compensate for the energy lost in the production of said heat."

Captain Ingvald yelled in sublime joy. "That is the most wonderful news I have ever heard! So what you're telling me is that you've found a way to produce an infinite supply of energy and resources from empty vacuum?"

"Essentially, yes." replied the Univend. "I will try to model a working prototype of a device to take such a rift and actually mold it into strings, particles, and even atoms. I'd wager that we could create an entire solar system from this vacuum, and then continue the process to keep that star alive for practically an eternity. The lives of this crew never have to end."

***

About one million years after the discovery of a way to mold matter out of empty space, a dense field of about 1000 stars now littered a small space in the vast, cold, empty universe as a different starship that had left the ancient black hole of Andromeda long ago sped in to check out these most curious points of light.