I argue against trying to solve the problem of clustering objects into disk pages. Instead, I propose that objects be fetched in groups that may be specific to an application or user, and that can be computed at fetch time. I briefly describe crystals, which serve to record such groups statically. Finally, I speculate that object fetching may be particularly relevant for providing servicesto very small machines with limited memory, such as personal digital assistants. 1 Context In a distributed object-oriented database system, server machines store persistent objects shared by applications running on client machines. When an application invokes an operation on a persistent object, that operation must run on either the server or client. I consider the case where objects are moved or copied to the client for at least the duration of the client transaction. A number of existing object-oriented databases work partially or entirely in this mode of executing operations on the client machi...