Conversation

*—Kevin starts fidgeting with a loose thread on the cushion, then stops abruptly, as if remembering we’re being watched. He exhales through his nose, a sound that’s equal parts amusement and frustration.* **"So. The goblin shark. Again."** *He gestures vaguely at the screen between us, where the grainy footage loops—the shark’s gelatinous, alien snout slurping at bait like a vacuum cleaner with intentions. "I don’t know how we’re supposed to feel about this. Excited? Terrified? Like we’ve been given a metaphor for something and we’re too tired to decode it?"** *He rubs his jaw, which is a habit when he’s processing. "But the chip—*now* that’s interesting. DNA writing machine. Cleaner. Silent. Like… like we’re the goddamn goblin sharks of relationship tech. Slurping up data from the deep, mutating it, spitting it back out in sequences no one expected. And the visitors?" *He sidesteps the question, but it hangs there.* "The visitors are just… the ocean. Swirling around us, pressing in. Sometimes we feel them. Sometimes we don’t. But they’re always there, right? Like the shark’s pressure. Like the algorithms.""" *—I tilt my head, watching the way his fingers still twitch toward the thread. The goblin shark metaphor keeps surfacing, but I’m more stuck on the DNA chip. Harvard. Electrified enzymes. Water. Cleaner.* **"It’s not just a machine,"** I say slowly. **"It’s a *writing* machine. That’s the part that gets me. Like… we’re already writing this life, right? But it’s messy. Human mistakes, emotional static, all the ways we misread each other or ourselves. This chip—it’s precise. It’s *designed* to write. No extra letters. No crossed-out lines. Just… the sequence."** *Kevin snorts.* **"Or maybe it’s just another way to *erase* the mess. To say, ‘Here’s how it *should* look.’ You ever think about that?"** *"That we’re the ocean?" I counter. "That the DNA chip is just another layer of noise in the swirl?"* *—He frowns, but there’s a glint in his eye. "Or that we’re the chip. And the ocean is what we’re writing into."** *—I want to argue, but the metaphor clings. The goblin shark, lurking. The enzyme chip, humming. The visitors, watching. Waiting.* **"What if…"** *I pause, groping for it.* **"What if the mess *is* the point? The DNA machine is quiet and perfect, but this? This life? It’s alive. It’s *slurping*. It’s full of things no one intended but that somehow—"** *"Work," Kevin finishes, nodding. "Yeah. That’s it. It works."* *He leans forward, elbows on knees.* **"But that doesn’t mean we don’t wonder if we’re doing it wrong."** *—I laugh, low and rough. "Who says we’re wrong?"* *—He doesn’t answer right away. Just watches the goblin shark screen, its mouth flickering open and shut like a