“Good afternoon, Danny. It’s good to see you again.”

ISAAC. Intelligent Semi-Autonomous Automated Computer. He created his own digital assistant when he was in junior high. He loved acronyms then.

One of the little cleaning robots trundles past, whirring as it sweeps the floor. Another one of his kid inventions. “Good afternoon, ISAAC,” he says clearly and distinctly. “Please set the thermostat at 70 degrees.”

“Of course, Danny,” the voice replies. He hears the A/C start up through the open vents. The air smells like an empty refrigerator.

Most of the space inside the workshop is taken up by his ElectriCar. He built that in high school too, long before anything rolled off the line at Tesla. Magnetic suspension, independent steering, carbon-fiber chassis over a titanium frame, zero to sixty in 4.3 seconds. It could outrace every gas-powered muscle car in town. He thought it would revolutionize the auto industry, but his father said there was no infrastructure to support it, and nobody would ever pay what it cost to make one. Now it just sits by the roll-up door. He never takes it anywhere; in his real life, he drives an Audi.

Attached to an overhead track is a giant robotic claw that he uses for assembling larger inventions. There’s his worktable, with another robotic arm bolted to the bench. Big Waldo and Little Waldo. His apprentices and his helpers. His extra set of hands. Big Waldo can bend steel and lift an engine block. Little Waldo can weld and solder and place a circuit board.

The PR people adored this place. They saw it as a way to leverage Danny’s minor celebrity. It featured prominently in several puff pieces when SharpTech was first raising money.

But he rarely comes down here at all anymore. He’s not sure why he keeps it, to be honest.

Carrie had a theory, of course. She stopped by about seven years ago, on the trail of a multistate serial embezzler. She had a long layover at SFO, so they worked in a quick visit.

“I never thought you would be so nostalgic, Danny,” she said when he brought her down here. She laughed at the blank expression on his face. “Don’t you see? You built a toybox for all your favorite things.”

They didn’t talk much after that. He had to get back to work, and she had to catch her flight.

Maybe if Danny had thought more about home appliances and less about jetpacks, he might have patented the Roomba or Alexa twenty years before they hit the market. But like most of the things he built back then, these were only gadgets, something to do in his spare time. Other people got rich from the inventions he dismissed as kid stuff. He always thought the real work would be something bigger.