Teething Ring

A suburban housewife is visited by a diminutive alien peddler hawking astonishing gadgets and, on impulse, accepts a neural distorter to quiet her teething infant. The salesman treats the encounter as field research while the child becomes unusually calm and quickly explores books beyond his age. Domestic routines and anxieties—television, childcare, marital strain—provide a comic backdrop to the exchange. Later, a Galactic Security officer arrives, returns the purchase money, and reclaims the device after explaining the peddler misclassified the planet's cultural status. The piece wryly examines consumer temptation, parental hope for quick fixes, and the hazards of misapplied advanced technology.