"A Highly Unlikely Scenario," by Rachel Cantor In a not-too-distant future, in a world much like our own, a young man sits in a white room, answering a white phone, listening. In his world, fast-food chains and political philosophies are one. Jack-o-Bites chefs and Whiggery Piggery employees brawl with kebab sticks in the public square, and neo-Baconians keep safe houses to protect themselves from the Cathars at the Strawberry Parfait. At the center of it all, Leonard, a customer-service rep for a Pythagorean pizza company, must save the world by time traveling and speaking to historical figures through the Neetsa Pizza support line. While admittedly highly unlikely, this scenario will in many ways be familiar to fans of absurdist fiction and film. The feckless boob character with a menial job who's drawn into the plot against his will, the oddities of the landscape, the beautiful woman who can explain all - these are recognizable markers for readers of Douglas Adams, Jasper Fforde or, more recently, Gary Shteyngart. You've seen "Brazil"? You've read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? You'll find yourself right at home in these pages. Ryan Heshka Quirkiness abounds in Rachel Cantor's alternate universe: Distance is measured in versts and cubits, public transportation is carried out in wagonettes, and policemen wear Chipmunk Patrol sashes. Everyone has an Afro, and currency is called lucre. While not strictly nonsense, these elements give the book an Alice in Wonderland feel. Yes, we're rooting for Leonard, the customer-service rep, just like we're rooting for any schlimazel in a jam, but the satirical twist threatens to push the book in an unhappy nihilist direction: It's all random, so what does it matter? There's a coldness to whimsy that sometimes creeps into books of this stripe. All the wackiness can seem a bit mechanical and contrived. Reading a book whose author has forced his characters into random what-ifs only for the purpose of creating bizarre juxtapositions can feel like watching a remarkable dancer without a face: impressive, but ultimately soulless. Happily, "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" does not get bogged down in such empty displays of dexterity. While Cantor delights in strangeness and demonstrates a rakish disregard for sense, she's not wallowing in nonsense, nor is she dishing up whimsy just for whimsy's sake. At the center of the book, her hero is real, and his problems feel urgent. First, Leonard's human connections ring very true. His political-activist sister spends most of the novel engaged in an uprising against the Leader and his National Unity program. Leonard loves and cares for her son, Felix, with a sweetness and sincerity that pushes right through the novel's cartoonish landscape. At one point Leonard takes Felix to the bathroom, just to get them out of an awkward situation. When Felix says he doesn't really have to go, Leonard says, kindly, that since they're there, he might as well try, and Felix agrees. This one deft stroke draws both these characters firmly in flesh and blood, and Leonard's sense of responsibility to his little nephew becomes a driving force in the book. Then there is Leonard's beloved dead grandfather. Leonard was cruel to his grandfather just before his death, and he wants to make amends. Now he has a mentor from the past named Isaac the Blind, who speaks with this grandfather's voice, using his idioms and terms of endearment. Adding this warm layer to Isaac's strange instructions on time traveling and world-saving deepens the novel immeasurably. Beside some real humans, "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" delivers a real history. Rather than making up aliens or talking animals, Cantor shows us actual historical figures and events, genuine artifacts of humanity, starting with Marco Polo, or Milione, as he calls himself on the Neetsa Pizza customer complaint hotline. He may sound like a crazy person, yammering on about the Great Khan, the Desert of Lop, Saracens, Tartars. Of course his reality is only far-fetched in that it is so far back in our past that it seems foreign to us. In the library where Leonard's love interest works, we encounter something called the Voynich manuscript - an unreadable book written in code, with drawings of "botanical, astrological-­astronomical, biological and pharmaceutical subjects." This sounds so silly it must have come from Cantor's imagination, but the Voynich manuscript exists in the ­crazy world we live in, exactly as it appears in the crazy world of the book: drawings, unreadable code, mysterious origins and all. Roger Bacon is an actual 13th-century philosopher who just happens to share a name with a breakfast food, appropriate for a novel in which philosophy and food are linked so tightly. Cantor upends history to create a mad plot out of substantive materials. After all, there were versts. There were wagonettes. As Leonard discovers early in his journey, "this wasn't a Neetsa Pizza test, this wasn't the joke of a loony - this was real, whatever real was." By layering the ridiculous inventions of her mind with the ridiculous facts of the world, Cantor creates a novel about being incredulous and certain at the same time, about listening without judgment, about acting on faith. Sure, the "municipal compost heap" raises a wry smile, but by the time we're traveling back to the 13th century, cubits don't seem so bizarre, and the landscape of the book folds over itself until the familiar becomes as odd as the extraordinary. A dystopian satire; a story about ­storytelling, believing and listening - "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" is ultimately a history of our own strange world. Or, A Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World By Rachel Cantor Melville House. Paper, $16.95.