The Big Flush

They never knew what it was that suddenly ended their lives and destroyed their galaxy.

Ancients: 
geocentric.

Long ago, they realized that the land wasn’t as flat as it appeared,
and that all of the land, and even the vast seas, were merely on the surface of a sphere.

+
orbits the sun
providing light and heat to one side at a time.

Most of the stars in a bowl overhead = other suns, 

Some of the stars visible in the nighttime sky, 
were wandering planets planets, farther away than the moon.

Invented optical viewing tubes and other devices, and discovered that some of the planets had their own moons,

///
days, years, etc.

250MY for the galaxy to revolve


…

… only in the past century or so was it discovered that some of the “stars” were in fact other galaxies, just like theirs.
They named the nearest one “Andromeda”.

Their own galaxy never had a name.
Some called it “Milky Way” because the other stars in the main disk appeared as a milky band across the sky,
but most of them associated that name with a candy bar. 

Suddenly, without any warning, their entire known universe was totally destroyed by events far beyond their own imagination.

— —

Jove stood there, with one bare foot upon the rim, staring fascinatedly at the swirling of the cigarette ash he had flicked into the bowl after finishing his business.

Was it coriolus force, or merely the trickle from the tank, that caused the ash to form such a beautiful, rotating spiral, he wondered?
Most of the ash was in that main swirl on the surface, but a few smaller swirls of ash bobbed nearby and there were even a few submerged clumps lingering beneath.
He wondered idly how those outliers would look if he could stand on one of the particles in the swirling center.

(recalled:  250MY for our galaxy to revolve about its center.
(the spiral of ash seemed to revolved every few seconds.
Since he had been watching the swirling spiral for a few minutes, now, that would be about 13 billion years if …

Resting his hand on the silver handle, he took a last puff, then dropped the butt into the middle of largest swirl
as he simultaneously pulled the handle down.

Looking out the window, into the clear midnite sky,
Jove wondered about the milky band of stars that crossed it,
wondering, again idly, how our unnamed sun would look from one of those other stars.

(Planet named after him?)

Jove Chronson
Jove Titanson
Sickleson