Chief Mourner Quits, Rehired Faster

Tavita Jaramillo, Mourner-in-Chief of Deepholm Stacks for nineteen years, resigned on Friday after management set a grief target of four minutes per bereavement. Lowgate Arcology hired her the following week, at triple the pace.

"A professional wail has a front, a middle and a breaking," Jaramillo told this paper. "You can't take the breaking out. People go home feeling only mildly sad."

Lowgate's wail takes ninety seconds. Jaramillo says she does not know how, and has stopped asking. Her new employer fits her with a throat band that carries the sound at pitch while she thinks about something else.

"I did the first one on Monday, for a hydroponics foreman," she said. "Two hundred people came. They said they were very moved, in the queue for the lift."

Asked if she was moved herself, Jaramillo said she had checked the band's log. "It says I was."

Dorcas Paewai, the foreman's daughter, said the family was satisfied. "It was quick, and it sounded right. We were back in the flat by the hour. Dad would have liked that."

On her evenings off Jaramillo wails at the old length in a disused pump room. Nobody has asked her to stop. The band, which she wears for comfort, has begun logging her as moved.