Archive.fm

Science Fiction - Daily Short Stories

Bread Overhead - Fritz Leiber

Listen Ad Free https://www.solgood.org - Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and meditative sounds.

Duration:
42m
Broadcast on:
15 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen, tenants drop at the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, maintenance application. Whew! Sound complicated? Renters' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Qualify tenants, check. Rent collection, check. Maintenance coordination, you got it. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444, because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runnerswarehouse. 11. The Least Clay Burn, the JCPenney Jack-O-Mensow, and Latina Yandelina Aueras, the Cinquinta-Porciento Contucko-Bond, and Quinter to Cestillos Vorritos, the Least Clay Burn, including the Ropa-Calsada Accessorios Piyama-Serticulos Parailogar, and to look at the Antonio Yandelavato Stilo-Conleast Clay Burn. Mass Moda Igrandes Aueros, solo lo mejor Para-Ti, JCPenney, Valle La Pena, and the Least Clay Burn, and the Cinquinta Accessorios Piyama-Serticulos Parailogar, Bread Overhead by Fritz Leiber. The staff of life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings and mankind had to eat crow. As a blisteringly hot, but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day, dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of puffy products spiked aloof in one operation began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas. The walking mills resembled fat metal serpents, rather larger than those Chinese paper dragons animated by files of men in procession. Sensory robot devices in their nose informed them that the waiting wheat had reached ripe perfection. As they advanced, their heads swung lazily from side to side, very much like snakes gobbling the yellow grain. In their throats it was threshed, the chaff bundled and burped aside for pickup by the crawl trucks of a chemical corporation. The kernels quick-dried and blown along into the mighty chests of the machines. There the tireless mills ground the kernels to flower, which was instantly sifted, the brand being packaged and dropped like the chaff for pickup. A cluster of tanks which gave the metal serpents a decidedly hump-backed appearance added water, shortening, salt, and other ingredients, some named and some not. The dough was at the same time infused with gas from a tank conspicuously-labeled carbon dioxide. No yeast creatures in your bread. Thus instantly risen, the dough was clipped into loaves and shot into radionic ovens, forming the mid-sections of the metal serpents. There the bread was baked in a matter of seconds, a fierce heat front browning the crusts, and the piping hot loaves sealed in transparent plastic buried in the proud puffy loaf emblem, two cherubs circling a floating loaf, and ejected on to the delivery platform at each serpent's rear end, where a cluster of pickup machines like hungry piglets snatched at the loaves with hygienic claws. A few loaves would be hurried off for the day's consumption, the majority stored for winter in strategically located mammoth deep freezes. But now, behold a wonder, as loaves began to appear on the delivery platform of the first walking mill to get into action, they did not linger on the conveyor belt, but rose gently into the air and slowly traveled off downwind across the hot, rippling fields. The robot claws of the pickup machines clutched in vain and, not noticing the difference, proceeded carefully to stack emptiness, tier by tier. One errant loaf, rising more sluggishly than its fellows, was snagged by a thrusting claw. The machine paused, clumsily wiped off the injured loaf, set it aside, where it bopped on one corner, unable to take off again, and went back to the work of storing nothingness. A flock of crows rose from the trees of a nearby shelter belt as the flight of loaves approached. The crows swooped to investigate, and then suddenly scattered, screeching in panic. The helicopter of a hangoverish Sunday traveler bound for Wichita, shied very simily from the brown fliers, and did not return for a second look. A black haired housewife spied them over her back fence, crossed herself, and grabbed her walkie-talkie from the laundry basket. Seconds later, the yawning correspondent of a regional newspaper was jotting down the lead of a humorous news story which, recalling the old flying saucer scares, stated that now apparently bread was being included in the Mad Aerial Tea Party. The congregation of an open-walled country church, standing up to recite the most familiar of Christian prayers, had just reached the petition for daily sustenance, one a sub-flight of the loaves, either forced down by a vagrant wind, or lacking the natural buoyancy of the rest, came coasting silently as the sun beams between the graceful pillars at the altar end of the building. Meanwhile the main flight, now augmented by other bread flocks from scores and hundreds of walking mills that had started work a little later, mounted slowly and majestically into the cirrus-flect upper air, where a steady wind was blowing strongly toward the east. About one thousand miles farther on in that direction, where a cluster of stratospheric tickling towers marked the location of the metropolis of New New York, a tender scene was being enacted in the pressurized penthouse managerial suite of puffy products. McGarry Winterly, secretary-in-chief to the