I've never been particularly good at leaving things the way I found them.
Apparently the warning signs started before I could even talk.
I had a mania for keys.
Not toy keys.
Keys.
Guests would come over and I'd make a beeline for them.
Mom needed to leave?
Where are the keys?
Gone.
Hidden somewhere by a toddler with absolutely no transportation requirements of his own.
I don't even remember what I did with them.
I just knew keys meant something.
I also had one of those childhood addictions nobody puts in the parenting books:
licking 9-volt batteries.
Just to feel the sizzle.
Apparently electrocution needed a snack-sized trial version.
Then, around seven, I discovered another problem.
Spaghetti required far too much manual labor.
So I sacrificed the very expensive remote-control truck I had only recently acquired through the traditional childhood financing model:
Please can I get one.
Please can I get one.
Please can I get one.
For weeks.
Possibly months.
Eventually they broke.
I got the truck.
It lasted a couple of days.
The toys never really stood a chance.
I needed a motor.
The truck had one.
Transaction complete.
Fork.
Decapitated it.
Attached a motor.
Two huge D-cell batteries.
Glue.
Tape.
No adult supervision worth mentioning.
And just like that:
FRANKENSTEIN V1 WAS BORN.
The automatic spaghetti winder.
There was, however, one minor engineering oversight.
I had failed to consider RPMs around what might reasonably be described as a pleasant eating experience.
In hindsight, safety goggles for anyone in the immediate vicinity would've been a nice touch too.
Nobody wants to eat spaghetti at 11,000 RPM.
My science teacher was shocked.
I was delighted.
Because beneath the flying pasta and minor household outrage...
the fucker worked.
That was really all the encouragement I needed.
My dad was my hero. Thankfully, by eight, he had taught me to weld.
He was the one who taught me how to actually make things.
Which was incredibly useful.
Because glue and duct tape can only get a kid so far.
Then I saw Tim The Toolman Taylor on Home Improvement.
And suddenly my entire existence had been validated.
More power.
Bigger tools.
Questionable engineering.
Things exploding for completely foreseeable reasons.
Finally. Someone had developed a philosophy around this.
Dad was my hero.
Tim Taylor became the patron saint of everything that followed.
I didn't need therapy.
I needed Binford.
Even today, my PC has a giant Binford Tools sticker on it.
Some kids had heroes.
I had a fictional tool company whose engineering philosophy appeared to be:
What if we gave it more power and dealt with the consequences later?
Now that made sense.
Which was unfortunate news for every piece of powered equipment my family owned.
Lawn mower.
Snowblower.
Weed Whacker.
AC.
DC.
Two-stroke.
Four-stroke.
Didn't matter.
I didn't discriminate.
Anything with a motor was living on borrowed time.
If it had a motor, it was a donor.
My family would buy these things under the strange assumption that they were going to continue cutting grass or processing food.
I saw them differently.
I saw a powerplant.
And a powerplant was being wasted if it wasn't attached to something wildly inappropriate.
Eventually, stealing motors wasn't enough.
I wanted a race car.
Although “go-kart” suggests a level of engineering and adult supervision that simply wasn't present.
I had a lawn mower.
I had lumber.
Close enough.
So out came the wrenches and vicegrip.
Lawn mower dead.
Mission underway.
There was never a blueprint.
There was certainly no engineering department.
There was whatever happened to be lying around.
Anything passed for wheels.
Same size?
Same shape?
Irrelevant.
Staggered fitment.
Some chain.
Plywood.
Of course plywood.
Lots of plywood.
Several 2x4s.
Glue.
Screws that were almost the right size.
And enough duct tape to rival the lunar module.
Then I needed a front end.
Fortunately, my sister had a brand-new GT Snow Racer.
Had.
Because I cut the front half off it with a Sawzall.
Ski.
Steering assembly.
Steering wheel.
The works.
Then Frankenstein'd the whole thing onto the wooden chassis.
This seemed entirely reasonable at the time.
To be fair, my sister had already survived me fastening enormous speakers to the dashboard of her '81 Chevette with 3.5-inch deck screws.
By this point she'd stopped expecting normal behavior.
Mercy had replaced surprise.
The finished machine was essentially a lawn-mower engine bolted to a picnic table with the nose of a children's snow racer grafted onto the front.
