I run a freight company with my best friend and business partner, and for the first six years we were the only two captains. Time was money then and time is money now. We do not encourage sight-seeing and looky-looing, although most of the young people then and now are hoping to see what there is to see in the little-known regions of the galaxy we often were first to ship to.
However, there are exceptions to every rule.
As busy as we were with our two ships in the sixth year of our business, I crossed the routes of Rustbucket 1, which I was in command of, and Some-Other-Metal-At-Need-Over-the-Rustbucket 2, which my business partner Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr. was in command of at the time. We piled everyone in the company, everyone who had worked with us, and everyone who had helped us onto these ships to see a once-in-a-galactic lifetime sight.
Call it a preview to whatever might happen when the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy get close enough to start interacting between their centers of gravity. Perhaps since Creation, for the eye of their Creator only, the galaxies now called Alvin Ailey 1 and Alvin Ailey 2 have been dancing around each other like binary stars, except that when galaxies do that, their stars all have to rearrange.
If life exists in either of the two galaxies named for one of Earth's most famous and influential dancers, it is certainly much hardier and more versatile – lighter on its feet – than exists in the Milky Way Galaxy because of the tremendous reorientation every star and planet has constantly been going through.
Yet by the time humans sailed up on their starships, the larger size and bulk of bluish Alvin Ailey 1 was causing the inevitable end stages of the dance: there would be one Alvin Ailey Galaxy in the end, for the larger galaxy would absorb the smaller one.
The process started before our eyes – all eyes in the Milky Way Galaxy turned to see as Alvin Ailey 2 began its dive into Alvin Ailey 1. Although we could not see the actual movement of each star, we did watch for a month as Alvin Ailey 2 changed its shape. Some saw a swan, others a bow or a manta ray or even a figure-eight because of light and energy reflecting out owing to where stars that would not survive the merger were colliding and exploding.
The core of Alvin Ailey 1 lit up in this month to 100 times its normal brightness, as if shining a spotlight on the closing act on its great dance with its partner.
Now this was a fast dance in stellar terms. The professional fleet said that it would be all done in 20,000 years.
Those of us who had businesses to run didn't have quite that long to watch and wait.
We had to run Rustbuckets 1 and 2 to rattling getting people back home to Earth and then for another month to make our contracts.
Still, to this day, whenever Alvin Ailey 1 and 2 are in sight on a route Kirk and Dixon Shipping run, every ship on that route is allowed one day to sight-see.
Some things are just too amazing to rush past for any amount of money in the galaxy.
From the time I was a child, I was fascinated with stargazing, and I read up on things happening in and around the Milky Way Galaxy just for my enjoyment. So, when in Apophysis I was working on fractals that began to resemble galaxies at distance, I began to wonder ... could I do a preview of what may happen to ours and the Andromeda Galaxy? Sure enough, the palette separated perfectly and I had two cores in two figures: one symmetrical, one twisting around it as if being drawn into it. Galaxies colliding beautifully ... it was an honor to be able to conceive of what that should look like and see it come forth in a fractal on Apophysis!