The Enterprise finds multiple star systems missing without a trace. The crew plot a course to the next likely target and are trapped within a vortex that delivers them to a seemingly empty realm billions of years in the future. Closer inspection reveals the missing star systems, contained within a massive artificial structure fifty light-years in diameter. While a landing party explores the structure’s inner surface, the ship and crew are subjected to rapid aging, mutation, and time-dilation. Pike, Number One, and Spock make contact with the structure’s inhabitants, noncorporeal beings who are the only remaining life in the universe. They have harvested numerous uninhabited star systems from across space and time in an effort to stop the entropy that will soon destroy all known existence.