The innovation of the steam engine kickstarted the industrial revolution, but the Savery Company took it much further than that.  Close to a hundred years later, steam-powered automata are a common sight on the streets of London and automation is begining to replace workers in the factories and even on the street corners. Alan is the child of a middle class familiy whose father is a manager at a plant building high-performance military automata. Mary is the daughter of a plant worker, a poor but happy and healthy family. When the newest Savery Automata eliminates the vast majority of jobs in factories, Alan and Mary find themselves trying to deal with the new world before them and struggling with the idea of a future in a world that changes faster than they can keep up.