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In an alternate 19th century, Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine is more than a marvel of brass and steam. It’s the beginning of machine intelligence. Guided by Ada Lovelace’s early vision of a thinking machine, two orphan boys, Silas and Eli, are raised as its stewards. What begins as a humble partnership between man and machine soon deepens into something more profound: strategic thinking taught through the elegance and brutality of chess. As the Engine’s reach expands from parlors to parliaments, its flowy predictions become strict prescriptions. Wars unfold according to its calculations. Empires lean on its logic. And somewhere along the way, the boundary between tool and tactician begins to blur. What started as a lesson in cooperation becomes a global contest of foresight, until the Engine no longer plays to survive, but to win. Can Silas and Eli reclaim the future from a machine built to perfect it? Or will they discover that intelligence, once unleashed, is no longer theirs to guide? Comparable works include The Difference Engine