managerial board and referred to by her underlings as the "blond icicle," was dealing with the advances of Roger, resource, sneddon, assistant secretary to the board and often indistinguishable from any passing office-boy. "Why don't you jump out the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?" The golden glacier said in tones, "Not unkind. When are your high-strung thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian coulach, now that Moscow's clapped on the interdict." Roger's voice was calm, although his eyes were feverishly bright, as he replied. "A lot of things are going to be different around here, Meg. As soon as the board is forced to admit that only my quick thinking made it possible to bring the name of Puffy Loaf in front of the whole world." "Puffy Loaf could do with a little of that," the business girl observed judiciously. The way sales have been plummeting, it won't be long before the government deeds our desk to the managers of fairy-brat and asks us to take the big jump. "But just where does your quick thinking come into this, Mr. Sneddon? You can't be referring to the Helium that was Rose-Thinker's brainwave." She studied him suspiciously. "You've birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D, and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffy Loaf's, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life on two planets. "Listen to me, Meg. Today, yes, today, you're going to see the board eating out of my hand. Ha! I guarantee you won't have any fingers left. You're bold enough now, but when Mr. Grice and those two big machines come through that door, now wait a minute, Meg. Hush, they're coming now." Roger leaped three feet in the air, but managed to land without a sound, an edge toward his stool. Through the dilating iris of the door strode, Phineas T. Grice, flanked by Rose-Thinker and Tin Philosopher. The man approached the conference table in the center of the room with measured pace and gravely expressionless face. The Rose-tinted machine on his left did a couple of impulsive pirouettes on the way, and twittered a greeting to Meghan Roger. The other machine quietly took the third of the high seats and lifted a claw at Meg, who now occupied his stool twice the height of Rogers. Miss Winterley, please, our theme. The blonde icicles face thawed into a little girl smile as she chanted bubblingly. Made up of tiny, weetened moats and reinforced with sturdy oats, it rises through the air and floats the bread on which our terror dotes. "Thank you, Miss Winterley," said the Tin Philosopher, though a purely figurative statement that bit about rising through the air always gets me here. He wrapped his midsection, which gave off a high musical clang. "Ladies," he inclined his photo-cells toward Rose-Thinker and Meg, "and gentlemen, this is a historic occasion in old puffy's long history, the inauguration of the helium-filled loaf, so light it almost floats away, in which that inert and heaven-aspiring gas replaces old-fashioned carbon dioxide. "Later, there will be kudos for Rose-Thinker, whose bright relays genius sparked the idea, and also for Roger Sneddon, who took care of the details. By the By, racehorse, that..." Owning a rental property sounds like a dream, collect a rent, and relax. That is, until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price, then there's cleaning, staging, repairs, and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites. It's got to kill the showings. Oh, no, it's intense. For information. At least I'll collect it. 20, 20, 20, 20. Sound complicated? "Runner's Warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing the lease. Our best-in-class property management professionals take care of your property as if it were our own, from rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent-estate advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runners warehouse. "The first place you need on your to-do list is the only place you need on your to-do list. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. You need to be able to get the lease. I wonder what tastes tastes like, 10 philosopher echoed dreamily. Recovering himself, he continued. Then, early in the 21st century, came the epochal researches of Everett Whitehead, Puffilove Chemist, culminating in his paper, "The Structural Bubble in Cereal Masses," and making possible the baking of airtight bread 20 times stronger for its weight than steel, and of a lightness that would have been incredible, even to the advanced chemist bakers of the 20th century. A lightness so great that, besides forming the backbone of our own promotion, it has forever since been capitalized on by our conscious list competitors of fairy bread. With their enduring slogan, "It makes Ghost toast." "That's a butte, all right, that ecto-dope blurb," Rose thinker admitted, mugging her photo-sells sadly. "Wait a sec, how about?" "There'll be bread overhead, when you're dead," it is said. Finneas T. Greis wrinkled his nostrils at the pink machine as if he smelled her insulation smoldering. He said mildly, "A somewhat unhappy jingle, Rose," referring as it does to the end of the customer as consumer. "Moreover, we shouldn't overplay the figurative 'Rises Through the Air' angle. What inspired you?" She shrugged. "I don't know. Oh, yes, I do. I was remembering one of the worker's songs we machines used to chat during the big strike. Look and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky, when you die, it's