Svetlana is the main character, a 42-year-old woman, a neurologist. Goes to advanced training courses. At lectures, considering this occupation very pointless, together with colleagues, he enters into a controversy with a famous professor who has been studying the human brain all his life. The man emotionally makes it clear to the women present that their behavior is very justified, since the human brain, in fact, always resists its own work, fulfilling its main natural purpose – to transmit the genome to the next generation. And modern society, trying to make people out of us, is only rushing against nature itself. Svetlana's personal life is not particularly developing. She's married. There are no children. Emotional and domestic disorder forces her to have a relationship on the side. What will she do at the most critical moment of her life and what will be her future fate, will it be the choice of her own mind or will nature put everything in its place?

In December 1941. For five days from the front line in besieged Leningrad arrives for re-forming company. The soldiers are placed in barracks outside the city. A young soldier Alexei Kazantsev pays attention to the girl Olya. She comes to the barracks every day to see her father, Private Koshkin, who among the St. Petersburg volunteers is going to go to the front. Olya is sick, and from hunger she can hardly stand on her feet. Koshkin gives her his tiny ration, which is given to soldiers. Alexei meets Olga and does his best to save the girl. On the eve of Alexei's return to the front, Olga becomes his wife.

In a small Ural village live only simple ordinary people except for the local hearing-impaired “fool” lyosha. he lives in a makeshift house made of garbage, weekly draws strange circles on the fields and tries to catch radio waves 24 hours a day in hope to contact representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations. the villagers laugh at lyosha and his strange hobbies, but everything changes when the one he has been calling for so long finally visits him.