John Smith admired the red sunset, with the thin clouds at the horizon reflecting the last of the sun's rays. And the strange diagonal stripes in the sky in the background. He was setting up his homemade Dobsonian telescope, like he had every clear night recently, to see as much as he could of the aliens' progress on the Dyson swarm.
His wife Mary came out to check on him. "The news says the nuclear warhead they launched at it, it just went offline, no reason," she said.
"Well, that's that, then," said John.
"What do you mean, 'that's that?' How can you be so detached about this?" she asked.
"Well we tried everything we could to talk to them. We sent radio. We sent satellites. We did flash cards. Heck, we just plain exist, it's obvious we're here from our city lights. They just don't want to talk."
"But what if they don't know? What if they just accidentally destroy us? Maybe they all think telepathically and don't notice the way we talk at all! We have to try something!"
"Like I said, that's that," said John. "They DID respond to the nuclear warhead. They turned it off. If someone is pointedly ignoring you, you hit them, because they can't ignore that. We tried to hit them. They cleanly deflected it and continued on their way. They know we're here and they're purposely ignoring us."
"But you CAN'T just take no for an answer!" she said. "This is your life we're talking about here! My life, if you can't bring yourself to care about yourself!"
"Eh," said John.
"Eh! What if they come and suck up our oceans!"
"Have they done that yet?" asked John.
"No"
"So where did they get the matter for this Dyson sphere? What's the news say?"
"The news says they're tearing apart the asteroid belt, and Mars, and Mercury! They see streams of material going every which-way!"
"And so do I," said John, adjusting his scope. "Here I've got it focused on Mars now. Do you want to see? It's pretty clear what they're doing."
"No no," said Mary, "I don't want to look at those awful things. I wish I could make them all just go away."
"Well," said John. "They're mining Mercury. And Mars. And the asteroids. And Venus too. I can see that. But they aren't mining earth. Or the moon, even." He waved at the sky, pointing to a blank spot overhead where the stars still shown through. "They aren't even blocking the sun, as seen from earth. They KNOW we're here. They're purposely ignoring us. If they weren't the earth would be torn apart, or the sun would be blocked, or we'd be dead already in any number of ways. It's frustrating that they won't talk to us, but it's clear they're purposely leaving us alone."
"How can you KNOW that?" she asked.
"I just told ... nevermind. It's true. I don't know how to make you believe it, but to me it's clear. And there's nothing I can do about it anyhow. So, I'm just sitting back and enjoying the show."
Mary stared at him incredulously. "Man I wish I could be so nonchalant about this!" She stomped back into the house to watch more news.
"Try praying to them!" called back John. "I bet they can hear that too!" Then to himself, "of course, even if they hear it, they'll ignore that too." He swung the scope toward Jupiter to see what was happening to its moons.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "Humanity has to watch helplessly as a super-advanced alien civilization starts to build what seems to be a Dyson Sphere around our sun. (The aliens don't even bear us any ill will. Our sun just had the optimal size and age.) You and your team try to work out a plan to contact the aliens."