Ithrium
Type: Exotic shielding material used in the beam chamber of K. Pasternak’s 5-Churten collider. Era: Available to the Galactic Human Empire by ~2641 A.L.
Summary
Ithrium is the material the collider’s primer chamber is lined with. In-universe it is presented as a high-energy shielding alloy — sufficient to contain the chamber’s conditions while the beam approaches 5 churtens. The story’s critical property, however, is metaphysical, not engineering: ithrium is opaque to a Wanderer. A wanderer inside an ithrium-sealed room cannot exit through the walls into The Other Place — he is trapped with the Packet he is wearing.
Evie exploits exactly this. She lures The First Wanderer and K. Pasternak into the chamber, seals the ithrium door from outside, and kills them both by starving the packet while the wanderer cannot leave. Until this scene there is no suggestion in the story that anything could contain a wanderer at all; ithrium is the first on-page counter to the wanderer’s core advantage.
Appearances
- Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet: Shielding of the 5-churten collider chamber; the murder weapon.
Related
Open questions
- Why does ithrium block wanderers? The text does not say. Is it a property of its nuclear structure, its density, or a coincidence Evie noticed?
- Who first discovered the wanderer-blocking property? Evie seems to already know it when she plans the execution; the first wanderer is surprised.
- Is ithrium used elsewhere in the Empire for deliberately containing consciousness, or only as a collider shield that happens to have the side effect?