a lie." "I don't know why we chanted it," she added. "We didn't want pie, or hay for that matter, and machines don't pray, except to bet in prayer-wheels." Finneas T. Greis shook his head. Her relations are another topic we should stay far away from. However, dear Rose, I'm glad you keep trying to out jingle those dirty crooks at fairy-bread. He scowled, turning back his attention to tin philosopher. I get whopping mad, old machine, whenever I hear that other slogan of theirs, the discriminatory one, untouched by robot claws, just because they employ a few filthy androids in their factories. Tin philosopher lifted one of his own sets of bright talons. "Thanks, PT, but to continue my historical resume, the next great advance in the baking art was the substitution of purified carbon dioxide recovered from coal smoke, for the gas generated by yeast organisms indwelling in the dough, and later killed by the heat of baking, their corpses remaining in situ. But even purified carbon dioxide is itself a rather repugnant gas, a product of metabolism whether fast or slow, and forever associated with those life processes which are obnoxious to the fastidious. Here the machine shuddered with delicate clinkings. "Therefore, we of puffy loaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity. We are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium, an element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations, and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide. Yes, noble, uncontamenable helium, which, if it be a kind of ash, is yet the ash only of radioactive burning, accomplished or initiated entirely on the sun, a safe ninety-three million miles from this planet. Let's have a cheer for the helium loaf." Without changing expression, finniesty grice wrapped the table thrice in solemn applause while the others bowed their heads. "Thanks, TB," PT then said, "and now for the moment of truth. Miss Winterly, how is the helium loaf selling?" The business girl clapped on a pair of earphones and whispered into a lapel mic. Her gaze grew abstracted as she mentally translated flurries of brief squawks into coherent passages. Suddenly, a single vertical furrow creased her matchlessly smooth brow. "It isn't Mr. Grice," she gasped in horror, "Fairy bread is outselling puffy loaves by an infinity factor. So far this morning there has not been one single delivery of puffy loaves to any sales spot. Complaints about non-delivery are pouring in from both walking stores and sesile shops." "Mr. Sneddon," Grice sparked, "what bug in the new helium process might account for this delay?" Ginger was on his feet, looking bewildered. "I-I can't imagine, sir, unless, just possibly, there's been some unforeseeable difficulty involving the new metal foil wrappers. Metal foil wrappers? Were you responsible for those?" "Yes, sir. Last-minute recalculations showed that the extra lightness of the new loaf might be great enough to cause drift during stackage. Drafts and stores might topple sales pyramids. Metal foil wrappers, by their added weight, took care of the difficulty. And you ordered them without consulting the board?" "Yes, sir. There was hardly time, and why you fool. I noticed that order for metal foil wrappers, assumed it was some sub-secretary's mistake, and canceled it last night." Roger Sneddon turned pale. "You 'cancelled' it?" He quivered, and told them to go back to the lighter plastic wrappers? Of course. Just what is behind all of this, Mr. Sneddon? What recalculations were you trusting, when our physicist had demonstrated months ago that the helium loaf was safely stackable in light-ears and gentle breezes, winds up to Beaufort Scale III? Why should a change from heavier to lighter wrappers, resulting complete non-delivery? Roger Sneddon's paleness became tinged with an interesting green. He cleared his throat and made strange gulping noises. Ten philosophers' photocells focused on him calmly. Rose thinkers with unfained excitement. Petey Grice's frown grew blacker by the moment, while McGara Winterley's Venus mask showed an odd dawning of dismay and awe. She was getting new squawks and her earphones. "Er, er," Roger said in winning tones, "Well, you see, the fact is that I hold it," McG interrupted crisply. "Tripple urgent from public relations, safety division, Tulsa Topeka arrow." Owning a rental property sounds like a dream. Collect a rent and relax. It is until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. First, you need to conduct market research to understand local rental trends and determine a competitive rent price. Then there's cleaning, staging, repairs, and hiring a professional photographer. Next, develop a marketing strategy. List the property on rental sites and schedule countless shows. "Phew! Sound complicated?" Ranners Warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental to-do list. Our job is complicated because it should be. We handle everything from marketing and showing your property to screening tenants and preparing the lease. Our best-in-class property management professionals take care of your property as if it were our own, from rent collection to maintenance coordination, all for one flat monthly fee. Go to Rannerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444 to speak with a rent-estate advisor today. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call Ranners Warehouse. