In 1932, James Waters Bendell picks up a magnificently sculpted hitchhiker named Ares Sen
Kenlin (the Sen means he’s a scientist, but Waters is just a name) who says that he’s
trying to get back to his home time (3059) from seven million years in the future—a time
when mankind has atrophied because of their reliance on machines.
They stand about, little misshapen men with huge heads. But their heads contain only
brains. They had machines that could think—but somebody turned them off a long time
ago, and no one knew how to start them again. That was the trouble with them. They had
wonderful brains. Far better than yours or mine. But it must have been millions of years
ago when they were turned off, too, and they just hadn’t thought since then. Kindly
little people.