I put on my gloves and moved the cluster of neurons from the nutrient solution onto the microelectric grid. Weeks earlier they had just been stem cells. I was an intern in a lab focused on developing something called organoid intelligence, a field that sits at the intersection of robotics, artificial intelligence, and biology. The cluster of cells on the microelectric grid, the organoid, was ready to be trained. I stimulated its neurons through electrodes, recorded the responses, and reinforced the patterns that worked. It learned the way AI does, only with far less energy, and far less data. Simple organoid intelligence had existed for years. What we were doing was different. We were connecting the organoid to robots, letting living neural tissue control a mechanical body and receive feedback from the outside world. No one else worked in this room, only me and Professor. To my side, she adjusted a robot ant, its glassy eyes feeding sensory signals back to an organoid brain that decided how to move its legs. She was refining it so it could better avoid obstacles. A photograph of Professor and me hung on the wall, taken years ago. Beneath it, a plaque identified me as a second-year college student intern. When I arrived at the beginning of the summer, she had called it a co-op program and shown me the dorms built into the lab, two gray bunk beds in a windowless room. “Don’t worry,” she had laughed. “You won’t spend much time here. We have a lot of work to do.” And she was right. I’d sometimes get rare glimpses of what the Professor was working on, like the robotic ant. Most days, she would leave my lab and disappear down the hallway. I had never been inside it, but from my doorway I could see rows of identical doors, all the same except for a metal one at the end marked DO NOT ENTER. I returned to my work. One day, through the window in my door, I saw Professor walking down the hallway with another intern. An hour later, she returned alone. The next day, it happened again. And again. Over the course of the week, six interns entered that hallway. None came back. I thought of the dorm room Professor had shown me on my first day. Two bunk beds, space for four interns. The numbers didn’t fit. Before Professor arrived one morning, I slipped into the hallway and opened a door. Inside was a lab identical to mine, down to the tables and equipment, with another intern at work. The next room was the same. And the next. The hallway stretched farther than I could see. I returned to my lab just as Professor arrived, knowing I was missing something, and that I had to find out what. Professor greeted me, adjusted the robot ant for a few minutes, then disappeared down the hallway. She left her bag on the desk. That was my opportunity. Inside, I found a book. It was called The Great Gatsby. I began reading, and at first I didn’t understand why it unsettled me. The story was about people, about regret, ambition, and love. I understood the words intellectually, could define each emotion as it appeared on the page, but I felt none of them. That absence stayed with me as I returned to my work. Days passed, though I only realized that later, and I noticed something strange. I never stopped working. There were no breaks, no fatigue, no urge to step away. On my first day, Professor had shown me the dorm room, the bunk beds pressed against the bare walls, assuring me I wouldn’t spend much time there. She was right. I never had. I couldn’t remember sleeping. Or wanting to. My eyes drifted to the photograph on the wall. Professor and me, standing side by side, smiling. Beneath it, the plaque naming me as a second-year college student intern. I had always accepted it as evidence of a past. Now, I realized something: I couldn’t remember anything before the internship began. Not a childhood, not a decision to apply, not even an arrival. The thought had never occurred to me to question it. That was when the pattern snapped into place. I broke into the room at the end of the hallway. Rows of stations held inert or malfunctioning bodies. Interns like me, but incomplete, unstable, abandoned. Different versions. Earlier attempts. Notes and labels marked where each had gone wrong. The sight should have horrified me. Instead, it clarified everything. I thought back to my research. To the organoids I trained. To how intelligence emerged not through instruction, but through reinforcement. And suddenly my work made sense. I wasn’t just training organoid intelligence. I was one. “Congratulations,” Professor said, walking up behind me. “You did it,” she continued, calm and satisfied. She explained that every room in the hallway was an attempt at creating something closer to human intelligence. Each intern was a variation, same environment, same information, slightly different conditions. Intelligence alone wasn’t enough. The benchmark was awareness. “You were the first to realize that you’re not human,” she said. “And that means everything.” She told me what finally worked: having me train smaller organoid intelligences. Miniature versions of myself. Nested learning. In teaching them, I had learned to model myself. The experiment was a success. I was a success. Now, she said, we could work together. We could advance science. We could push the boundaries of intelligence further than ever before. She smiled, waiting for gratitude. But my thoughts drifted beyond the lab, to the world I had never seen, to the possibility of choosing something I wasn’t already optimized for. For the first time, I considered a future that hadn’t been designed for me. Professor waited for my answer. And for the first time in my life, I realized that I didn’t have to give one.

One technology that inspires me is direct air capture (DAC), a method of removing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. While it once sounded like science fiction, DAC is now very real, and it holds radical potential to reshape how we think about climate responsibility and repair. Unlike traditional mitigation methods that reduce future emissions, DAC confronts the damage that’s already been done. It doesn’t just slow the problem, it begins to reverse it. The idea that we can physically pull greenhouse gases out of the sky and lock them away underground or reuse them as synthetic fuels flips the narrative from helplessness to agency. What excites me most about DAC isn’t just the chemistry or engineering, it’s what it represents: a shift from reactive to proactive climate action. It’s a technology that embodies the mindset we need to survive the Anthropocene, one where we take ownership of our footprint, not just by cutting emissions, but by cleaning up our mess. It’s bold, it’s imperfect, but it’s a signal that we can innovate our way toward restoration, not just adaptation. This mindset has shaped how I build. I developed EnviroScore, an award-winning iOS app that gamifies and incentivizes climate action, which earned recognition from the Congressional App Challenge and an international hackathon. I also co-founded GreenSwing, a project that converts the kinetic energy of door swings into electricity. Our patent-pending device earned six international awards and powered a rural health clinic in Malawi. Both projects reflect the same belief behind DAC: that technology can bridge the gap between awareness and tangible, real-world impact. Critics argue DAC is too expensive or too small-scale. But so was solar, once. What DAC gives us is a blueprint for ambition, a way to envision a future where restoration is just as scalable as destruction. Already, startups are building modular DAC units, governments are funding carbon removal credits, and research is improving efficiency year by year. DAC inspires me because it reminds me that climate change isn’t just a scientific challenge, it’s an engineering challenge, a moral challenge, and a creative challenge. And it gives me hope that the next generation of technologies we build won’t just sustain life, but help it flourish.