And somewhere, in a middle school across town, a little girl with pigtails was already sketching a hand that could draw rainbows. End.

That night, Maya lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She pulled up the old application cursor in her memory. Choose Your Path.

“You’re not just building robots in your notebook, are you?” He pointed to the margins of her lab report. Tiny circuits. Motors. A sketch of a prosthetic hand made from recycled printer parts.