På 1980-talet läste jag en novell i en antologi. Korthistorien heter "Hey Diddle Diddle". Det handlade om några killar i en rymdstation (tror jag), varav en av dem pekade ut utrustning för att göra en maskin som gjorde mjölk från, om jag minns korrekt, papper. Googling för detta har inte hjälpt mig eftersom det finns andra berättelser som heter Hey Diddle Diddle som inte verkar matcha den här. Om möjligt skulle namnet på antologin också vara till stor hjälp.
"Hej Diddle Diddle!" , en novelette av Robert Silverberg ; först publicerad (som av "Calvin M. Knox") i Förvånande Science Fiction , Februari 1959 , tillgängligt på Internetarkiv . Historien återtrycktes i Silverbergs samling i 1975 Soluppgång om kvicksilver och andra historier om science fiction och i två 1969 antologier redigerad av Harry Harrison , nämligen Blast Off och Worlds of Wonder . Om du läser den i Storbritannien antar jag att Blast Off är den mest troliga platsen.
He saw by the sly looks on their faces that they were completely hooked. There hadn’t been a really good gag at Lunar Base Three in a couple of months, not since a computer man had programmed one of the heavy-duty robot drudges to give hotfoots. Mason could hardly wait until the first quart of milk came from the synthetic cow.
[. . . .]
Maury Roberts and Nat Bryan stuffed the waste-paper bale onto the intake platform, while Sam Brewster’s hand hovered over the electronic keyboard that controlled the entire operation. He thumbed a switch. The machine hummed. The bale of paper moved ponderously forward, into the jaws of the shredders.
From there the shredded cellulose proceeded to the first stomach to be mangled and pulped into a soggy semiliquid; then on to the second stomach for further breaking-down, then to the wringer in the third stomach, then to the fourth, where digestion proper could begin. Translucent feed lines spurted enzymes into the system at the properly programmed intervals. Counters clicked; gears meshed. The effect was imposing.
According to Mason’s computations, the process, vastly accelerated over its natural counterpart, would take about three hours from waste-paper to milk. The time was 0540 hours when the first few drops of yield came filtering through the udder. At 0650, after Maury Roberts had run some quick chemical tests and after the yield had been refrigerated, the six bleary-eyed experimenters gravely toasted each other with milk that was milk to the last decimal point.
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