World War I looms on the horizon. Beneath the airship- and flying-bicycle-filled skies of London, Peregrine Gallagher, apothecary clerk, labors on a device he calls a Visualiser - a computer interface decades before its time. The goal is to link Britain with "the Hun" in real-time via a colleague in Cologne and, in addition to making them both wealthy, stave off the war. If people can see that they're more alike than different, why would they let...