Park’s insides shriveled like peach pits. Solitude for her was like a religious blessing to others: it was her church of one. Always she closed the doors behind her with the awareness that she was giving herself sanctuary, an opportunity to cleanse and be purified. Fulbreech was like the neighbor who kept her from shutting the door, asking if she was interested in participating in the annual bake sale.

That was the problem, Park thought. Fulbreech thought she was mysterious, and that appealed to him. He thought that her guardedness, her need to be alone, was all a defense mechanism that he had to get past. Either she was a puzzle to be solved—and then later, discarded—or he simply thought that he needed to get to know her better, to break through to some other place, some core where another person lived inside of her. But that was the catch. There was no other person, no self that she was hiding. Park was who she seemed to be from the outside. That would never change. Fulbreech just hadn’t realized it yet.

She liked Hilbert’s illustration of infinity, using a hotel as an example. A hotel with an infinite number of rooms could accommodate an infinite number of guests, even if the whole place was already fully occupied. Whenever a new guest arrived, the guest in room one would simply move to room two; the guest in room two to room three; and so on and so forth. What Park liked was that, even with an infinite line of people waiting out the door, the thought of making guests share a room never occurred to anyone in the hotel. Each guest had to be solitary; each had to have a room of their own, even if it meant that everyone else performed an infinite series of actions to ensure this. It was the natural order of things, assumed. This made sense to her. She wished the Deucalion was Hilbert’s hotel.

But it’s not, Park thought then. She was not like the hotel guest, come in safely from the night. She was more like a glacier, alone and adrift on a warming sea. Cold, remote. But shrinking rapidly under the circumstances.

5.

[Hi,

Another day, another transcript. I segmented off some of the stuff that didn’t matter, to keep the file size small. You were right to have your suspicions: it seems some very weird shit went down here. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you’re staying safe. We are doing our best here, though every day I think Requisitions is going to storm our place and throw us out. I hope that doing this is worth it. I hope that Eos can really be a home.

Love,

S.S.]

VIDEO LOG #8—Ship Designation CS Wyvern 7079

Day 2: 9:42 UTO

Daley: And you’re sure it’s okay for us to go out there.