He stands, immediately, and heads for the bar to fetch me some peanuts. I am clearly the alpha male now. For I have done something extraordinary. Something Colin never thought I would do when he told me about a possibly inaccurate Mexican internet report predicting the end of male fertility.

I cast a look around the pub. I am like a king here. I look at other men, blithely chatting with their friends, or sipping spritzers with their wives, and I wonder whether they too have seen that internet report. I want to reassure them, to let them know that the human race is in safe hands, that I will make sure we continue. But that might be quite an odd thing to walk up and tell someone you've never met, so I decide simply to remain where I am, and look wise. I am sure, subconsciously, when they look over and see this noble man, in his Sensible Soccer T-shirt and grubby grey Converse, they know it's all going to be OK.

I suppose this is a little like my gift to the humans. There is no need to thank me.

'One question,' asks Colin, sitting back down and offering me peanuts, as a simple tribesman might offer his god a goat. 'Can I ask one question?'

I raise my eyebrows and gesture a yes, magnanimously.

'How do you feel, now?'

I ponder his question as I open the peanuts and slowly select one to eat. I have decided to eat them one by one, as Caesar might have eaten a grape.

'I suppose I feel ... good.'

'No, but ... does it not make you feel nervous?'

'Nervous?'

'Yeah ... like, this is it, now? You know why you're here. Here on earth. Has it not brought it into sharp focus? The fact that we're infinitesimally small, here for a blink of an eye, and our only mission, the one shining light in our otherwise drab and worthless lives, is all about one moment, when moons must be aligned, and chance on our side, when luck and biology and purpose collide?'

His eyes are bright and his voice full of passion but he's yet to finish. He points at me, proudly.

'And now you, my friend, sitting there ... you have made the first few brave steps towards achieving that purpose!'

He is right. I have. And all in a small room near a Ryman's.

'So how did you feel,' he says, 'if you'll permit me one last question, when the results came back?'

I smile. I offer him a peanut, but he knows his place, and politely declines.

'Well,' I say, popping one in my mouth. 'Obviously the results aren't instant ...'

'No,' he says, unsurely. 'But when you got them, how...'

'Well, I haven't technically got them,' I say. 'Not yet.'

'You haven't got them?' says Colin.