Roadside Picnic

by Arkady Strugatsky

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo. Bureaucrats and politicians, who can’t afford to cultivate their imaginations, tend to assume it’s all ray-guns and nonsense, good for children.

Goodness. . . . You got to make it out of badness. . . . Because there isn’t anything else to make it out of.

Stop, don’t move! and can’t. And there probably isn’t enough time, anyway, it all happens so fast: Kirill steps over the empty, turns around, and his back goes right into the silver stuff. The only thing I can do is close my eyes. I feel weak all over, can’t hear a thing—just the sound of the cobweb tearing. With a faint crackle, like a regular cobweb, except louder, of course. I’m crouching there with my eyes closed, can’t feel my hands or my feet, then Kirill says, “Well, are we picking it up?” “Let’s do it,” I say.

The problem is we don’t notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places. A

Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.”

“Certainly,” said Valentine. “Imagine a picnic—” Noonan jumped. “What did you say?” “A picnic. Imagine: a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car pulls off the road into the meadow and unloads young men, bottles, picnic baskets, girls, transistor radios, cameras . . . A fire is lit, tents are pitched, music is played. And in the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that were watching the whole night in horror crawl out of their shelters. And what do they see? An oil spill, a gasoline puddle, old spark plugs and oil filters strewn about . . . Scattered rags, burntout bulbs, someone has dropped a monkey wrench. The wheels have tracked mud from some godforsaken swamp . . . and, of course, there are the remains of the campfire, apple cores, candy wrappers, tins, bottles, someone’s handkerchief, someone’s penknife, old ragged newspapers, coins, wilted flowers from another meadow . . .” “I get it,” said Noonan. “A roadside picnic.” “Exactly. A picnic by the side of some space road. And you ask me whether they’ll come back . . .”

Sometimes I ask myself, Why the hell are we always in such a whirl? For the money? But why in the world do we need money, if all we ever do is keep working?”

Man is born in order to think (there he is, Kirill, finally!). Except that I don’t believe that. I’ve never believed it, and I still don’t believe it, and what man is born for—I have no idea. He’s born, that’s all. Scrapes by as best he can.