"… Into stars?"

"Well, near the stars, anyway. And we could, like, harvest them!"

"For, what, light?"

"No, energy! All the energy on Earth comes from the Sun, so we could get more stars to have more energy."

"For… what sorts of things? I'm unclear on what uses of energy you have in mind."

"Eeeverything? Pretty much everything, yes. Growing plants, powering electrical stuff, or space travel itself—everything."

Anthony pauses in his gathering of ingredients. "Those sound like… the first, a thing that's quite easy to do with magic, the second, a thing I have no idea about, and the third – surely there are easier ways than draining a sun?"

"Yes but my point is that we currently use very little of our sun and we could end pretty much all scarcity while harvesting suns, there's no good reason for them to exist so we can just drain them and use their energy better."

"I'm pretty sure the sun does… things…"

"Like what?"

"Heating the planet, growing plants – but I guess you're replacing that second one – and I think it's needed for humans to live, and, uh, I don't know, there might be some sort of magic that needs it?"

"We can heat the planet much more efficiently than the Sun can, like more than ninety nine percent of the energy it produces goes nowhere."

"… It seems really weird to be casually talking about destroying the sun so we can – do it better?"

She giggles.

"That's my daughter, yes."

"Does she talk about destroying the sun a lot?"

"Amongst other things."

"The moon?"

"She doesn't think we need live on a planet."

"… What else? Small boxes floating around?"

"Spaceships! Flying arcologies!"

"… I don't think I know that word. And I'm not sure spaceships are very big, are they?"

"Well, not yet, but they could be. That's what you drain suns for."

"People haven't actually done this yet, have they?"

(He finishes putting stuff into a bag.)

"No, we don't have technology for that yet."

She doesn't, there are so many books.