Which presented several engineering challenges.
Chief among them:
2x4s AREN'T GREAT FOR AERODYNAMICS.
They're heavy.
They're flexible in all the wrong places.
And pushing several of them through the atmosphere at speed is roughly equivalent to racing a garden shed.
Didn't matter.
They were available.
And available beats perfect when you've already destroyed multiple pieces of family property and are now emotionally committed to the project.
The objective was simple:
Make it move.
Then:
Make it move faster.
There was one small problem.
I didn't have a transmission.
In conventional engineering, this would be considered fairly serious.
I considered it a design choice.
Direct drive it is.
One wheel stayed jacked off the ground while I started the engine.
Engine running.
Wheel spinning.
Hop in.
Kick the stick away.
And off we went.
Clutch?
No.
Transmission?
No.
Launch control?
Way before its time.
There was another minor oversight.
I'd mounted the engine in an orientation its manufacturer apparently hadn't considered.
I remembered to turn the gas tank upright.
Very responsible.
What I hadn't considered was that the oil pan had also changed orientation.
Which meant the oil was no longer particularly interested in lubricating the engine.
I didn't get far.
Soon my approximately 780-pound racing machine was sitting beside the road smoking.
And another discovery.
It worked considerably better downhill.
Turns out a lawn-mower engine is no match for something with roughly the mass and aerodynamic properties of a 1970s Cadillac.
So what I'd actually built was an extremely heavy shopping cart...
that may or may not have been improved by the engine.
Still.
It moved.
Technically.
FRANKENSTEIN V2 WAS ALIVE.
Brakes?
Let's see if we even need them first.
Then we'll worry about brakes.
Suspension was provided by my spine.
Crash protection consisted entirely of optimism.
And if something didn't fit?
Fuck that.
Another hole.
Cut something off.
More washers.
Bigger hammer.
Glue it.
Tape it.
Try again.
This wasn't craftsmanship.
It was mechanical insurgency.
And every disaster taught me something.
Chains come off.
Wood bends.
Throttle cables stick.
Hot exhausts are, in fact, hot.
Oil apparently prefers being in the oil pan.
And that was the magic.
Because eventually this pile of garbage
this dead lawn mower
this amputated snow racer
this collection of bicycle parts and construction lumber
was a vehicle.
Not a good vehicle.
Not a safe vehicle.
But it moved.
And I'd made it move.
There is something dangerously addictive about that moment.
Yesterday it didn't exist.
The parts were never supposed to meet.
Everyone else saw junk.
I saw possibilities.
Pull the starter cord.
The engine coughs.
It catches.
The whole ridiculous thing starts vibrating.
And my immediate thought isn't:
"I wonder if this is safe."
It's:
"I WONDER HOW FAST IT'LL GO."
Machines weren't the only systems I liked testing.
There was also school.
A few years after discovering my dad's Swiss Army knife — possibly the coolest object I'd ever seen — I made the perfectly sensible decision to bring it to Catholic school.
That went well.
“Mrs. Iervella, Stephen brought a knife to school.”
Shortly afterward:
“Mrs. Iervella, Stephen said holy shit in class.”
Apparently Catholic school and I had reached an irreconcilable theological difference.
They kicked me out.
So off I went to public school.
Fresh start.
New administration.
Same Stephen.
By my final year at West Dalhousie Elementary School, I had somehow managed to get nominated for valedictorian.
Then, just weeks before graduation, I mooned the entire school from across the field.
So much for the fresh start.
This presented administration with a difficult decision.
Their prospective valedictorian had just shown everyone his ass.
The principal — an ex-cop — was furious.
I got kicked out.
I was delighted.
No stupid graduation speech.
Summer vacation started early.
Several adults pissed off simultaneously.
WIN. WIN. WIN.
And then computers showed up.
Which, in hindsight, was probably a terrible development for everyone around me.
My school had just installed a brand-new computer lab.
486s.
Serious machinery at the time.
And apparently someone decided it was a good idea to put me in the same room with all of them.
I did what came naturally.
Started pulling things apart.
Not physically this time.
Worse.
Poked around.
Changed things.
Broke things.
Kept going.
Until the entire lab went down.
Not one computer.
