Trading Aliens

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They say trade is not only something we can’t live without but a superior and even inevitable step in the evolution of human relations. 

Anyway there’s this alien spaceship coming from outer space sometime in the near future. These aliens are coming from their far away home exploring the galaxy in search of knowledge and resources to fuel their inventions and experiments. They are obviously from a more advanced civilization but unlike what we expected, they are not hostile. They even hold true as a tenet the concept that commerce is a better way to fulfill your goals when interacting with other intelligent life-forms.

So there they are, in our upper atmosphere, probing our planet and our superior culture and civilization, deciphering our languages and exchanging messages with us. They are willing to trade with us whatever we might find useful. They have superior technology capable of interstellar travelling and for efficiently generating vast amounts of green energy, they have superior firepower and cures for cancer, AIDS, violence, and various genetic and degenerative diseases, they have a unified theory of the Universe, quantum computers, the end of famine and poverty, the best ways to deal with stress and conflict management, the art and philosophy beyond modernism, the answer to all the questions regarding our origins, God or the after-life. They even have weird entertainment like time-warble, double-brainers or woogie-machines and the good news is of course that they are friendly and willing to sell all this stuff.

Now while we ponder in awe at this wondrous alien-scape and the magnificent luck that struck us, they, the extraterrestrials, are scanning our planet to find something that can serve them. Unfortunately they find out that we live in urban settlements that sum up to several billions individuals, that our psychological energy is drained out because of overwork, useless entertainment and compulsive accumulations of information, our bodies are a total mess because of medicines we took and genetic manipulations we undergone to become more beautiful, slender, younger, smarter, artistic and to live longer. They find out that all our forests are long wiped out in order to print leaflets, posters, zines, menus, holy books, money, brochures, law codecs and monthly accounting. They find out that all the wild animals have gone extinct long time ago because they couldn’t adapt to our civilizations and the only life-forms beside humans are the mosquitos, rats, stray dogs and cockroaches. They see that all the plants are gone and everything we eat and grow is only commercial variants of genetically modified corn in various colors and tastes. They find out that our water is heavily altered with chemicals and the air is full of dust making it almost impossible to breathe. They test the soil and realize the fertile soil has long been buried under highways, football stadiums, concert halls, parking lots and shopping malls. They grudgingly discover that all our natural resources like sweet water, wood, gold, silver, mercury, iron, copper, fossil fuels, uranium, titan and diamonds have been depleted in the manufacturing of cell phones, LCD monitors, i-pods, home furniture, weapons, ear-rings, door-knobs, wallets, street lights, cars, paintings, suitcases, fences, motorcycle helmets, flags and so much more. 

 
Having discovered all of these, the aliens admit there is nothing left on our planet that can get them any good use so they cannot trade with us because we have nothing to offer. They respectfully thank us for our hospitality and express their joy for finding intelligent life in this part of the Galaxy. After this they gather up the products they had to sell and leave towards another solar system, while we are left behind with unsatisfied lust just like a homeless child staring at a candy showcase on the Christmas Eve.