 City at the End of Time is about the Kalpa , the last city on Earth , one hundred trillion years in the future . The novel 's backstory describes how the aging universe continued expanding and its spacetime fabric weakened . With the galaxies burnt out , humanity dispersed across the cosmos , where they encountered the Typhon , an inexplicable entity that was destroying the decaying universe . It consumed matter and replaced space @-@ time with emptiness and inconsistencies beyond the laws of physics . The resulting Chaos spread rapidly , driving some humans back to ancient Earth with its rekindled sun . In an attempt to fend off the approaching Typhon , leaders of the dying Earth sent for Polybiblios , a human living with the Shen , an ancient alien race . Polybiblios returned to Earth with his adopted daughter , Ishanaxade , a being he had constructed from " fate @-@ logs " of intelligent species collected by the Shen . After the Shen system fell , and the Chaos surrounded Earth , its leaders instructed everybody to convert themselves from primordial ( real ) matter to noötic ( virtual ) mass . As each city fell , its inhabitants retreated to the last remaining cities , the Kalpa and Nataraja . Using knowledge he had gleaned from the Shen , Polybiblios built reality generators to protect the Kalpa . Nataraja , which had rebelled against the instruction to convert to noötic matter , was left to fend for itself . 
