It was a laboratory more immaculate than any he’d come across in the States; certainly more elaborate than the Orbotica lab, which had always been a midden of discarded parts and clotted wires. This lab occupied a whole floor of the house. There were no windows looking out across the lawn here; the lab was a white cell, climate-controlled, dust-free, sealed off from the outside world. To his left stood a bank of 3D printers, one of them humming away over a shape that appeared to be a series of nested spheres. To his right, a dozen robotic arms ending in pincers or needles craned from the wall. Beside them was a laser cutter, and farther on, behind plate glass, were several metal lathes.
For the first time since he’d left San Francisco, Quinn felt a jolt of the old thrill—the thrill that h
