From Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Tale of the Troika, what may be the only elevator in literature with personality (pace Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator).

An unbelievable hubbub reigned on the platform of the first floor in front of the elevator cage. The door of the shaft was open, as was the door into the elevator itself. Many lights were burning, the mirrors were sparkling, and the polished surfaces gleamed. Under the old, peeling banner that proclaimed “Let’s Get the Elevator Up by the Holiday!” huddled a crowd of curiosity seekers and people wanting rides.

They were all listening politely to Modest Matveevich Kamnoedov, the deputy director, who was giving a speech before some electricians from the Solovetsk Boiler Supervisor’s Department.

“This must be stopped,” Modest Matveevich exhorted. “This is an elevator, not some spectroscope or microscope. The elevator is a powerful means of locomotion—that’s primary. It is also a means of transportation. The elevator must be like a dump truck: it gets you there, dumps you out, and comes back. That’s point one. The administration has long been aware that many of our fellow scientists, and that includes some academicians, do not know how to use an elevator. We are combating this, and we will put an end to it. There will be examinations for licenses for operating an elevator, and past services to us will not be taken into consideration … the establishment of the title of Senior Elevator Operator … and so on. That’s my second point. And on their part the electricians must guarantee uninterrupted service. There’s no use in falling back on objective conditions as an excuse. Our slogan is ‘elevators for everyone.’ No matter who. The elevator must be able to withstand the entrance of the least-educated academician.”

We made our way through the crowd and moved on. The pomp of that improvised meeting impressed me greatly. I had the feeling that today the elevator would actually, finally, be running and would continue running maybe for as much as twenty-four hours. That was impressive. The elevator had always been the Achilles’ heel of the institute and of Modest Matveevich, personally. Actually, there was nothing special about it. It was an elevator like any other, with its good points and its bad points. As befits a proper elevator, it constantly strove to get stuck between floors, was always occupied, burned out the bulbs that were screwed into it, and demanded irreproachable behavior and a deft touch with the gate. Getting into the elevator, one could never say with any certainty where and when one would be getting out.

But our elevator did have one unique trait. It could not stand going above the thirteenth floor. I mean, of course, that there are recorded instances in the history of the institute of individual skilled craftsmen who managed to overcome the contrariness of the mechanism and, giving it its head, went up to absolutely fantastic heights. But for the average man, the endless territory of the institute looming above the thirteenth floor was just a blank. There were all kinds of rumors, some contradictory, about those territories, almost completely cut off from the world and the influence of the administration. It was maintained, for example, that the one hundred twenty-fourth floor had an exit into an adjoining space with different physical properties, that on the two hundred thirtieth floor lived a mysterious race of alchemists—the spiritual descendants of the famous Union of the Nine established by the enlightened Indian king Asoka, and that on the one thousand seventeenth floor, the old man, his wife, and the Golden Fish still lived on the shore of the Blue Sea.

The ‘old man, his wife, and the Golden Fish’ refers to a tale of Alexander Pushkin’s.

From Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic. The ‘visitation’ is the major background event of the novel, an unobserved alien arrival and departure that left behind, at its place of occurrence, a ‘zone’ filled with unexplainable technology and even more bizarre non-tangible effects. Coming more from the Tarkovsky film – also written by the Strugatskys – I hadn’t fully appreciated before how good a partner this passage makes to Stanislaw Lem’s His Master’s Voice.

“Really? Well, who cares about him anyway. What do you think about the Visitation? You can answer unseriously.”

“All right, I’ll tell you. But I must warn you that your question, Richard, comes under the heading of xenology. Xenology: an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. It’s based on the false premise that human psychology is applicable to extraterrestrial intelligent beings.”

“Why is that false?” Noonan asked.

“Because biologists have already been burned trying to use human psychology on animals. Earth animals, at that.”

“Forgive me, but that’s an entirely different matter. We’re talking about the psychology of rational beings.”

“Yes. And everything would be fine if we only knew what reason was.”

“Don’t we know?” Noonan was surprised.

“Believe it or not, we don’t. Usually a trivial definition is used: reason is that part of man’s activity that distinguishes him from the animals. You know, an attempt to distinguish the owner from the dog who understands everything but just can’t speak. Actually, this trivial definition gives rise to rather more ingenious ones. Based on bitter observation of the above-mentioned human activities. For example: reason is the ability of a living creature to perform unreasonable or unnatural acts.”

“Yes, that’s about us, about me, and those like me,” Noonan agreed bitterly.

“Unfortunately. Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. And then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct—precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives.”

“Somehow you make it all sound demeaning.”

“All right, how about another definition—a very lofty and noble one. Reason is the ability to use the forces of the environment without destroying that environment.”

Noonan grimaced and shook his head.

“No, that’s not about us. How about this: ‘man, as opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable need for knowledge’? I read that somewhere.”

“So have I,” said Valentine. “But the whole problem with that is that the average man—the one you have in mind when you talk about ‘us’ and ‘not us’—very easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge. I don’t believe that need even exists. There is a need to understand, and you don’t need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn’t require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.”

“Hold on,” Noonan said. He finished his beer and set the mug noisily on the table. “Don’t get off the track. Let’s get back to the subject on hand. Man meets an extraterrestrial creature. How do they find out that they are both rational creatures?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Valentine said with great pleasure. “Everything I’ve read on the subject comes down to a vicious circle. If they are capable of making contact, then they are rational. And vice versa; if they are rational, they are capable of contact. And in general: if an extraterrestrial creature has the honor of possessing human psychology, then it is rational. Like that.”

“There you go. And I thought you boys had it all laid out in neat cubbyholes.”

“A monkey can put things into cubbyholes,” Valentine replied.

“No, wait a minute.” For some reason, Noonan felt cheated. “If you don’t know simple things like that … All right, the hell with reason. Obviously, it’s a real quagmire. OK. But what about the Visitation? What do you think about the Visitation?”

“My pleasure. Imagine a picnic.”

Noonan shuddered.

“What did you say?”

“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, burnt-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, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”

“I see. A roadside picnic.”

“Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos. And you ask if they will come back.”

And maybe it’s just me but this part feels some masked Soviet-era subversion, especially given the final sentence. Substitute any favorite scientific or socio-historical theory for God and you have the same situation on a more limited scale.

There is a need to understand, and you don’t need knowledge for that. The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn’t require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.”