Comment by MarkusQ

The interior and exterior are isolated; we have no idea if are universe has an exterior or not and, according to present theory, never will.

As another comment pointed out, in GR our "future" is a singularity which everything moves towards (so what we see as a time dimension).

"Expanding" and "contracting" depend on your coordinate system. If your rulers are shrinking, you can't tell this from space expanding.

The common factor here is you are wanting to use our reference frame (somewhere in this universe, not near a black hole) to describe things as they would be seen from other reference frames.