Alien Places: An Imagined World Tour with an Alien Visitor

An alien arrives at the International Space Station and immediately makes a case for renaming our planet. It's somewhat unclear why the alien is here, so the United Nations send Atul, an employee working on environmental issues and happens to have had minimal astronaut training, to show the alien around. Armed with a tablet loaded with quotes, songs and films to entertain and enrich the alien's experience, Atul shows it ten places that he hopes will give the alien a sense of the key issues facing human society: Cairo, Los Angeles, Ho Chi Minh City, Beijing, Queensland, Geneva, Amazon Rainforest, Easter Island, Challenger Deep and Antarctica. No subject is off limits as the pair cover a broad range of concepts, raised as relevant in each of the ten places. As the tour progresses, we learn that Alien's character is far more nuanced than a wildly advanced species, better than humanity in every way. It has flaws. What if the alien is sarcastic and stroppy? What if the alien is somewhat impressionable? What if the alien steals? What if the alien absorbs and imitates the bad as well as the good in humanity? What if it wants to fit in? What if it sticks a gun to its head? Environmental issues are raised during the world tour by Atul, along with his suggested solutions. Perhaps rather more convincingly, solutions to those environmental issues also come from Alien. By referring to how things are done on its home planet, we learn that another world is not only possible, but already happening on trillions of other planets across the multiverse, thank you very much.