Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

Thanks to my Earth scientific journals, they know all my nutritional needs and how to synthesize the various vitamins in labs. Once they solved that, smaller, less-focused groups worked on making them taste better. That’s more or less up to me, actually. Lots of taste tests. Glucose, common to both Eridian and Human biomes, comes up a lot. The best thing, though, is they managed to clone my muscle tissue and grow it in labs. I can thank Earth science for that. They were nowhere near that technology when I first showed up. But that was sixteen years ago—they’re catching up quite well. Anyway, it means I can finally eat meat. Yes, that’s right, I’m eating human meat. But it’s my own meat, and I don’t feel bad about it. Spend a decade eating nothing but odd-tasting, vaguely sweet vitamin shakes and then see if you’ll turn down a burger. I love meburgers. I eat one every day.