All he wants is his own room and a kitchen where he can bake chocolate cake. He dreams of it while he sleeps in tents in parks and under the freeway.

A friendship born out of the ruins of a nation, a dangerous journey home, and a 40-year search for the truth.

Trials and dangers abound for an interplanetary social worker.

"The Planetary Tourism Agency always compensated the family members of the unlucky victims of dematerialization, giving the evergreen excuse that on Earth they didn’t have enough experience managing such advanced equipment, because extraterrestrial technicians were reluctant to train human crews to run teleport booths. Maybe there was a bit of truth in that. Surely newly trained human teletransport specialists would get off the planet as fast as they could: artists, scientists, athletes—they all ran from their birth world as soon as extraterrestrial credits made them understand where true happiness could be found."

Behind the tabloid story of the “murder orphan” in Queens.