She stopped her bicycle to peer at herself more closely in the window.
She felt a burning in her left earlobe and stroked the earlobe grimly.
Against her finger, the earlobe felt hard and weepy. It troubled Melba
to consider her earlobe "weepy," as though the sense organs, in this
case, the eyes and the ears, could share their functions. The very
notion brought to mind the lower-order animals, how they ate and
defecated through a single hole. Such a simplification of the bodily
processes would not appeal to the men and women of Dan. They took so
much pleasure in the buttery crumpets and extra-soft pretzels Melba sold
by the dozen in the bakery, and they reacted so negatively when, in
casual conversation, Melba linked the crumpets and pretzels, however
loosely, to any kind of output: vomit, excrement, or esophageal
refluxus. Melba shuddered to imagine what the townsfolk would say if
they needed to contend with the effects of reverse evolution. Most
likely, though, they were simply unaware. Melba had never heard even a
whisper about reverse evolution in her science classes, and not around
town either. One time, Melba remembered, people had milled around in
talkative groups right in the center of Dan, eating pretzels and
discussing issues, but the conversation had focused on technological
innovation.
"Fold-out couches are a disgrace," shouted one woman. "They're gimmicky,
not worthy of their patent. Does anything good come from beneath the
cushions of couch? Disease! Fossilized nachos! And we spend money
adopting polar bears!" the woman's voice shook with emotion, but the
others did not take up her topic. It was widely known that the woman's
teenage son was a bounder given to serial, ungrateful tenancies on the
couches of others, and that her comments did not represent the impartial
assessment of technology that the tenor of the discussion demanded.
