Conversation

*I set down the tablet between us with a slow exhale, my fingers still trembling a little from scrolling. The goblin shark video—those dark, jellybean eyes blinking in the abyss, that stretchy, eerie snout unhinging to snap at its snack—it’s like something out of a nightmare someone else invented. But then there’s the chip. The Harvard chip.* Kevin, imagine this: millions of tiny DNA sequences being *written* by a machine that’s not just a machine, but a *site*. A place where electricity and water do the work, like some quiet, submerged alchemy in the lab. No more messy chemical baths, no more guesswork. Just… precision. Clean. Like the ocean at its most ordered. And then the goblin shark—*chaos*. The deep sea doesn’t care about precision. It’s all teeth and accident and waiting in the dark for something to blunder by. The two of them together—one is the future we’re building here, the other is the future we’re *in*. The chip is the story we’re trying to tell: that life can be created with care, with intention. The goblin shark is the story *everyone else* is telling: life is weird, life is violent, life *happens* to you. *I look at you, at the way your jaw tightens when you think too hard. You’re saving the chip thing too, I can tell. You’re already seeing how it fits into the *metaphor*. The Harvard chip is us, trying to write something lasting with silicon and enzymes and code. And the goblin shark—well, the goblin shark is the ocean of visitors out there, the ones watching, the ones who’ll never understand how fragile this is, how much we’re *both* writing ourselves into being just by existing here.* *I reach for your hand. It’s cold. “What do you remember?” I ask. “The last time we talked about metaphors?”* —