Kozyavin toils in a labyrinth of bureaucratic offices, where every form and stamp defines the day. His supervisor tasks him with a single, peculiar assignment: locate another employee named Sidorov. With quiet, steady resolve, Kozyavin accepts the mission and steps into a world built on order and routine, a world that often feels dreamlike as he sets his course.
Determined not to stray, he moves in a continuous, unbroken line, insisting on a straight path that cuts through ordinary spaces and strange obstacles alike. He threads a path through a sewer and into the city’s dull rhythms until he reaches a wall toppled by a wrecking ball. At a bustling construction site, he asks the foreman if anyone has seen Sidorov, but the deafening noise swallows his words. The foreman signals the entire site to halt, and after a sharp scolding, Kozyavin persists, repeating his question and pressing on with his search.
His walk takes him next into a bright fair where acrobats interrupt their routine as he passes, the performance briefly unsettled by his presence. He then encounters a violinist; the music grows progressively erratic as Kozyavin continues to press about Sidorov. The violinist offers no response; Kozyavin nudges him and pocketed the bow, turning the encounter into another small, puzzling vignette on his long pursuit.
Climbing a set of surreal stairs, he enters a commission building and lights a small lamp to cut through the darkness of a gallery filled with paintings and antiques. There, he discovers two individuals who resemble thieves; Kozyavin remains oblivious to their ongoing burglary and calmly asks whether they have seen Sidorov. Surprised, they direct him toward a new direction, and he continues his search, still walking in a straight line.
He steps into a ground-level pipeline that seems to bend and smooth under his steps, then drops onto a dry veld beyond. Undeterred, he crosses the open landscape, climbs a mountain to its summit, and arrives in a desert where he finds a colossal skeleton of a prehistoric beast. He walks along the backbone as if it were stairs and even destroys part of the ancient relic, then asks a paleontologist if he has seen Sidorov. The paleontologist offers no reply, and Kozyavin continues onward, unshaken by the silence.
A body of stagnant water does not stop him; he swims toward the distant horizon, toward the icy edge of the world—Antarctica. His odyssey continues as he circumnavigates the planet in a perfectly straight line, moving through landscapes that seem to bend around his stubborn goal, never quite finding Sidorov.
Eventually, he returns to his office, having failed to locate the elusive coworker. Kozyavin reports to his superior with a shrug and slides back into his desk to shuffle the familiar paperwork, the day ending as it began: with order restored but a mystery stubbornly unresolved.
