A Russian plumber, Dima Nikitin, is also a municipal repair-crew chief and studying building engineering in an unnamed Russian town that is not yet 40 years old. Some of the city’s housing blocks are already in a grave state of disrepair. A burst bathroom pipe in one of the rickety communal housing buildings reveals a much larger problem, as the exterior wall behind the pipe has cracked and started to shift. When Nikitin goes outside to inspect the matter, he realizes the building has fissured from the ground up to the ninth and last floor.