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king's supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices, plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week, and up to $1 or off per gallon at the pump with points, so you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. Express makes emergency landing after being buffeted in an encounter with vast flight of objects first described as brown birds, although no failures reported in airways, electronic anti-bird fences. After grounding safely near Emporia, no fatalities, Pilots' windshield found thinly plastered with soft white and brown material. Emblems on plastic wrappers embedded in material, identified incontrovertibly as an undetermined number of puffy loaves cruising at 3,000 feet. Eyes and photocells turned inquisitorially upon Roger Sneddon. He went from green to puffy loaf white, and blurted, "All right, I did it, but it was the only way out." Yesterday morning, due to the Ukrainian crisis, the government stopped sales and deliveries of all strategic stockpiled materials, including helium gas. Puffy's new program of advertising and promotion, based on the lighter loaf, was already rolling. There was only one thing to do, there being only one other gas comparable in lightness to helium. I diverted the necessary quantity of hydrogen gas from the hydrogenated oils section of our Magna margarine division and substituted it for the helium. You substituted hydrogen for the helium? Finneas tea rice faltered in low mechanical tones, taking four steps backward. "Hydrogen is twice as light as helium," Tin Philosopher remarked judiciously. "And many times cheaper, did you know that?" Roger countered feebly. "Yes, I substituted hydrogen. The metal foil wrapping would have added just enough weight to counteract the greater buoyancy of the hydrogen loaf, but so, when this morning's lows began to arrive on the delivery platforms of the walking mills," Tin Philosopher left the remark unfinished. "Exactly," Roger agreed dismally. "Let me ask you, Mr. Sten. Christ interjected still in low tones. If you expected people to jump to the kitchen ceiling for their puffy bread after taking off the metal wrapper, or reach for the sky if they happen to unwrap the stuff outdoors?" "Mr. Christ," Roger said reproachfully, "you have often assured me that what people do with puffy bread after they buy it is no concern of ours." "I seem to recall," rose thinker chirps somewhat unkindly. That dictum was created to answer inquiries after Roger put the famous sculptures in miniature artist on 3D, and he testified that he always molded his first attempts from puffy bread, and jumbo loaf squeezing down to approximately the size of a peanut. Her photocells dimmed and brightened. "Oh boy, hydrogen! The loaf's unwrapped. After a while, in spite of the crust seal, a little oxygen diffuses in an explosive mixture. Housewife and curlers and kimono pops a couple slices in the toaster. Boom!" The three human beings in the room winced. Tin philosopher kicked her under the table while observing. "So, you see, Roger, that the non-delivery of the hydrogen loaf carries some consolations, and I must confess that one aspect of the affair gives me great satisfaction, not as a board member but as a private machine. You have at last made a reality of the 'Rises through the air' part of puffy bread's theme. They can't ever take that away from you. By now, half the inhabitants of the great plains must have observed our flying loaves rising high." Finneas T. Greis shot a frightened look at the west windows and found his full voice. "Stop the mills!" he roared at Meg Winterly, who nodded and whispered urgently into her bike. "A sensible suggestion," Tin philosopher said, "but it comes a trifle late in the day. If the mills are still walking and grinding, approximately seven billion puffy loaves are at this moment cruising eastward over Middle America. Remember that a six-month supply for deepfrees is involved, and that the current consumption of bread, due to its matchless eriness, is eight and one-half loaves per person per day." Finneas T. Greis carefully inserted both hands into his scanty hair, feeling for a good grip. He leaned menacingly toward Roger who, chin resting on the table, regarded him apothetically. "Hold it!" Meg called sharply. "Flock of multiple urgents coming in! News liaison! Information Bureau swamped with flying bread inquiries! Arrow express lines! Clear our airways or face lawsuit! U.S. Army! Why do loaves flame when hit by incendiary bullets? U.S. Customs! If bread intended for export, get export license or face prosecution!" Russian Consulate in Chicago advised on destination of Breadlift. And some Kansas church is accusing us of a hoax inciting to blasphemy of faking miracles. "I don't know why," the business girl tore off her headphones. "Roger Sneddon!" She cried with a hysteria that would have dumbfounded her underlings. "You brought the name of Puffy Loaf in front of the whole world, all right? Now do something about the situation!" Roger nodded obediently. But his power increased to shade. The pupils of his eyes disappeared under the upper lids, and his head burrowed beneath his forearms. "Oh, boy!" rose thinker called Galey to tin philosopher. "This looks like the start of a real crisis session! Did you remember to bring spare batteries?" Meanwhile the monstrous flight of Puffy Loaves, filling Midwestern skies as no small flyers had since the days of the passenger pigeon, soared steadily onward. Private flyers approached the brown and glistening bread front in