"Which department are you from? How did you end up here?" The fat man turned around, narrowed his eyes, and looked Schiller over with obvious disgust.
"I'm from the medical department." Schiller kept his expression unchanged as he lied. He needed to know what role this man had played in Oakes's breakdown—or, more precisely, whether the pressure he had exerted could really have driven Oakes this insane.
Most people now interpreted the incident as a disaster caused by a technical worker who had gone mad under excessive pressure. But in Schiller's view, Oakes's time working on the space station had certainly been stressful, yet not stressful enough to make him this crazed. Something must have accelerated the process, and one of the suspects was the dead fat man standing in front of him.
Schiller was not making personal attacks for no reason. The space station had high recruitment standards. Since candidates were selected globally, there was no shortage of applicants, and naturally the standards were exacting. They had requirements not only for professional skills, but also for appearance and body type.
After all, these were space workers. The better their physical condition, the fewer medical resources they required. Unless there was truly no one else available, they would naturally choose healthy, well-proportioned people.
Even taking a step back, the personnel reviewers would not want to send a fat person up here. Setting aside mobility issues, if obesity caused some illness that could not be treated aboard the station, they would have to waste another spacecraft trip sending him back to Earth. Better not to select him in the first place.
So there were only two possible reasons why the Deputy Chief Engineer standing before Schiller was fat. First, he had never gone through the review process and had gotten in