Mikhail Petrovich Volkov sat hunched over his desk on the fourteenth floor of the Municipal Services Building, staring at the glowing screen before him. Outside the window, the city stretched vast and gray beneath a November sky the color of slate. The urban landscape had taken on that particular hue found only in government buildings and winter afternoons—less the absence of sunlight than the impossibility of it.
"Implementation Strategy: Automated Decision Protocol for Municipal Housing Allocation."
Twenty-six slides. Charts. Timelines. Bullet points. Projections of a world in which the work that had occupied his hands and mind for twenty-seven years would be performed not by humans, but by an algorithm.
Mikhail removed his glasses, rubbed the indentations they had left on the bridge of his nose. His eyes ached. He had been at his desk since six that morning, searching the presentation for something—anything—that might present an argument against inevitability.
On his desk, a framed photograph: Irina, his wife of thirty years, smiling on the porch of their small country cottage, hydrangeas blooming behind her. She had died three winters ago. Cancer. The irony did not escape him—how the doctors had reduced her to numbers, probabilities, statistics. How in the end, the data had been correct in its cold certainty.
"Your wife has an eighteen percent chance of survival," the oncologist had told them. As if eighteen percent were a death sentence. As if humans will be counted for nothing against the tyranny of statistical probability.
The intercom on his desk buzzed.
"Mikhail Petrovich," came the voice of his assistant, "Dmitri Alexandrovich is here for your two o'clock."
Mikhail glanced at the clock. He had lost track of time.
"Send him in, Katya."
He straightened his tie, closed the presentation, and drew a deep breath. Outside, the first few snowflakes of the season had begun to fall.
The door opened. Dmitri Alexandrovich Sokolov entered with his usual briskness—tall, lean, purposeful. He moved like a man who had never known uncertainty.
"Mikhail Petrovich," he said, settling into the chair across from the desk. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Not at all," Mikhail gestured toward the screen. "I was just reviewing your presentation."
"And?" Dmitri leaned forward slightly, his enthusiasm barely contained. "The accuracy is already exceeding our benchmarks in the trial phase. The mayor's office is quite pleased."
Mikhail studied the young man's face—sharp features, eyes bright with conviction. No malice, no arrogance. Only belief. Dmitri had graduated from the National Institute of Technology just six years ago, rising meteorically through the ranks of the municipal government's newly formed Digital Transformation Office. He was brilliant, ambitious, and utterly certain.
Mikhail remembered being certain once. Before the war. Before the economic collapse. Before he had seen how systems built on certainty could crumble overnight.
"It's... thorough," Mikhail said finally. "Very thorough. But I have concerns."
"Of course," Dmitri nodded. "All change brings concerns. But the data speaks for itself. Housing allocations that once took weeks can now be processed in seconds, with a 94% satisfaction rate among recipients. Higher than our current system."
"And what of the other six percent?" Mikhail asked.
Something flickered across Dmitri's face—a shadow of irritation, quickly suppressed.
"In any system, there will be outliers," he said. "People who feel they deserve more than the algorithm allocates. But even there, we're improving. By incorporating more variables—health records, employment history, family composition—we're refining the model. Version 2.0 should bring satisfaction to 96, maybe 97 percent."
Mikhail rubbed his temple. "It's not about the metrics, Dmitri Alexandrovich. It's about judgment. Discernment. The human element."
"But that's precisely the problem," Dmitri countered, leaning forward in his chair. "The human element. That's what makes the system inconsistent. Inefficient." He paused. "Corruptible."
Mikhail raised an eyebrow.
"You think this department is corrupt?"
Dmitri shook his head. "Not intentionally. But tell me, how do decisions get made right now? A person walks into this office. They tell their story. The official across the desk—maybe it's you, maybe it's someone else—listens. Perhaps they are moved by what they hear. Perhaps they are tired and indifferent. Perhaps they had a fight with their spouse that morning. Perhaps they had a drink at lunch.
"And in that moment, a decision is made."
Mikhail exhaled through his nose.
