He fell silent and stared at me.

“Well,” I said. “This is really impressive. Good work.”

“Thanks!” he said. “So can I have some Astrophage to test it?”

“Sure,” I said. “How much you want?”

“How about a hundred milligrams?”

I drew back. “Easy there, cowboy. That’s a lot of energy.”

“All right, all right. Can’t blame a guy for trying. How about one milligram?”

“Yeah, I can swing that.”

He clapped. “Hell yeah! Astrophage comin’ my way!” He leaned forward to me. “Isn’t it amazing? Astrophage, I mean? It’s like… the coolest thing ever! Again, God’s just handing us the future!”

“Cool?” I said. “It’s an extinction-level event. If anything, God’s handing us the apocalypse.”

He shrugged. “I mean, maybe a little. But man. Perfect energy storage! Imagine a battery-powered household. Like—you have a double-A battery, but full of Astrophage. That’d last your house about a hundred thousand years. Imagine buying a car and never having to charge it up? The entire concept of power grids is going to end. And it’ll all be clean, renewable energy once we start breeding the stuff on the moon or something. All it needs is sunlight!”

“Clean? Renewable?” I said. “Are you suggesting Astrophage will be… good for the environment? Because it won’t be. Even if Hail Mary finds a solution, we’re looking at a mass extinction. Twenty years from now, a whole bunch of species on Earth will be extinct. And we’re working hard to make sure humans aren’t one of them.”

He waved off my comment. “Earth’s had five mass extinction events in the past. And humans are clever. We’ll pull through.”

“We’ll starve!” I said. “Billions of people are going to starve.”

“Naaaah,” he said. “We’re already stockpiling food. We’ve got a bunch of methane in the air to hold in the solar energy. It’ll be all right. As long as Hail Mary succeeds.”

I just stared at him for a moment. “You are, without a doubt, the most optimistic person I’ve ever met.”

He gave me a double thumbs-up. “Thanks!”

He picked up the beetle and turned to leave. “Come on, Pete, let’s get you some Astrophage!”

“Pete?” I asked.

He looked over his shoulder. “Sure. I’m naming them after the Beatles. The British rock group.”

“I take it you’re a fan?”

He turned back to face me. “Fan? Oh, yes. I don’t want to exaggerate, but Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the greatest musical accomplishment in the history of mankind. I know, I know. Many would disagree. But they’re wrong.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But why Pete? Aren’t the Beatles named John, Paul, George, and Ringo?”