Two Picnics

Today is the day of our company picnic, which is a wonderful opportunity for me, a person who works alone at night about seventy percent of the time, to hang out with my co-workers, who are awesome people. This year, like last year, there is a 'casino' theme- each attendee gets five hundred dollars worth of 'funny money' to gamble with, the prizes being vouchers which can be redeemed for items from our gift shop. There are also lawn games set up, such as horseshoes and bocce, a particular favorite of mine. I always have a good time, it's like a reunion for me, and it is the staff's one last breather before the utter madness of Fall Fundraiser season begins.

The other picnic of the title is Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, a 1971 science-fiction novel, the release of which was delayed by the Soviet authorities. The novel was published in translation in the U.S. in 1977. To my chagrin, I had not read the novel previously, though it is a landmark in the genre, which I claim to be a fan of.

Roadside Picnic involves the aftermath of an alien visitation, a visitation in which the aliens, technologically superior to humans, didn't even bother to interact with the natives... hence the title:


"Imagine a picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burn out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess — apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, comic, faded flowers picked in another meadow."

"I see. A roadside picnic."

"Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos."

The 'usual mess' in the six Visitation Zones consists of inexplicable objects and effects- there are deadly concentrated gravity pockets, drifts of burning fluff that incinerates native flora, 'witches' jelly' which can dissolve the bones of anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact. There are also sufficiently advanced treasures- hoops which suggest that perpetual motion might be possible, wonderful batteries which aren't depleted, and most common of all, 'empties':


He had loaded, locked, and sealed one safe and was loading up the other one -- taking the empties from the transporter, examining each one from every angle (and they’re heavy little bastards, by the way, fifteen pounds each), and carefully replacing them on the shelf.

He had been struggling with those empties forever, and the way I see it, without any benefit to humanity or himself. In his shoes, I would have said screw it long ago and gone to work on something else for the same money. Of course, on the other hand, if you think about it, an empty really is something mysterious and maybe even incomprehensible. I’ve handled quite a few of them, but I’m still surprised every time I see one. They’re just two copper disks the size of a saucer --about a quarter inch thick, with a space of a foot and a half between.

There’s nothing else. I mean absolutely nothing, just empty space. You can stick your hand in them, or even your head, if you’re so knocked out by the whole thing -- just emptiness and more emptiness, thin air. And for all that, of course, there is some force between them, as I understand it, because you can’t press them together, and no one’s been able to pull them apart, either.

No, friends, it’s hard to describe them to someone who hasn’t seen them. They’re too simple, especially when you look close and finally believe your eyes. It’s like trying to describe a glass to someone: you end up wriggling your fingers and cursing in frustration. OK, let’s say you’ve got it, and those of you who haven’t get hold of a copy of the institute’s Reports -- every issue has an article on the empties with photos.

Kirill had been beating his brains out over the empties for almost a year. I’d been with him from the start, but I still wasn’t quite sure what it was he wanted to learn from them, and, to tell the truth, I wasn’t trying very hard to find out. Let him figure it out for himself first, and then maybe I’d have a listen. For now, I understood only one thing: he had to figure out, at any cost, what made one of those empties tick -- eat through one with acid, squash it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he would understand everything and be hailed and honored, and world science would shiver with ecstasy. For now, as I saw it, he had a long way to go. He hadn’t gotten anywhere yet, and he was worn out. He was sort of gray and silent, and his eyes looked like a sick dog’s-they even watered. If it had been anyone else, I would have gotten him roaring drunk and taken him over to some hard-working girl to unwind. And in the morning I’d have boozed him up again and taken him to another broad, and in a week he would have been as good as new -- bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Only that wasn’t the medicine for Kirill.

There was no point in even suggesting it -- he wasn’t the type.

So there we were in the repository. I was watching him and seeing what had happened to him, how his eyes were sunken, and I felt sorrier for him than I ever had for anyone. And that’s when I decided. I didn’t exactly decide, it was like somebody opened my mouth and made me talk.

"Listen," I said. "Kirill."

And he stood there with his last empty on the scales, looking like he was ready to climb into it.

"Listen," I said, "Kirill! What if you had a full empty, huh?"


The protagonist of the novel, Redrick "Red" Schuhart, skirts the legal divide, at times working for the Institute which studies the Visitation Zone, at times working as a 'Stalker', an unauthorized treasure-hunter who enters the zone seeking alien artifacts for the black market. The novel is set in a remote area of western Canada, and takes place over the course of a number of years. As the years progress, there are hints of the Zone exploration bearing fruits- cars powered with alien 'So-Sos' replace petroleum dependent ones. Those individuals exposed to the Zone often bear mutant children, and as the suburbs 'plagued' by proximity are abandoned by civilians, a city populated largely by scientists and security forces grows nearby. The primary conflict in the narrative is the tension between the legal explorers of the zone and the 'Stalkers', with figures such as Red straddling the fence.

The aliens remain a mysterious offstage influence, their technology is never explained, and some of it is probably legendary- the tall tales of the 'Stalkers'. The novel really does seem to have a 'Soviet' vibe- the secrecy necessary for functioning in a morally gray milieu, the thriving black market, the lionization of noble scientists, the paranoia inherent to a security state in which 'shoot to kill' orders are in place... this isn't the typically optimistic American 'Sci-Fi' novel.

So, those are the two picnics that will occupy my time today- one a sunny, cheerful event, full of good fellowship, the other a dark, brooding tale of moral ambiguity. Me being me, I love them both... though I do prefer sunshine and friendship to 'grimdark' amorality.