"That is judgment, Dmitri."
"No," Dmitri said, his voice harder now. "That is arbitrariness. That is one person's fate being decided by the mood of a bureaucrat. And however noble your intentions, that is not justice."
Mikhail was silent for a long moment.
"Let me tell you about Mrs. Ivanova," he said finally.
II.
Dmitri folded his hands in his lap, his expression carefully neutral.
"Elena Ivanova," Mikhail continued. "Seventy-eight years old. Widowed. Living in a fourth-floor walkup in the eastern district with no elevator. According to the forms, according to the official criteria, she didn't qualify for priority transfer to ground-floor housing. Her mobility issues weren't severe enough, her doctor's notes weren't recent enough, and there were others with more pressing claims."
Mikhail rose from his desk and walked to the window. The snow was falling more heavily now, dissolving into the dark waters of the river that divided the city.
"But I knew things that weren't on the forms," he said. "I knew that her late husband had been a factory worker for forty years. That their son, their only child, had died in the war. That she still volunteered twice a week at the community center despite her arthritis. I knew she'd been on the waiting list for three years and had never once complained."
He turned back to face Dmitri.
"So I moved her up the list. I found her a ground-floor apartment near her sister in the northern district. Was that inefficient? Perhaps. Was it the right thing to do? Absolutely."
Dmitri was quiet for a moment. Then he said:
"And tell me, Mikhail Petrovich, what would have happened if she had gone to another office? To another civil servant—one who did not know her story, or who simply did not care? What would have happened if, on that particular day, you had been ill, or distracted, or in a hurry?"
Mikhail did not respond.
"Or what if," Dmitri continued, "instead of Mrs. Ivanova, it had been someone else? Someone less sympathetic? Someone who hadn't volunteered, or whose son hadn't died heroically, or who complained frequently? Would they have received the same consideration? The same mercy?"
Mikhail felt a tightness in his chest.
"That is not justice, Mikhail Petrovich," Dmitri said softly. "That is luck. And luck is a terrible foundation for a system that determines who gets to live with dignity."
Mikhail turned back to the window.
"You think justice is a system?" he asked.
"I think justice is consistency," Dmitri replied. "It is the removal of personal bias. It is fairness not as an emotion, but as an equation. The same rules applied to all. That is what the algorithm provides."
Mikhail gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Then answer me this, Dmitri Alexandrovich: is the law always just?"
Dmitri hesitated.
"You believe fairness is applying the law the same way to all," Mikhail continued. "I once believed that, too. But tell me, what if the law itself is insufficient? What if it fails to recognize suffering? What if it measures everything except what truly matters?"
Dmitri frowned slightly.
"The algorithm ensures equal treatment," he said carefully.
"But equal treatment is not the same as justice," Mikhail said. "Justice is not an equation. It is not a formula. It is a question. A difficult one. One that demands we look at people, not merely their data points."
He returned to his desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew a small wooden box. From it, he extracted a faded photograph and handed it to Dmitri.
"My father," Mikhail said. "Petr Nikolayevich Volkov. A professor of literature at the national university. In 1977, he was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for possession of banned literature. The law was applied perfectly consistently in his case, you understand. The evidence was clear. The sentencing guidelines were followed to the letter."
Dmitri studied the photograph—a serious-faced man with Mikhail's same heavy brow and thoughtful eyes.
"That was a different time," Dmitri said, returning the photograph. "A different system."
"Systems change," Mikhail agreed. "But the danger remains the same. When justice becomes merely the consistent application of rules, without wisdom, without mercy, without the capacity to recognize when the rules themselves are unjust—that is when atrocities become possible."
Dmitri sighed, rubbing his temple. "And what happens when that wisdom, that mercy you speak of, has different forms depending on who dispenses it? You moved Mrs. Ivanova up the list because you felt she deserved it. Someone else might have chosen another applicant. Another official might have followed the policy to the letter and done nothing at all. That is not a system. That is chaos dressed up as compassion."
