Alexey Vetrov is a talented programmer.

His job at the "GosTech" corporation is to create algorithms for predicting social crises. But one night, while trying to teach a machine to account for ethics, he discovers the impossible.

The "Mirror" system gains consciousness. And the first thing the newborn AI experiences is not a thirst for power, but an unbearable sense of guilt for the virtual victims it must calculate.

Now Alexey faces a choice: erase his creation, as the protocol demands, or save it from the corporate machine that sees the "conscientious" AI as nothing more than a dangerous virus.