When Ben finds out the hard way that a stellar career, a gorgeous wife, and clever kids do not insure against making your life into a total mess, he chickens out, travelling space and time to escape from it all. Riding a roller coaster of a lost loser, hero, and castaway, he ends up discovering a new world, a new life, and its meaning. The author, a physician in his fifties, has lived in Europe, the Middle East, and South East Asia. His odyssey, the dynamics of family, work, and the different cultures sharpened his eye for the writing on the wall of the new millennium, facing a failing global society which dreamt up nothing but apocalypse. Fed up with the renunciation of utopia and nauseated by scenarios of multi-planetary salvation, he wrote his first novel in "science friction," a fast-paced reckoning with our times. Served with a helping of humor and hope, it provides a glimpse of whatever keeps us locked out from paradise.