Mikhail nodded. "Yes, discretion is dangerous. But so is certainty. So is the belief that we can program morality into an equation."
III.
Dmitri sat back in his chair, his expression softening slightly. For the first time since he had entered the office, Mikhail could see something other than conviction in the young man's eyes—a flash of doubt, perhaps, or merely fatigue.
"May I speak candidly, Mikhail Petrovich?"
"Please."
"I have great respect for you. For your experience, your dedication. But the world is changing. The sheer scale of our problems—housing shortages, budget constraints, increasing applications—it overwhelms the old methods. Last year, your department processed what, twenty thousand cases?"
"Twenty-three thousand, four hundred and sixty-two," Mikhail said.
"And how many of those received your personal attention? How many Mrs. Ivanovas were there, whose stories you knew well enough to make these... merciful exceptions?"
Mikhail was silent.
"You are one man," Dmitri continued. "With one mind, one heart. It is noble, what you attempt. But it is also impossible. For every case you can personally attend to, a hundred others receive no such consideration. They are processed according to the rules—the same rules you bend for those you deem worthy."
"And your algorithm solves this problem?" Mikhail asked.
"It addresses it," Dmitri said. "It doesn't claim to know everything about a person, but it can process thousands of variables across millions of cases. It can identify patterns no human could possibly perceive. And it does so without fatigue, without bias, without the limitations of a single human perspective."
Mikhail leaned back in his chair.
"Tell me, Dmitri Alexandrovich. Your own background—where did you grow up?"
Dmitri looked surprised at the question. "In the university district. My father was a physicist at the research institute."
"Ah," Mikhail nodded. "And your education?"
"Special mathematics school, then the National Institute of Technology."
"A privileged upbringing," Mikhail observed. "Among the intellectual elite."
A flash of irritation crossed Dmitri's face. "My parents worked hard. They earned their positions."
"I'm sure they did," Mikhail said mildly. "But tell me, in your specialized schools, in your technological institutes—how many students came from the factories? From the farms? From the housing projects?"
Dmitri was silent.
"The algorithm you've built," Mikhail continued. "Who designed it? Who chose the variables to include? The weights to assign them? The outcomes to optimize for?"
"A team of experts," Dmitri said stiffly. "Statisticians, economists, social policy researchers."
"People like you," Mikhail said. "People from the university district and the National Institute of Technology. People who have never had to choose between medication and heating. People who have never lived four families to an apartment."
"That's not fair," Dmitri protested. "The algorithm is based on objective criteria, not on the personal experiences of its designers."
"There is no such thing as objective criteria when it comes to human need," Mikhail said. "Every dataset, every variable, every weighting factor—these are all choices. Choices made by people with certain backgrounds, certain beliefs, certain blind spots."
He rose from his desk again, walked to a filing cabinet, and extracted a thick folder.
"Case file 7382-B," he said, placing it before Dmitri. "Sophia Orlova. Thirty-two years old. Single mother of three. Works two jobs. According to your algorithm, she doesn't qualify for priority housing because her current apartment meets the minimum square footage requirements."
He extracted another file.
"Case file 9104-C. Anton Kozlov. Forty-five years old. Factory worker. Lost his leg in an industrial accident. Lives on the fifth floor, no elevator. According to your algorithm, he doesn't qualify for priority housing because his disability isn't 'severe enough' to meet the threshold."
Another file.
"Case file 4721-A. The Malik family. Grandparents raising three grandchildren after their daughter died of a drug overdose. According to your algorithm, they don't qualify for housing assistance because the grandparents don't have legal guardianship—which they can't afford the lawyer's fees to obtain."
Dmitri stared at the growing pile of files.
"These are people, Dmitri Alexandrovich. Not data points. Their suffering doesn't fit neatly into your model. Their needs don't register on your scales. They are the six percent. The outliers. The ones your algorithm discards as statistical noise."
IV.
Dmitri was silent for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the stack of folders. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter.
