BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO 13.8
Boss Pip hits the house lights | Clocks wind | The Crackling | Everything smells of raspberry | Night club basso profondo | The Twinkling.
4.6
Our sun ignites.
4.4
Inchoate Venus and Earth.
4
Late Heavy Bombardment.
3.6
Hydraulic melisma | First tides.
3.5
Prick of eager, anxious life | Mars also experiments in biology.
3
Supercontinent Ur shudders into place.
2.5
Algae accelerate | Flora conspire to spark the Great Oxygenation Event.
1
Supercontinent Rodinia slowly makes her debut.
MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO 800
Glaciers gird the equator.
600
Exostentialism.
590
Fossils and trinkets accumulate.
535
Earth’s Dada period.
468
The Teeming | The story is not on land.
420
Fish dress in armor | The first feet on earth belong to pioneer millipedes.
375
The Appalachians and sharks start.
360
Seeds sow.
354
Insects master flight | Primitive ferns unfurl.
313
Reptiles make love in swampy coal forests | Frogs form the sound of sex.
235
Supercontinent Pangaea plays host.
200
Beetles invent flowers | Dinosaurs start sneezing.
100
The first quaver of mourning dove wings.
65
India docks.
.15
Human flesh and the first flirtation.
.1
Bonfires.
THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO 100
Dogs domesticate themselves.
32
Paint dries on cave walls.
21
The Thaw.
15
Glaciers settle Detroit.
12
Global Homo sapiens population: one million.
9
The Beginning of Cheese.
7
Afghans tame grapes, Americans peppers.
5.5
Writing and wheels. And the whirring persists.
1
Ghana’s princes dress court dogs in collars of silver and gold.
.8
Whiskey. Whiskey. Whiskey.
.7
The Edifying Book of Erotic Chess | Joan of Arc’s mother is born.
THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW .5
Global Homo sapiens population: eleven billion.
.75
The Chinese take immortality in stride.
1
Reparations sidestep the singularity.
1.2
Synthetic lightning strikes.
2
Global Homo sapiens population: one million.
2.5
The Next Gospel.
3
Civilizations trip and fall | Tulips and robots follow shortly thereafter.
27
Phosphorescent moss abounds.
70
The ninth coming of Christ.
88
Rolling brownouts | Rolling rust.
95
Dogs domesticate drones.
MILLIONS OF YEARS FROM NOW 1
Meek inheritance.
12
Comet nymphs arrive.
20
Later, greater sapien culture takes center stage.
25
Vast Pacification.
100
Aquatic primates flee supercontinent Amasia.
250
The last nest.
355
Cephalopod empires take root.
375
Moon molting | Rebel moons concuss outer planets.
570
The rise of Cetacean prophets.
700
Perpendicular worlds | Plasma floods.
850
The gods return as notes on the scale.
BILLIONS OF YEARS FROM NOW 1.5
Life levitates | Microfauna dominate the upper atmosphere.
2
Haze leaves meteors soft as tapioca pearls.
2.1
The Great Deoxygenation Event.
2.3
The last orgasm.
3
Our sun’s final light waves | Dutch angles.
3.1
The Enveloping.
3.2
The last supercontinent’s last earthquake.
4.5
Our Milky Way caramelizes.
4.6
The Gloaming.
11
A dozen galaxies, including ours, exeunt stage left.
12
The painlessness is also endless.
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