A private detective takes on a missing person's case. He has no leads and his usual contacts draw blanks. He is ready to give up. But then he is contacted by the world's first artificial intelligence. The AI suggests he talk to an old friend about the case. The detective does and things get moving.
However, as the detective follows the trail of clues, he becomes more and more suspicious. The AI is much too involved, suggesting people to talk to, providing documents, even bribing police and modifying official records. The detective is no closer to finding the missing person and wonders if they ever existed.
Then a key source turns up dead clutching an old photo of himself with the detective. A photo the detective knows was never taken. Digging deeper yields fake and reconstructed documents at every turn, many with some reference to another world. It can only be the AI. But why?