The third planet had turned into a tiny sun and the aliens were sad to see the end of the human race.
What had gone wrong?
Toward the end of their reign on earth, the humans argued incessantly over a couple of fun subjects. One was evolution, the other was Intelligent Design.
The aliens thought this was hilarious. After all, evolution was a process that the aliens had set up so that the humans would improve over time. And, since the aliens were behind evolution, there you were — living proof of Intelligent Design.
But something went amok in the aliens’ projections. It had to do with energy. The aliens had devised a way to turn sunlight into trees and big lizards, then compact what was left over, and using the pressure of the planet, create oil. Beautifully simple. And simply beautiful. The oil was used to supply energy for the humans. A real symbiotic thing, thanks to the big oil companies who had played into the aliens’ paradigm.
The humans, being mere mortals and not into how they and the planet interacted, assumed the earth was running out of oil. A well-meaning group, environmentalists, stopped oil production and actually reduced human dependence on fossil fuels —
Without the humans to extract and rid the earth of oil, the planet kept producing it and pretty soon everything became a big black blob which sponged up massive solar energy and the whole kettle of fish went up in flames when someone lit a cigar.
Ain’t that a kick in the head?