Fifty machines. Three months. Zero components.
March 1978. The educational and demonstration complex «Сфера-80» must be put on the assembly line by the first of September. The order from the ministry has been signed, but there are no parts and no quotas.
For Alexey Morozov, an engineer with the memories of a person from the 21st century, this is not just a problem—it’s a personal challenge. You can’t assemble half a dozen computers “on the cheap.” He needs factory capacity, and nobody intends to grant him access to it.
Alexey makes a hard decision: the “Second Echelon” goes on a raid through the backstreets of the planned economy.
The meticulous designer Lipatov and trainee Pashka travel to Kaluga to learn how to turn factory defects into indestructible keyboards. The cynical Oleg and the intelligent Natasha take on Alexandrov, pulling scrapped cathode-ray tubes out from under a bulldozer. They will have to repair other people’s machines, smuggle cargo in bread trucks, and solder at night—proving that the instruction is not a law, but a tool.
«Сфера-80: В поисках Юности» is a production drama about those who built the digital future with a file and a soldering iron.