Bread
Overhead
By FRITZ LEIBER
The Staff of Life suddenly and
disconcertingly sprouted wings
—and mankind had to eat crow!
Illustrated by WOOD
AS a blisteringly hot butguaranteed weather-controlledfuture summer daydawned on the Mississippi Valley,the walking mills of Puffy Products("Spike to Loaf in OneOperation!") began to tread delicatelyon their centipede legsacross the wheat fields of Kansas.
The walking mills resembled fatmetal serpents, rather larger thanthose Chinese paper dragons animatedby files of men in procession.Sensory robot devices intheir noses informed them thatthe waiting wheat had reached ripeperfection.
As they advanced, their headsswung lazily from side to side, verymuch like snakes, gobbling the yellowgrain. In their throats, it wasthreshed, the chaff bundled andburped aside for pickup by thecrawl trucks of a chemical corporation,the kernels quick-driedand blown along into the mightychests of the machines. There thetireless mills ground the kernelsto flour, which was instantly sifted,the bran being packaged anddropped like the chaff for pickup.A cluster of tanks which gavethe metal serpents a decidedlyhumpbacked appearance addedwater, shortening, salt and otheringredients, some named and somenot. The dough was at the sametime infused with gas from a tankconspicuously labeled "CarbonDioxide" ("No Yeast Creaturesin Your Bread!").
Thus instantly risen, the doughwas clipped into loaves and shotinto radionic ovens forming themidsections of the metal serpents.There the bread was baked in amatter of seconds, a fierce heat-frontbrowning the crusts, and thepiping-hot loaves sealed in transparentplastic bearing the proudPuffyloaf emblem (two cherubscircling a floating loaf) and ejectedonto the delivery platform at eachserpent's rear end, where a clusterof pickup machines, like hungrypiglets, snatched at the loaveswith hygienic claws.
A few loaves would be hurriedoff for the day's consumption,the majority stored for winter instrategically located mammothdeep freezes.
But now, behold a wonder! Asloaves began to appear on thedelivery platform of the first walkingmill to get into action, theydid not linger on the conveyorbelt, but rose gently into the airand slowly traveled off down-windacross the hot rippling fields.
THE robot claws of the pickupmachines clutched in vain, and,not noticing the difference, proceededcarefully to stack emptiness,tier by tier. One errant loaf,rising more sluggishly than its fellows,was snagged by a thrustingclaw. The machine paused, clumsilywiped off the injured loaf, setit aside—where it bobbed on onecorner, unable to take off again—andwent back to the work ofstoring nothingness.
A flock of crows rose from thetrees of a nearby shelterbelt as theflight of loaves approached. Thecrows swooped to investigate andthen suddenly scattered, screechingin panic.
The helicopter of a hangoverishSunday traveler bound for Wichitashied very similarly from thebrown fliers and did not return fora second look.
A black-haired housewife spiedthem over her back fence, crossedherself and grabbed her walkie-talkiefrom the laundry basket.Seconds later, the yawning correspondentof a regional newspaperwas jotting down the lead of a humorousnews story which, recallingthe old flying-sauce