URNE Michael Fowler
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When Chick arrived on Planet Cri he started a nursing home job, and on the night shift he met Urne. Urne came to the home only at night, Chick discovered, even if a Crian died in the daytime. But even if Urne had come in the day, Chick would likely have been too busy adapting to his new orderly position to notice the quiet and inconspicuous undertaker. It was during the long nights, when Chick’s duties shrank to little more than staying awake and preventing escapes and breaking up the wine-fueled s*x orgies the decrepit but lusty Crians enjoyed, that he noticed the unobtrusive Urne.
The elderly Crian residents of the home, “terminals” as Chick thought of them, chose overwhelmingly to expire on the graveyard shift, dropping off at the rate of one or
