Not with a Bang, but a Whimper

Walter Kronoski. Watery gray eyes. Thin lips. A small, sharp nose. Tufts of graying hair just above his ears and not much else. A green sweater vest, threadbare at the elbows. Sensible shoes. Caretaker of the universe.

Walter read the calendar for the third time. There was no mistaking it. Close up in his neat handwriting, penned millennia ago. Nothing else was written in the calendar after that. Walter sighed and got to work.

First to go was time itself, wound back onto its sturdy spool and then rolled into storage. Then the hundreds of millions stars, once they were cool enough to touch, wrapped up and placed in their individual containers. Other planetary bodies came next, jumbled together in a large canister. Walter swept what remained into a dustbin.

Space itself needed folding up, as well. Carefully manipulating the well-worn creases, Walter gave up on the third try, despite a number of unsightly bulges in the fabric.

All of it stored away, Walter let himself out of existence and locked it behind him.