Mike has been abducted by aliens in this irreverent examination of the alien abduction mythos. He awakens not knowing how he got where he is. Bob, a wisecracking “alien,” greets him. Bob looks exactly like a human being. After much questioning, Mike discovers that people from Bob’s planet have been abducting humans for thousands of years. As part of that conversation, Mike learns that the reason Bob looks so much like a human being is that Earth was seeded by Bob’s planet. Due to circumstances beyond their control, the colony was reduced to two directly related individuals, who proceeded to populate the planet.

All of the resultant inbreeding led to the development of an unusual variant of Bob’s species. This variant fights with each other, kills each other, establishes countries with different languages, and engages in other sorts of pathology. The reason Bob’s people continue to visit and abduct individuals is to determine how to fix the problems that they caused by starting with only two people. In the course of the wide-ranging discussion, Mike learns that many famous individuals have been abducted or visited by the members of Bob’s race.

Mike convinces Bob to take him to their original planet. This takes quite a bit of convincing; several individuals have to be persuaded that this is a good idea. Mike does end up convincing them, however. Once on the planet, Mike’s ulterior motive becomes finding a way to stay on the planet and live in this newly revealed Eden-like world.

In order to accomplish his plan, Mike needs to develop an entirely new way of interacting with other people. He has to retrain himself; eliminating any vestiges of Earth-like aggressive and violent behaviors. Unfortunately, Mike doesn’t really understand how badly his environment has affected him.