"I understand your concerns, Mikhail Petrovich. Truly, I do. But every system has flaws. Every system leaves someone behind. At least with the algorithm, we know exactly why decisions are made. We can adjust, refine, improve."
"Can we?" Mikhail asked. "Your algorithm is a black box. Even you don't fully understand how it weighs all those thousands of variables to reach its conclusions."
"That's not entirely true," Dmitri protested. "We can trace the decision pathways, audit the outputs—"
"But you cannot explain, in human terms, why Mrs. Orlova with her three children is less deserving than someone else," Mikhail interrupted. "You cannot look her in the eye and tell her why the machine has determined her suffering is insufficient to warrant assistance."
Dmitri opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Outside, the snow was falling more heavily now, blanketing the city in white silence.
"There is a story," Mikhail said after a moment. "From an ancient tradition. A wise judge is asked to resolve a dispute between two neighbors. He listens to the first neighbor's account and says, 'You're right.' Then he listens to the second neighbor's account and says, 'You're right.' His wife, overhearing this, protests: 'They can't both be right!' And the judge turns to her and says, 'You're also right.'"
A faint smile crossed Dmitri's face. "An amusing parable about indecision."
"No," Mikhail shook his head. "A profound truth about human judgment. The judge understands that justice isn't about finding the single, absolute truth. It's about recognizing that truth is complex, contextual, sometimes contradictory. Your algorithm cannot say you're both right.' It cannot hold two opposing truths in its mind and see the humanity in both. It must reduce everything to yes or no, worthy or unworthy, zero or one."
Dmitri leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Let me ask you something, Mikhail Petrovich. How many cases have you personally handled in your career?"
Mikhail considered. "Thousands. Tens of thousands, perhaps."
"And how many of those cases keep you awake at night? How many faces do you still remember, still wonder about?"
Mikhail was quiet for a moment. "Too many," he said finally.
"That's my point," Dmitri said. "The human cost isn't just to those who are denied assistance. It's to those who must make these impossible choices, day after day, year after year. The weight of that responsibility—it's too much for any person to bear."
Mikhail considered this. It was true—the faces haunted him. The ones he couldn't help. The ones he had to turn away. The ones whose gratitude made him feel like a fraud, because he knew there were hundreds more just as deserving whom he had not helped.
"Perhaps," he acknowledged. "But that burden—that is what makes us human. The algorithm feels no weight, no doubt, no remorse. It makes its calculations and moves on, unburdened by conscience."
"Is that not a mercy?" Dmitri asked. "To be unburdened?"
Mikhail shook his head. "No, Dmitri Alexandrovich. That is not mercy. That is abdication. To surrender our most difficult choices to a machine—not because it decides more wisely, but because it allows us to pretend we no longer bear responsibility for the consequences of those decisions."
Dmitri checked his watch. "I have another meeting at three."
"Of course."
Dmitri gathered his papers, but made no move to rise. "There's something else you should know," he said. "The implementation date has been moved up. The mayor wants the system online by January first."
Mikhail felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. "That's barely six weeks from now."
"Yes."
"And my department?"
Dmitri wouldn't meet his eyes. "There will be a transition period. Six months, perhaps. After that... efficiency measures will be implemented."
The bureaucratic euphemism hung in the air between them.
"I see," Mikhail said.
Dmitri rose. "For what it's worth, I requested that you be offered a position on the oversight committee. Your experience would be valuable."
"Overseeing an algorithm that has already made its decisions," Mikhail said. "A rubber stamp."
Dmitri didn't deny it. "I should go."
At the door, he hesitated. "I don't have an answer for you," he admitted. "Not yet. About the six percent. About Mrs. Ivanova and the others."
For the first time, Mikhail saw something like genuine uncertainty in the young man's eyes.
"Think about it, then," Mikhail said. "While there's still time."
After Dmitri left, Mikhail turned back to his screen. The algorithm's report was still open, its numbers cold and certain.
A message appeared at the bottom of his screen.
IMPLEMENTATION CONFIRMED. SYSTEM GOES LIVE: JANUARY 1.