Dead End

By WALLACE MACFARLANE
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
Sparing people's feelings is deadly. It leads to—no feelings, no people!
Scientist William Manning Norcross drank his soup meticulously and scooped up the vegetables at the bottom of the cup, while his attention was focused on the television screen. He watched girls swimming in formation as he gnawed the bone of his steak. He stolidly ate the baked potato with his fingers when the girls turned around, displaying Weejees Are Best signs pasted to their shapely backs. The final flourish was more formation swimming, where they formed a wheel under water, swimming past the camera to display in individual letters stuck to their bare midriffs: Wonderful Weejees!
Norcross chuckled appreciatively when a fat old man swam after them with an Is That Right? strung across his behind. Young men followed him, each carrying a one-word card that spelled: You—Bet—It's—Right—Don't—Be—Left—Buy—Weejees—! The scene ended on the surface. The grotesque old man was far in back, while the young men caught the young women, and together they kicked up a cloud of spray in the distance, which by a trick of photography mounted to the sky and the words swept around the globe in monstrous letters: BUY WEEJEES!
The dessert was apple pie, and Scientist Norcross turned the screen to the Abstractions channel. Watching the colors and patterns form in response to the music, he finished the pie and licked his fingers appreciatively. He pressed a stud to reveal the mirror wall before he activated the molecular cleanup.
Not many people would do that. It was not contrary to morals, exactly, but it was like scratching in public, and it took a scientific mind to study the human form unshaken, immediately after ingestion. There was pie on his tunic and gravy in his hair and a smear of grease from cheek to ear. With no sign of squeamishness, he smeared beet juice on his nose and studied the effect before he depressed the Clear stud.