The prince, who was named Prince, had a lot of work to do. He knew that if he didn’t fulfill his responsibilities, he would again be punished by the mechanical surrogate of his deadbeat father, which the prince himself had built. The prince set out into the world, carrying with him a lumpy sphere that was several times larger than himself. Appearing within a stranger’s house, he immediately went to work. He rolled his sphere over the mess that cluttered the stranger’s home, and the debris clung lovingly to the sphere, becoming one with its mass. Eventually, the sphere grew larger as it collected more of the clutter, and it was able to absorb larger objects into itself. The home was picked clean of rats and bugs, and the prince had moved on to bigger game, such as cats and dogs. Now enveloped and engorged with the contents of the house, the sphere moved outside, and proceeded to clean up the streets. Larger and larger items became one with the sphere, from chairs to bicycles to fences. Inevitably, the prince would seek out people to become part of his sphere. The people would scream and writhe as they became stuck to the growing, rolling juggernaut. Their screams became muffled as additional layers of cars, trees, and buildings were added to the sphere. Soon enough, the entire town had been uprooted and rolled into a ball. The prince knew now that the sphere was large enough to fulfill its purpose. The head of his robotic father-substitute appeared, and transported the sphere away in a beam of prismatic light. In space, the machine king considered this strange ball of trinkets, animals, vegetation, people, and homes. It determined that the sphere was worthy of being set ablaze, becoming a new speck of light in the night sky. The sphere was sent upward, ready to complete its transformation.

Suddenly, the universe had ceased to exist.