Evie
Role: The second known Wanderer. Born in a dying woman in 2641 A.L., lives in a packet who was a slave on Minnith before rising to become one of the slave’s overseers. Executioner of The First Wanderer and K. Pasternak. Affiliation: None. Self-described as having “morals.” Era: ~2641 A.L.+
Summary
Introduces herself to K. Pasternak and The First Wanderer at Pasternak’s laboratory in response to the cryptic advert The First Wanderer asks him to place on the “galactic hub.” She identifies herself as a wanderer the same way the first wanderer does — slowly, ambiguously, “I don’t know” what I’m called. She takes the name Evie from her packet, because that was the packet’s name, and she never gives the packet control of her body — an extent of hatred the first wanderer never showed his own hosts.
She stays in the laboratory under the pretense of helping with the research. In reality she is reconnaissance. Reveals at the climax that she spawned from The First Wanderer during his time in Henry Berkhamsted — meaning Evie is, by her own theory of fork-from-unstable-minds, the wanderer’s daughter. She has spent years tracking him.
Her verdict on him: “You are the most pathetic excuse for a creature. You’ve used your advantage for nothing but the furthering of your own interests. You’re as bad as them.” Her frame for the killing: “I’m going to exact justice, on behalf of the millions you must have killed by now.” She quotes the wanderer’s own line back to him as the execution line: “For every dove a bullet, Earnest.” — pointedly calling him Earnest, the name he inherited from his mother packet.
Seals both of them inside the 5-Churten ithrium-shielded beam chamber. The wanderer cannot exit through ithrium shielding. Both die.
Her packet — the Minnith mine-slave turned slaver — is one of the few details that suggests a wanderer can retain something like justice even after living inside a monstrous host.
Appearances
- Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet: Appears at the lab, stays through the collider construction, executes the wanderer and Pasternak. Fate afterwards unstated.
Related
- The First Wanderer — her parent pattern.
- Henry Berkhamsted — the packet during whose occupation she spawned.
- K. Pasternak — her victim by extension.
- Minnith, Packet, Wanderer, Ithrium
Open questions
- Does Evie survive? She’s still in her packet when she seals the door. Presumably she walks away. But she’s also a wanderer, and wanderers can leave packets at will.
- Does she carry forward Mentalic Ontology? She tells the first wanderer that “one day your science will find a use, perhaps even open up the frontier of consciousness. Great thinking machines will be built, out in the black no less. It couldn’t have been done without your work.” She seems to know the research will reach fruition — by whose hands?
- How did she “amass the strength to break free”? She says she spent years tracking the first wanderer after she learned to leave her original packet. What mechanism? Unstated.
- Are there more wanderers she spawned? By the story’s theory, any sufficiently unstable packet might fork. The implication is unsettling.