On a slight rise by the shore of a sea that, many millennia hence would be called the Arabian Gulf, two figures lurked beneath a flimsy canopy. Below them, a spacecraft stood out against the sand. Drones bustled around the loading ramp and the animal pens surrounding it.
One of the figures picked idly at a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth with one of its talons. The other glanced at it.
“Do you mind?”
“Sorry,” it pulled its claw away quickly, “dinner was stringy.”
“Oh?” Looking down at the ranks of creatures, realization dawned. “You didn’t.”
There was their species' equivalent of a shrug. “Seemed like a waste and there are so many of them.”
“What did you try?”
“The bipeds.” It waved a scaled claw at the pen containing the most sentient of the planet’s population, which was not saying much.
“We’re not meant to eat the self-aware ones, you know.” It paused. “What was it like?”
It picked some more out of its teeth. “Tasted like chicken.”
“Doesn’t it all?”
“True.”
Out over the water, clouds boiled, lightning flashed, and thunder rolled. The weather machines that had been visible earlier were now obscured by a rain front that was doing a fair impression of a demonic manifestation. Ironically, given how the event about to happen would be remembered, the reverse was true.
“Weather system seems to be early. Will we finish loading before it hits?”
“With time to spare,” it consulted the local group mind. “Looks like the other sites are almost done too. By tomorrow there won’t be any sign we were ever here.”
“Bit of a shitter for the ones we aren’t taking.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“Not the dead ones.”
They stood in silence for a while longer as the drones carried on their work.
“Time for a last snack then. We have some of the ones with horns left. They’re delicious.”
The other one perked up. “Oh, yes, they are.”
Another roll of thunder came in from the sea.
“Bit of a waste if you ask me. I’m not sure I entirely see the point of this project. It’s basically a gigantic piece of performance art to fuck with these things when we’re gone.”
“It will be funny when they realize though.”
“Yeah.”
The first spots of rain hit the sand as they walked towards the waiting ship. By morning, the entire beach, and most of that part of the world, would be submerged under rather a lot of water.