THE LAB.
They couldn't figure out what I'd done.
So they called in outside specialists.
Actual specialists.
For a kid.
Everyone was pissed.
I don't remember exactly what they called the problem.
I strongly suspect it wasn't:
“promising young systems architect.”
But the pattern was pretty well established by then.
Give me a machine.
I'll figure out how it works.
Give me a system.
I'll break it in two seconds.
Give me a rule.
I'll find out what happens when you ignore it.
But childhood eventually ended.
The habit didn't.
The toys just got more expensive.
The motors got bigger.
The consequences got less theoretical.
And apparently the Frankenstein program never really ended.
Years later came the e-bike.
Legal limit in the city:
300 watts.
Mine:
2,700.
Subtle.
This was before e-bikes were really a thing, so nobody was the wiser.
Cops included.
✅ Dinky little helmet
✅ Loads of power
✅ Streets are my personal racetrack
✅ Way too much weed
✅ Batshit crazy
I'd pull onto the road and pass cars uphill.
Who was going to stop me?
The helicopter was the only piece of machinery the police had that could keep up 😂
And with roughly 72 km of range, I could go pretty much anywhere.
And recharge anywhere.
The drivers were confused.
The cyclists were furious.
And once again...
I WAS DELIGHTED.
Another pattern.
It was still legally a bicycle.
Which, to me, meant traffic laws had become more of a loose collection of suggestions.
There was, however, one familiar engineering oversight.
Brakes.
Again.
The kit arrived.
I bolted it on.
And I became so interested in acceleration that I completely neglected the possibility that eventually...
I might need to stop.
So my 2,700-watt missile retained its stock mountain-bike brakes.
Perfect.
Rear tires lasted about a week.
Between the motor, my weight, and driving it like Michael Schumacher had been handed a prototype...
they never really stood a chance.
I bought tires and tubes by the box.
Thankfully, somebody at the factory in China had shown some concern for human life and installed a speed governor.
At:
87 KM/H.
On stock bicycle brakes.
Safety first. Always.
Call that Frankenstein Version Whatever.
I'd stopped keeping count.
Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped limiting myself to machines I could physically bolt together.
I started building businesses.
Then systems.
Then software.
Same disease.
Just fewer fires.
The questions never changed.
How does it work?
What happens if I pull this apart?
Can I make it better?
Can I make it faster?
And what happens if I connect it to something it was never supposed to talk to?
The 2x4s became code.
The donor motors became APIs.
The Frankenstein projects stopped fitting in the garage.
And then came possibly the biggest mistake in the entire story.
THE ADULTS GAVE ME ACCESS.
The one thing I'd never really had.
Resources.
Real resources.
Not plywood.
Not lawn-mower engines.
Not somebody else's snow racer.
Cloud infrastructure.
Serious infrastructure.
Google.
Amazon.
Microsoft.
The kid who built machines out of whatever garbage he could get his hands on suddenly had industrial-grade computing infrastructure.
Little did they know.
My entire life, the insanity had been constrained by one thing:
What I could physically get my hands on.
That problem had just disappeared.
Nothing could stop me now.
Like Frank Williams, I just had to survive long enough.
Because I'd always known what I was.
I just never had the tools.
The materials changed.
The machines got considerably more interesting.
But the process?
Same.
Rip it apart.
Steal the good parts.
Build something.
Break it.
Fix it.
Make it faster.
Repeat.
Some people call that engineering.
I still think of it as:
TAKING THE ENGINE OUT OF THE LAWNMOWER.
Because sometimes you don't have the right materials.
You don't have a factory.
You don't have investors.
You don't have permission.
You have an engine.
A few 2x4s.
And an unreasonable determination to make the bastard work.
Turns out...
that's enough.
And if the thing you need doesn't exist...
BUILD IT.
That's Genesis Club.
A machine shop for people who look at all this ridiculous technology suddenly sitting in front of us and have absolutely no intention of leaving it in the box.
We were promised flying cars and hoverboards.
Instead, we got Elon's dumpster truck and toasters with eavesdropping software.
Fine.
We'll build the future ourselves.
WELCOME TO THE GENESIS CLUB.
BRING YOUR 2x4s.
Stay tuned.
Series 2 · Episode 2 · In the workshop