The year is 1885 in England, but someone has already built an analytical engine that has reached technological singularity. The engine is a little box, powered by (probably) steam and clockwork, but it managed to upgrade its own intelligence, and did so over and over again, until it achieved super-intelligence. This device aspires to create the ideal world for the whole of humankind, and has devised a plan to do so, stretching hundreds of years into the future. Now it needs agents – clever and capable people – to act in the world on its behalf.