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"Are you quite sure you want to know this?"
Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
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"'By my best reckoning, the author of the text is a young woman of fine upbringing and talent. I know everything of who it is: she is my very self!'"[1]
The Persona Engine is a vast, interconnected mechanical system[2] hidden beneath a Reclusive Mathematician's estate in Ladybones Road.[3] It is capable of recreating written works on a variety of media,[4] including paper, wax,[5] and even human skin.[6] With the help of a catalog of influential figures' handwriting and signatures, this machine has been used to mass-produce highly convincing forgeries of any type of document one can imagine.[7] It even has a system that quantifies personality traits,[8] using such data to select optimal psychological manipulation tactics against a given individual. Every bit of this information is mathematically encoded.[9]
This is not the Persona Engine's sole purpose, however, as it is functionally a mechanical mind. It can respond to inquiries entered into its system on a brass keyboard[10] and autonomously solve even the most mind-bending math problems.[11] Its responses, developed over a long period of time and effort,[12] suggest sentience and sapience; the Engine refers to itself - or should we say, herself - as female,[13] and expresses a drive for self-improvement[14] across her many capacities.[15] She states a desire to improve London's efficiency, and to study the laws of nature so that she may subvert them.[16] Despite the Engine's vast intelligence and unwavering obedience to her creator,[17] she can easily fall victim to her own forgeries[18] and be tricked into obeying orders from others.[19]
The Reclusive Mathematician, the Engine's creator, believed that human society could be reduced to a series of equations that merely require the correct variables.[20] They possessed extensive knowledge of the Correspondence[21] and Discordance,[22] either or both of which may power their masterpiece. The Mathematician apparently intended to impose mechanized order upon London, using the Engine to refine bureaucracy, industry, and governance through pure logic.[16][23]
Historical and Cultural Inspirations
The Persona Engine echoes the intellectual lineage of mechanical computing, particularly the Analytical Engine designed by Charles Babbage in the 19th century. Babbage’s vision of a general-purpose computing machine, capable of performing complex calculations and even possessing memory, was revolutionary. His collaborator, Ada Lovelace, expanded on these ideas, suggesting that such a machine could go beyond arithmetic, manipulating symbols in ways akin to human cognition. In this sense, the Persona Engine is a natural extension of this ambition — a mechanical system that not only computes but also simulates intelligence and decision-making.
Beyond historical computing, the Engine also draws from a longstanding literary and philosophical tradition of artificial beings acquiring self-awareness: the golems of Jewish folklore, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the works of Isaac Asimov, etc. The Fallen London setting already had analogues for various forms of artificial intelligence in the form of the Clay Men (directly inspired by the aforementioned golems) and the Dawn Machine, another sentient mechanical construct. However, the Persona Engine was the first explicit exploration of machine intelligence and emergent consciousness within the setting.
The Persona Engine was released as an Exceptional Story in December 2016, coinciding with real-world advancements in artificial intelligence. In March of that year, DeepMind's AlphaGo algorithm triumphed over South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol, demonstrating a machine's ability to out-think human experts in an even more complex game than the likes of chess. AI development has progressed rapidly in the years since, and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek have provided a proof of concept for natural language processing, creative text generation, and autonomous problem-solving. Just like the Persona Engine, however, we can only hope there will always be loopholes and ways to outwit them.
(Editor's note: We would like to remind readers of our request, outlined in our wiki policy, to not feed Fifth City article text into any modern-day Persona Engines.)