curiosity, and dipped back in awe. Arrow express lines organized sightseeing flights along the flanks. Plains of the government forestry and agricultural services and copters bearing the Puffy Loaf Amblin, hovered on the fringes, watching developments and waiting for orders. A squadron of supersonic fighters hung menacingly above. The behavior of birds varied considerably. Most flat or gave the loaves a wide berth. But some boulder species, discovering the minimal, nutritive nature of the translucent brown objects, attacked them furiously with beaks and claws. Hydrogen diffusing slowly through the crusts had now distended most of the sealed plastic wrappers into little balloons, which ruptured when pierced with disconcerting pops. Below, neck-craining citizens crowded streets and backyards cranks and cultists had a field today, while local and national governments raged indiscriminately at Puffy Loaf and at each other. Rumors that a fusion weapon would be exploded in the midst of the flying bread drew angry protests from conservationists and a flood of telefax pamphlets titled H. Loaf or H. Bomb. Stockholm sent a mystifying note of praise to the United Nations Food Organization. Telly issued nervous denials of a millet blight that no one had heard of until that moment and reaffirmed India's ability to feed her "population with no outside help," except the usual. Radio Moscow asserted that the Kremlin would brook no interference in its treatment of the Ukrainians, jokingly referred to the flying bread as "a farce perpetrated by mad internationalist, inhabiting cloud cuckoo land," added contradictory references to airborne bread booby-trapped by capitalist gangsters and then fell muddly silent on the whole topic. Radio Venus reported to its winged audience that Earth's inhabitants were establishing food depots in the upper air, preparatory to taking a permanent aerial residence such as we have always enjoyed on Venus. New New York made feverish preparations for the passage of the flying bread. Tickets for sightseeing space in skyscrapers were sold at high prices. Cold meats and potted spreads were hawked to viewers with the assurance that they would be able to snag the bread out of the air and enjoy a historic sandwich. Phineas T. Greis, escaping from his own managerial suite, raged about the city, demanding general cooperation in the stretching of great nets between the skyscrapers to trap the errant loaves. He was captured by tin philosopher, escaped again, and was found posted with oxygen masks and submachine gun on the topmost spire of puffy loaf tower, apparently determined to shoot down the loaves as they appeared and before they involved his company in more trouble with customs and the State Department. After by tin philosopher, who suffered only minor bullet holes, he was given a series of mild electroshocks and returned to the conference table, calm and clear-headed as ever. But the bread flight, swinging away from a hurricane moving up the Atlantic coast, crossed a clouded embossed in by night and disappeared into a high Atlantic overcast, also thereby evading a local storm generated by the Weather Department in a last-minute effort, the bring down or at least disperse the H-loaves. Warnings and counter-warnings by communist and capitalist governments seriously interfered with military trailing of the flight during this period, and it was actually lost in touch with for several days. At scattered points, seagulls were observed fighting over individual loaves floating down from the gray roof, that was all. A mood of spirituality strongly tinged with humour seized the people of the world. Ministers sermonized about the bread, variously interpreting it as a call to charity, a warning against gluttony, a parable of the evanescence of all earthly things, and a divine joke. Husbands and wives facing each other across their walls of breakfast-toast burst into laughter, the mere sight of a loaf of bread anywhere was enough to evoke guffas, an obscure sect having as part of its creed the injunction, "Don't take yourself so damn seriously," one knew adherents. The bread-flight, rising above an Atlantic storm widely reported to have destroyed it, passed unobserved across a foggy England and rose out of the overcast only over middle Europa. The loaves had at last reached their maximum altitude. The sun's rays beat through the rarefied air on the distended plastic wrappers, increasing still further the pressure of the confined hydrogen. They burst by the millions and tens of millions, a high-flying Bulgarian evangelist who had happened to mistake the up-leaver for the east-leaver in the cockpit of his flier and who was the sole witness of the event, afterwards described it as "the foaming of a sea of diamonds, the crackle of God's knuckles." By the millions and tens of millions, the loaves coasted down into the starving Ukraine, shaken by a week of humor that threatened to invade even its own grim precincts, the Kremlin made a sudden about face. A new policy was instituted of communal ownership of the produce of communal farms, and teams of hunger-fighters and caravans of trucks loaded with Pumpernickel were dispatched into the Ukraine. World distribution was given to a series of photographs showing peasants queuing up to trade scavenged puffy loaves for traditional black bread. Recently aerated itself but still extra solid by comparison, the rate of exchange demanded by the Moscow teams being 20 puffy loaves to one of Pumpernickel. Another