Bebe complained about everything: Holt’s youthful cluelessness, his wandering eye, how when she said she loved him, he only smiled nervously and said, “Great.” And, when pressed: “That’s so great.” She pressured Park to give her opinions on Holt, on the other candidates who interacted with him, as if Park were her personal spy. “Do you think he’s sleeping with anyone else? Do any of the others notice him? Have you ever seen him flirting with anyone?”

On and on. Now Bebe seemed to leap out of the most unexpected places: from behind a crate of rations as Park bent to grab a snack, from around a generator while Park tried to warm her hands. She demanded endless emotional conferences, roundtable discussions about who liked her or didn’t like her, about who had hurt her feelings that day or made her feel small when all she really wanted to do was be in love . . .

Through it all Park had to fix a neutral expression on her face and offer calm words of affirmation and redirection, trying to prod Bebe towards focusing on her job. Park was part of the crew’s counseling team, she couldn’t turn anyone away—as much as she wanted to turn and run in a panic whenever she saw Bebe coming. She felt like a resident advisor at a university, rubbing freshmen’s backs while they wept about their roommates eating the last soyogurt in the fridge. At least Bebe did the minimal work to keep her plants alive; Park half-hoped she wouldn’t, so she could send her home. She was so disappointed.

Other than the Bebe problem, however, Park was happy in Antarctica. At night she spent her free time watching documentaries about the first colonists, the pioneers who had settled Mars, Corvus, Io. That would be her, she thought, watching the pre-downloaded streams on her wrist console. Someday someone would make a documentary about her: about the psychologist who had kept the Eos expedition sane and in check. She hoped they would pull interviews from when she was still young. She didn’t want to be remembered as a misty-eyed old woman, shakily recalling adventures in space that could have been half-imagined.

She had no other friends to speak of. Even laying aside her position on the fringes of the biodome’s community, Park simply didn’t have the time for friends: she had her hands full, wading through the neuroses and fixations of the newly formed village. No time to think of any of them on a personal level; no time to think of anything beyond the task at hand, really. Which she liked. After the Bebe fiasco, she thought, it was better to avoid the whole thing altogether. That way you couldn’t be let down.