Never were apartment blocks more menacing, more inhabited by mystery, fear and control than the bright, white towers of “Neustadt, New Town, a self-sufficient "living machine" on the outskirts of place and time... With the help of a motherly friend and colleague, Hannah leaves her violent husband and moves to a higher, and thus socially superior, floor of her building. There her life quickly begins to derail. Why is she being observed by her new neighbors and spied upon by the internal security system? Why did the previous tenant commit suicide? Hannah begins having visions - or are they? - of shooting her husband. She feels that everyone, including her lover, is conspiring against her. Her only hope is her friendship with Anna, a kind of "negative" of Hannah, who rebels against the all-pervasive control in New Town. But as their two identities begin to merge, and the boundaries between manipulator and manipulated blur, they are swept up into a spiral of violence that threatens the very foundations of the "living machine" New Town...