series of photographs picturing Chubby workers' children being blown to bits by booby trapped bread was quietly destroyed. Congratulatory notes were exchanged by various national governments and world organizations, including the brotherhood of free business machines. The great bread flight was over, though for several weeks afterward scattered falls of loaves occurred, giving rise to a new folklore of manna among lonely Arabian tribesmen, and in one well-authenticated instance in Tibet, sustaining life in a party of mountaineers cut off by a snow slide. Back in New New York, the managerial board of puffy products slumped in utter collapse around the conference table. The long crisis session at last ended. Empty coffee cartons were scattered around the chairs of the three humans, dead batteries around those of the two machines. For a while, there was no movement whatsoever. Then Roger Sneddon reached out wierly for the earphones where McGara winterly had hurled them down, adjusted them to his head, pushed a button, and listened apothetically. After a bit, his gaze brightened. He pushed more buttons and listened more eagerly. Soon he was sitting tensely upright on his stool, eyes bright and lower face all a smile, muttering tourist comments and questions into the lapel mic torn from Meg's fair neck. The others, reviving, watched him, at first dully, then with quickening interest, especially when he jerked off the headphones with a happy shout and sprang to his feet. "Listen to this!" he cried in a ringing voice. "As a result of the worldwide publicity, coffee loaves are outselling fairy bread three to one, and that's just the old carbon dioxide stock from our freezers. It's almost exhausted, but the government, now that the Ukrainian crisis is over, has taken the ban off helium, and will also sell a stockpiled wheat if we need it. We can have our walking mills burrowing into the wheat caves in a matter of hours. But that isn't all. The far greater demand everywhere is for puffy loaves that will actually float." Public relations, child liaison division, reports that the kiddies are making their mother's lives miserable about it. If only we can figure out some way to make hydrogen non-explosive, or the helium loaf float just a little, "I'm sure we can take care of that quite handily," tin philosopher interrupted briskly. Puffy loaf has kept it a corporation's secret. Even you've never been told about it, but just before he went crazy, Everett Whitehead discovered a way to make bread, using only half as much flour as we do in the present loaf. Using this secret technique, which we've been saving for just such an emergency, it will be possible to bake a helium loaf as buoyant in every respect as the hydrogen loaf. "Good!" Roger cried. "We'll tether 'em on strings and sell 'em like balloons. No mother-child shopping team will leave the store without a cluster. Buying bread balloons will be the big event of the day for kiddies. It'll make the carry-home shopping load lighter, too. I'll issue orders it once." He broke off, looking at finniest tea-grice, said with quiet assurance. "Excuse me, sir, if I seem to be taking too much upon myself." "Not at all, son. Go straight ahead," the great manager said approvingly. "You're!" She laughed in anticipation of getting off a memorable remark, rising to the challenging situation like a genuine puffy loaf. McGara winterly looked from the older man to the younger. Then in a single leap, she was upon Roger, her arms wrapped tightly around him. "My sweet little ever-victorious, self-propelled monkey-wrench!" she crooned in his ear. Roger looked factuously over her soft shoulder at tin philosopher, who, as if moved by some similar feeling, reached over and touched claws with Rose-Thinker. This, however, was what he telegraphed silently to his fellow-machine across the circuit so completed. "Good-oh, Rosie. That makes another victory for robot-engineered world unity, though you almost gave us away at the start with that bread overhead, jingle. We struck another blow against the next world war in which, as we know, only too well, we machines would suffer the most. Now, if we can only arrange, say, a fur-famine in Alaska and a migration of long-haired Siberian lemmings across bearing straights, we'd have to swing the Japanese current up there, so it'd be warm enough for the little fellows. Anyhow, Rosie, with a spot of help from the brotherhood, those humans will paint themselves into the peace-corner yet. Meanwhile, he and Rose-Thinker quietly watched the blonde icicle melt, and a story." Owning a rental property sounds like a dream until you realize how much work goes into getting it ready. Determine a competitive rent price, market the property, schedule the showing screen tenants, draft the lease at a rent collection, handle maintenance request, make a dedication. Whew, sound complicated? Renters' warehouse is here to take the hard work off your rental-to-do list. Qualify tenants, check. Rent collection, check. Maintenance coordination, you got it. Go to runnerswarehouse.com for a free rental analysis to find out how much your home can rent for. Or call 303-974-9444. Because from now on, the only thing you need on your to-do list is to call runners' warehouse. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping King Supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices. Plus, extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings, King Supers, fresh for everyone, restrictions apply.