C.A.D. 500,000,000

“Time passed.

After a certain point measurement of time became meaningless. For Paul this point arrived when there was no hydrogen left to burn anywhere, and the last star flickered and died.

Already the Universe was a hundred times its age when the Xeelee left.

Somberly Paul watched the dimmed galaxies subside like the chests of old men.

At last there was little free baryonic matter outside the vast black holes which gathered in the cores of galaxies. Then, as the long night of the cosmos deepened, even protons collapsed, and the remaining star-corpses began to evaporate.

Paul wearied of puzzling over the huge, slow projects of the photino birds. He sought out what had once been a neutron star. The carbon-coated sphere floating between the huge black holes was so dense that proton decay was actually warming it, keeping it a few degrees above the near-absolute zero of its surroundings; Paul, as if seeking comfort, clustered his attention foci close to this shadow of baryonic glory.

After some time he became aware that he was not alone: the last of the Qax had come sliding through the interstices of space and now hovered with him over the frigid surface of the star.

Human and Qax, huddled around the chill proton star, did not attempt to communicate. There was nothing more to say.

The river of time flowed, unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity.”

The rest of this stuff doesn’t even come CLOSE to Dune or Foundation, though, not even HHGTTG.