SOURCE: "Sweet Their Blood and Sticky" (Worlds of if, November 1961) by Albert R. Teichner

DESCRIPTION: "Creno set a few of his legs on the edge of the glassy, weathered ridge and gazed over the plateau. Harta, next to him, trembled as she adjusted to the strange hardness of these four dimensions. 'Being is a thin thing here,' she said." ("Sweet Their Blood and Sticky" by Albert R. Teichner)

NOTES: Creno and Harta are two interdimensional beings, one old and one young, who have come to Earth. They find a machine made by long extinct humans. The machine makes a taffy-like food from the soil. Mice-like creatures eat the taffy and grow and evolve. The mice will eventually become thinking beings who will no longer remember the machine or ever know about humans. Harta is shaken by the experience, not because of this machine but because there is another at the planets core that once feed mice-like creatures that became human beings...

HISTORY: Teichner's short tale is a chicken and egg deal. If someone gave humans such a machine then where did they come from and who gave them their machine, etc.