"Investigations into wormhole space have shown that one, a vast majority of it is filled with Sleeper installations, and two, some of the wormholes are actually fairly static over time - they come and go in cycles, but always travel between the same two points. This has led some to theorize that they're actually the remnants of an ancient Sleeper gate network."

"What are Sleepers, anyway, you keep mentioning them?"

"It's the colloquial name for the people who lived in the wormhole arcologies: they're called the Sleepers because they built a large number of automated defense systems, which are still in working order and 'wake' whenever they detect ships in the area. Nobody's ever seen a living Sleeper, to my knowledge."

"Weird. And what's a Capsuleer?"

"A Capsuleer is someone like me. This ship is hooked directly into my nervous system via my capsule, which means I'm the only person aboard. I'm also reasonably immortal so long as I keep up on my insurance."

"You may need to back up a bit."

"I'll start by explaining the immortality. We have effective brain scanning that allows us to duplicate consciousnesses: however, this destroys the original brain in the process. My capsule is programmed to immediately do this process to me if it's breached, then transmit my brain state via ansible to the facility where my medical clone line is kept. Rather than dying, as would be inevitable if my capsule was breached in a combat situation, I wake up disoriented in a new body."

"You have FTL ships but not FTL comms? We had a period like that as well. Anyway, this is why you're getting a still picture and a text channel, rather than video: I can't talk or gesture at you very well, immersed as I am in Pod-fluid."

"That sounds uncomfortable."

"I don't notice it: right now I'm busy 'being the ship', as it were. The podding and unpodding process is the most uncomfortable part of it all, honestly."

"You don't have functional autopilot?"

"We have route autopilot and advanced enough automatic processes that I can just think 'execute this maneuver' and the ship does it. What I'm saying is that I'm not very aware of my physical body while I'm piloting: I have to consciously make the effort to notice it."

"Huh."

"You get used to it. Did I tell you about Jump Clones? They're the most freaky part of the whole thing, in my opinion."

"Jump Clones?"

"Aside from my medical clones, I also have spare bodies called Jump Clones. They let me use this process for casual FTL travel of my consciousness."

"...Just checking, the clones never wake up except when you're using them, right?"

"So long as everything's done properly, yes. Theoretically I could have myself copied into more than one of my jump clones at once, but there's very strong legislation against that sort of thing, due to the obvious issues involved with having more than one of me in existence."

"Makes sense."

"There are occasional horror stories about misuse of the tech - one of the major cartel bosses who trades in neural enhancers is rumoured to have copied himself many times - but most Capsuleers have no desire to have extra versions of themselves."

"It sounds useful, though. The ansible alone without the clones, even, although less so. Immortality has eluded everyone I've heard of."

"It hasn't come without its problems. Capsuleers are almost universally exceedingly wealthy, and their immortality has caused some very strange developments in society. It's almost impossible to arrest and try a Capsuleer: you have to capture every single one of their clones, otherwise they can just commit suicide and wake up elsewhere. There's a Capsuleer War League in empire-controlled space that routinely conducts live-fire war games. And, of course, there are the nullsec empires."

"Which are?"

"Capsuleer political bodies, warring for territory and resources outside the policing range of CONCORD. Usually they keep their fights outside of CONCORD space. Usually."