Over at SL Conceptual a lovely musing on turning a Soviet-era story into an SL sim.
Quoting a plot synopsis from Wikipedia:
Aliens have visited the Earth, and departed, leaving behind a number of artifacts of their incomprehensibly advanced technology. The places where such artifacts were left behind are areas of great danger, known as “Zones.” The Zones are laid out in a pattern which suggests that they resulted from the impact of an influence from space which struck repeatedly from the same direction, striking different places as the Earth rotated on its axis
Says SL Conceptual:
And what has this to do with Second Life? If the idea of the search for valuable and bizarre leftovers from an alien visitation, in a post apocolyptic landscape, where the ultimate prize is a chance to achieve your heart’s desire doesn’t sound like a fine idea for a Second Life sim or two, then I don’t know what does.
Well, first…you’re right….what an awesome build it would be.
But second – isn’t all of Second Life (or at least the mainland) already like that?
I love this quote from the synopsis:
After the picnickers depart, nervous animals venture forth from the adjacent forest and discover the picnic garbage: spilled motor oil, faded unknown flowers, a box of matches, a clockwork teddy bear, balloons, candy wrappers, etc. He concludes that humankind finds itself in a situation similar to that of the curious forest animals.
It sounds a lot like mainland to me, and as the curious pass through, a few diehards who have been hidden away in their little nooks and crannys (including, no doubt, the Garden of Earthly Lights) isn’t that much of what they’ll find? Oh, maybe throw in a hoverboard or two broken by the new Havok, a few discarded Xcite! appendages, and it sure sounds like SL! 
Finally, I offer the final paragraph of the book. I pray that I do not find myself scraping about the remains of the Roadside Picnic mumbling the following words to the Linden Gods:
“I am an animal, you see that. I don’t have the words, they didn’t teach me the words. I don’t know how to think, the bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are… all-powerful… all-knowing… then you figure it out! Look into my heart. I know that everything you need is in there. It has to be. I never sold my soul to anyone! Damn it all, I can’t think of anything, except those words of his… ‘HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!’”
Hey Prokovy, is that what the Fetid Core sounds like?
