The Sun was content with its lot.

It had a simple but satisfying job that it had been quietly getting on with for longer than it could remember. There were a lot of things in the universe, and there was nothing the Sun enjoyed more than spending its time squeezing them together and seeing what happened. It was particularly fond of hydrogen, really basic stuff that was rewardingly crunchy to fold together and gave off a pleasant glow afterwards. Luckily, it had a lot of hydrogen to be getting on with.

After a while, it had started to notice some rocks gently forming and growing nearby as it worked. The Sun quickly decided to keep watch over these rocks as they spun through the void around them, making sure they didn’t get lost as they grew. Sometimes the rocks fought, which the Sun thought was a shame, but it liked them nonetheless. They were its rocks.

Sometimes the Sun noticed another rock that wasn’t there before, but it couldn’t keep hold of them in time and they disappeared off into the darkness. It hoped they were OK.

The Sun became very proud of its rock collection over time. It knew how cold and dark it could get out there, and didn’t want to lose them like those other rocks, so it had started to share the warm glow of its work with them. The rocks seemed to like it and had started to copy some of its work, but obviously not as efficiently. That was fine though, the Sun thought, as it had had a lot more to practice with.

Some time later, the Sun noticed that one of the rocks was changing in a way that was startlingly different to the others. Water had formed on its surface, and its shell was cracked and unstable. It watched in awe as life started to develop on it. Life! On one of its little rocks! The Sun beamed with pride at this, and diligently worked away to continue keeping it warm while it watched.

The life on that rock carried on developing, working out for itself how to turn things into other things. At first it basked in the Sun’s glow for help. As it grew more and more complex, it looked back in reverance and humility. Eventually the life started to make its own miniature versions, tiny stars that added even tinier rocks to the Sun’s collection.

One day, the life had made tiny stars that were so good at its job that it managed to take some of those new tiny rocks away from the collection and off into the void on its own. At the same time, it sent another tiny rock the other way, towards the Sun, where the rock began to shout.

“This is the UHD Suncatcher. Thank you for everything. We’ll take it from here.”