Ray: “It’s the garage, Bill. The garage itself. Not some ordinary space filled with nails, wood shavings, and the detritus of middle-class American living. No, this garage, it’s alive. Like one of those shops in the old stories, the ones that weren’t there yesterday and won’t be there tomorrow. But today? Today it hums with energy, a transmitter of something grander than mere human thought.”
Bill: “Ah, yes, the old alchemy. A conduit, not a container. You don’t walk into it—you get absorbed by it. The space warps reality, don’t you see? Market speculation bleeds through the walls like the very vapor of high finance, all those zero-interest loans seeping in like opium through a bloodstream. Ideas aren’t born there, they’re inhaled—snorted off the concrete floor with the dust and grease of all the past failures and half-baked schemes.”
Ray: “Exactly! The garage isn’t some workspace for soldering wires or slapping together motherboards. No, it’s a cosmic atelier, where the air itself whispers secrets to those who dare to breathe deeply. And the people? They’re just… passengers. Hitchhikers on the road to brilliance. The garage is driving, always has been.”
Bill: “It’s a ritual space, then. The garage works on you the way a junkie works on a needle—methodically, compulsively. You think you’re shaping the future, but the future is really shaping you. And the rent? Let’s talk about that—six figures for a little square of concrete and corrugated steel. You’re paying for the privilege of being swallowed up by this beast, thinking you’re starting a company when really you’re just part of its metabolism. Feeding it.”
Ray: “And that’s the genius of it, Bill. The garage doesn’t want your ideas. No, it’s after your belief. You step inside thinking you’re going to change the world, but it’s the garage changing you. Transmitting, processing—every entrepreneur that passes through is like another brick in the wall. They come in with dreams, but they leave with… startups. Products. Things. The garage doesn’t care for things—it’s the process it craves.”
Bill: “A grand scam, isn’t it? The startup is the fix, and the garage? That’s your dealer. You think you’re on the verge of revolution, but it’s just the same trip, over and over, selling you visions for what you can’t quite touch. And when the market crashes? The garage disappears like smoke. But by then, it’s already in your bloodstream, man. It’s already altered you. Made you its instrument.”
Ray: “So the real secret isn’t the founders. It never was. It’s the garage, alive, timeless, waiting for the next great idea to stumble through the door. Wozniak? Jobs? They were just tuning forks, vibrating to the hum of something much older. Much bigger. And the future? That’s just another echo, another reverberation of what the garage wants to be born.”
Bill: “Exactly. You don’t create the next big thing in there—you channel it. The garage is an ancient hunger, disguised as innovation. You think you’re feeding it your mind, but really, you’re just feeding the machine. And by the time you figure that out? It’s too late. You’re already hooked.”