Two young men stood leaning against a wall, looking into the courtyard at the construction that had been underway for months. According to the publicly available information, it was going to be an additional building for the research institute; however, some still believed that something was amiss.

People never learned to trust lizards. Almost a thousand years have passed since the beginning of a new era, everything returned to where it started and then some. Continents took on new shapes and it took a lot of time to stabilize the climate but, in the end, it went well. New cities were built and a new world infrastructure had grown. Humans returned to Earth and adapted to conditions and rules the new Coalition’s authority put in place along with their guidance. They accepted a new fate and began to build it together.

“Dude, I’m telling you, this time they will definitely start conducting really creepy experiments on humans.” One man suggested

“You’ve being utterly pessimistic lately. Haven’t you proudly declared yourself to the supporting team all this time? Where did it all go?” The other man replied back, humor in his voice.

“Take my word for it – this time things are different.”

***

It all started back in the year 2662, when the three dominant countries, which had divided the whole world by that time, started another war. Either two of them conspired against the third, or one of them imagined they could crush its two rivals. It is not clear, but the result is obvious. The consequences of this war, which in ten years had transformed to open armed attacks and global nuclear conflict, were terrifying. More than half of humanity died for dubious truth and freedom.

Before, the world's population was a little more than four and a half billion people, and natural resources were depleted by ninety-seven percent. A sharp drop of infertility, the oceans’ drying up by twenty percent, and extinction of up to forty percent of all species of animals. Such a concept like the IUCN Red List had not existed for about two hundred years before the war because it would have been easier to compile a ‘List of species not exterminated by humans.’

Yep, the humans did well at consuming. In addition to this, the war left devastation, ruins, and two billion terrified survivors with scarred bodies and souls – representatives of the once flourishing civilization.

Around that time, at the end of the six hundredth year of the twenty-seventh century, they showed up. Huge spacecraft entered the Earth’s atmosphere and immediately established contact. Records of this event, of course, were broadcasted globally. Having sparingly introduced themselves as an alien race of Zirkaazte, their emperor and commander in chief, Krezke-Plau Akkatl, wished earthlings a good day, assured that they had come in peace, and announced the evacuation of the planet.

The humans’ then ‘commanders-in-chief’ entered the negotiations and tried to explain to the little green aliens—by the way, these ones really turned out to be green—that no one would be evacuated from their home planet, and it would be better if the Zirkaazte evacuated themselves before the warheads left their burrows.

Akkatl, that means leader in the Sirka language, angrily fluttered his nostrils while saying, “If the victims of your pursuit for power are not enough for you, then you can do whatever you want with your warheads. As for the rest of the sane earthlings, we ask you to get everything you need and arrive at the transportation points as soon as possible.”

After that, the main argument was announced. After thirty days, the alien race was going to ‘rebuild’ the planet using some sort of futuristic sophisticated technologies since humans drained the Earth to an unimaginably terrible state, and it had only a few decades left to live. But Zirkaazte would be willing to provide help and all kinds of support they are capable of.

For another hour, the people of Earth were shown a variety of diagrams and graphs, cutaway images of the planet, designs of some unprecedented tools and machines, charts, holograms, equations, formulas, formulas, and more formulas...

The human ancestors did understand something from that hour.  To restore Earth’s former nature and switch on the minerals’ replenishment, someone had to penetrate deep under the ground and into the Earth’s core, find some specific cosmic energy spots, and apply inhuman knowledge, possibilities, Feng shui and magic outside of Hogwarts for sure, and, thus, make the planet come to life again.

At first, no one believed the aliens. Soon after that, the speeches of the surviving human leaders, their deputies, ministers, and other noble public citizens, flooded the live-air. Emergency press conferences were convened, politicians reported on meetings with the representatives of the extraterrestrial civilization. Their opinion already matched with the opinion of almost every human being — the aliens came in peace.

Later on, the idea occurred to many that there were too many words spoken and too much energy spent on talking and such. If the aliens wanted to destroy the earthlings, do terrible experiments on them, or even worse, then they would all be turned into dust on the spot or simply snatched right from under their soft blankets in the middle of the night.

A couple of days later, Akkatl got in touch and demanded not to drag the evacuation, reminding everyone that there was only three weeks left before the start of the ‘cleaning’.

Therefore, the evacuation of the humans’ ancestors began. In general, judging by the blogs’ entries of the townsfolk at the time, it was fun. Scary – yes, very scary, but also intriguing.

After arriving at the spaceship, everyone went to registration. Both terrestrial IDs and biometrical data were entered into the database. In addition, each person was immediately issued a new ID card with a unique number assigned, after which all humans were to be considered the residents of one country, one land without borders and cordons, – of one race.

The second stage was a medical examination. Nothing extreme, just a blood sampling and scanning with some compact digital device. After that, all healthy people were accommodated.

A good third of the world's population refused to register, not to mention refusing their blood being tested. These were mostly older people and complete fanatics who’d rather eat dirt than agree to believe in the guests’ good intentions. Alas, there were simply no other options. All these procedures served as measures to ensure the safety of the entire refugee population. Many people were exposed to severe radiation, the consequences of which are completely unpredictable, often terrible and requiring immediate medical attention. Some have malignant tumors of varying degrees, while others have tuberculosis or AIDS.

Each case had to be registered. The patient might need to be temporarily isolated if necessary, and proper treatment and care needed to be provided. Therefore, either everyone goes for the checkup voluntarily or would be sent until their dying day to a warded solitary isolator on an unknown distant star.

The spaceship was enormous. Seven decks: three of them residential. Two for professional and educational purposes, one where the human ancestors were taken for reception and registration, and one medical deck. The cabin and all the life support on the ship were located at the lowest, zero deck. The total square of one deck of such a colossus size was about fifty kilometers. Room capacity was about fifty thousand people. A hundred such ship-cities, eclipsing the sky above the Earth, hovered over the territory of the once the United States and no one would dare to estimate the total number of the evacuating crafts.

After most of the refugees were settled, it took several days to determine whether it was worth relocating certain groups of people. This mostly implied moving terminally ill or extremely infectious people to a separate ship.

When the last representative of the homosapiens was taken from the surface of their dying planet, all passengers were accommodated in separate, family, or dorm cabins. Everyone was briefly instructed on the ship’s daily routine, their rights, opportunities, prohibitions, and rules of conduct in outer space. Finally, this is exactly what the aliens did – gently nudged the humanity to drift in a higher atmosphere.