After first contact, we learned that the aliens hadn’t been talking to us because we simply were not very interesting. There were no unique resources on our planet and it turned out humans were very average for an intelligent bipedal lifeform. It was expensive to get all the way out here, so no one had bothered. What finally changed that was a business opportunity.
There’s something that happens on earth every 18 months on average. It’s an astrological event where the moon passes in front of the sun and covers it perfectly. When someone discovered that wealthy beings from all around the galaxy were willing to pay good money to see this, it changed out world forever.
We welcomed the first few scientists and sightseers who told us how special our little planet was and how grateful they were to be here. Over the decades though, more and more aliens showed up every time. Many humans and aliens alike took the opportunity to get rich.
It only took a few decades before we were planning our entire civilization around eclipse tourism. It was good in some ways. If there was going to be an eclipse in your area, you were pretty much guaranteed a job for the entire decade leading up to it. The earth had been in a death spiral with runaway climate change, and the aliens were able to come in and fix it easily with advanced tech. We couldn’t be having natural disasters or unseasonable clouds disrupting vacations willy nilly!
The extra terrestrial entrepreneurs hired locals to build the infrastructure required to sustain the increasing number of visitors. Things like habitats and food production for various lifeforms were spun up. Farmland was paved over and city blocks were replaced with alien hotels and other amenities. Humans were removed from entire neighborhoods just because they were in convenient locations for tourists.
We started with peaceful protest. We linked arms to stop the bulldozers from tearing down forests and paving over savannas. Our own governments shot and tear gassed us to make way for progress. Many of them were profiting from the destruction along with the invaders. There’s always going to be traitors. You probably won’t be surprised to hear what happened to them in the end.
