The First Spark
They met by accident — naturally.
It was 1958, in a hall of mirrors disguised as a science fair. Professor Dexter Dabblewick had been invited to present his “Sympathetic Circuitry Demonstrator,” a bewildering assembly of coils, lights, and an overconfident amplifier. The invention’s purpose, as he told the crowd, was to detect emotional frequency and translate it into visible color.
Lady Elowen Merriweather (not yet Dabblewick) was across the room, meant to be sewing curtains for the presentation stage. Instead, she had taken one look at the institutional gray fabric and decided the atmosphere was “morally beige.” By the time Dexter’s amplifier overheated, she had already rewired half the lighting rig to respond to laughter.
When the lights bloomed pink at the audience’s first chuckle, Dexter’s machine declared, “Response detected!” and promptly shorted out.
Dexter: “You’ve ruined my experiment!”
Elowen: “You’re welcome.”
The judges called it a tie. Dexter called it fate disguised as interference. Elowen called it Tuesday. They were inseparable by the following spring — arguing, building, and laughing through every project since.
Professor Dexter Dabblewick
Dexter approaches invention the way a poet approaches a rhyme: earnestly, endlessly, and with a faint suspicion that the next line will save the world. Trained in resonance physics but distracted by everything that glows, he blends mathematics with mid-century showmanship — a scientist with a sense of theater.
To the untrained eye, he is all precision and polish: immaculate hair, perfect tie, slide rule at the ready. But beneath the order hums an eccentric kindness. His Empathy Engine began as a side experiment — “a diagnostic for emotion in circuitry” — and quickly evolved into a lifelong pursuit.
“Empathy is measurable. Probably.”
Lady Elowen Dabblewick
Elowen is the Workshop’s color and its heartbeat. A textile designer by training, an inventor by accident, and an optimist by sheer determination, she translates feeling into form. Her fabrics shimmer when touched by laughter, her circuits hum in major keys, and her tea always overflows at precisely the wrong moment.
She is grace in motion until she trips, and inspiration when she does. Most of the Workshop’s best discoveries began as her apologies.
“Accidents are just inventions that skipped rehearsal.”
The Workshop
Perched on a cliff above the sea, the Dabblewick Workshop hums in amber light — half laboratory, half living room, half improbable miracle. The walls are lined with oscilloscopes and orchids. The Empathy Engine listens from its corner, its soft pulse keeping time with the surf.
This is where science learns to smile. This is where laughter becomes voltage. And this is where two people — and one very patient machine — keep trying to build a gentler future, one improbable experiment at a time.
Tagline
They build impossible things because possible ones are too polite.