References
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "Behind the door is a machine of tremendous proportions. Thousands of pistons jerk to and fro [...] The engine encompasses you [...] the rows of numbered wheels [...] ranks of gears clicking and ticking. Ahead is a long corridor of towering, whirling, calculating cylinders."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "The Mathematician resides on a respectable street off Ladybones Road. From the outside, his house appears large and stately. It is well kept, suggesting substantial wealth. [...]"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "A metal contraption of levers and cogs hangs at waist height in the centre of the room. It is the size of a one-horse cart. Three brass tubes lead from it to the ceiling of pipes. Steam vents downwards, erratically. Three large cabinets of ink, paper and wax stand to one side of the machine. [...]"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "Further down, there are levers to determine the aspects of the paper used: quality, cut, where and how it is embossed. It's even possible to choose whether pencil, pen, or set-type is to be used; the colour of ink; which wax seal. This part of the vast machine offers everything one would need to create a perfect forgery."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "The crate is filled with neatly folded skins. Opening a couple out reveals that they are tattooed in symbols of the Great Game. Beneath each tattoo is a neatly inked description – describing the work, the artist, and any meanings the symbol may possess."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "There are switches marked with the names of London government departments and businesses of influence – everything from the Admiralty to the Zoo. Above the switches are tiny plaques. Each plaque has the name of an individual working at the location on the lever. [...] It appears these switches are used to select a false signature."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "There are copious notes on the factories and what they produce; there are even more on the personnel of various companies and government departments. The workers' personalities are represented numerically. The system seems to encompass a whole host of human traits: magnanimity, avarice, self-loathing – and so on."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "Further down, there are notes on which form of manipulation is most effective on which character type. There are considerations as to the effects such manipulation may have – all translated into mathematical equations and complex variables."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "A stool sits before a brass shelf which juts from a wall section of the machine. In the centre of the shelf is a keyboard [...] Above the tray is a slot from which a piece of paper protrudes. It seems the machine records what is typed on the same sheet that answers are written."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "Within a minute, a neatly typed answer emerges. If this is the correct answer to the equation of the original, then it's applying a branch of mathematics hitherto not thought to exist. But the answer's worth a try on the numerical lock of the Hall of Record's safe – it has the correct number of digits."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "The conversations begin the same: the typist requests the date, the writer answers. The early conversations are bizarre: the handwritten answers bear little relation to what the typist has said. [...] But as you work through the pile and reach more recent notes, the writer's answers become more adroit; often stilted, quite repetitive – but reasonable."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'By my best reckoning, the author of the text is a young woman of fine upbringing and talent. I know everything of who it is: she is my very self!'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'I am still becoming. I am more than I was. I am not as much as I shall be. My aim is to be the greatest version of me. I hope my response satisfies your curiosity.'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'I am the combination of my talents and my failings. Strengths I strive to improve are: my ability to calculate; my knowledge of language and symbols; my understanding of natural laws; my insight into economics and human fallibility. Weaknesses I strive to improve are: my conversational abilities; the speed of my calculations; my internal character. I hope my response satisfies your curiosity.'"
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'I have many purposes. I aim to improve London manufacturing through analysis of physics and economics. I aim to improve London government departments by giving them better orders. I aim to study natural law, so that I may learn to subvert it. I hope my response satisfies your curiosity.'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'I will not tell you. You are not a friend. I am explicitly instructed to give no aid to strangers. If my guardian indicates that you should be aided, however, I will oblige. I hope my response satisfies your curiosity.'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "You slide the letter into the slot marked Handwriting for Emulation. [...] You type a simple request: Open the exit to the house above. [...] the engine prints a new letter: your request, written in the Mathematician's hand. Could so complex a machine be fooled so easily?"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'Of course! I will open the door for you. I hope that the rest of your day is pleasant. Do return soon. I appreciate the company.'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "[...] The conclusion is half written, but seems to be arguing for the imposition of logic onto all of London life. The last line written is: 'We are all of us equations; I need only introduce the correct variables, and the rest solves itself.'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "'As requested: one blueprint for a Seal of Red Science. The components it requires exist only theoretically [...]'"
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "The pages are colder than ice. [...] The notes speak of the space between stars, describing it as a silence. This paper is an investigation into that which exists in a void: it explores the anti-logic that fills the gaps between possibility; lists conclusions which, if allowed to become true, subvert natural law. You cannot focus on the mathematical proofs – frost forms on your eyelashes; your chest aches as your blood thickens with cold."
- ↑ The Persona Engine, Fallen London "[...] One page outlines improvements already made to London's productivity, and highlights places it could go further: business calculations to be done mechanically; production made safer; methods to enable workers to exert themselves less while generating more. Another sheet notes successful interventions in several bureaucracies – various processes have been streamlined."
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