As she approaches to within a few hundred kilometres, the arcology pings her. Weapons signatures come online, scattered all throughout the habitation ring, then detach: the screens show her a half-dozen small ships approaching her at significant impulse. All of them carry missile pods and laser weaponry: all of them appear to be forming targeting solutions on her ship.

...Well, she isn't actually equipped for combat but she can fend off lasers. The missiles might be more trouble. She prepares to drop into warp and skedaddle to let Starfleet handle this if they launch, but she hails the arcology.

"In case it had automated systems which could call off the attack drones. Can you call off the attack drones?"

"No: I suggest you align for warp immediately!"

"It's on standby, but - warp? Are the missiles faster than the ships?"

"Somewhat? That doesn't look like an Interceptor you're flying, there - what's your maximum speed?"

"On impulse?" She names it. Approximately.

"... Are you bullshitting me?"

"No. What is this place? You mentioned Earth, you're speaking English, you look human, but you're not on any Federation maps and it seems like you've been out of touch..."

"Are you saying you're from Terra? Lady, this just turned into something way above my pay grade, and I'm a Capsuleer. I'm from the EVE systems: you might find references to the project if you have a good historical database. A natural wormhole appeared near Terra, with habitable planets on the other side: a colony was established, then the wormhole collapsed and everything went to hell. We still keep our end of the gate-bridge as an archaeological and historic site: I'm pretty sure it's several centuries old by now."

"A collapsed wormhole colony - I would have thought something like that would be mapped as a landmark if nothing else. When was this?"

"Long enough ago for us to invent cloning, warp and jump tech from a very nearly pre-space existence. From what little records we have, it was a bad time on earth: a major global conflict spurred the establishment of the colonies, so it's possible that records of the settlement could have been lost."

"Perhaps. I wouldn't necessarily know; I'm a surveyor. But if you have warp why didn't you reestablish contact? Did you forget where Earth was?"

"When the wormhole collapsed, it was devastating for the New Eden system, and destoyed an enormous amount of knowledge. Among that knowledge was the location of Earth. Even if we had known where Earth was, it would have to be broadcasting a cynosaural field in order for us to jump to it, and we have seen no evidence of such fields being produced by anyone other than us. The general assumption so far has been that Earth was destroyed when its end of the wormhole collapsed."

"...The thing you are calling warp does not seem to be the thing I call warp."

"... It's quite possible that an Earth that developed warp technology independently of us might discover a different method. We have two - well, maybe three forms of faster-than light transport. Warp drives, jump drives, and jump clones. Warp's good for in-system transport: Jump drives and jump gates have a range per jump of about five or six light-years, though I think some established gate complexes do better. Warp drives require a large mass or a previous targeting fix from someone who's already physically been to the location: Jump drives require a cynosaural field generator to be actively running at the other end of the jump, providing a beacon for the jump drive to lock on to."

"None of these things are what I'm calling warp. Earth came up with the drive in 2063; other species at other times but eventually they almost always manage, which is part of why I'm surprised you have this alternate technology but not - subspace warp, let's call it that."

"It's possible that some portion of the original colony developed subspace warp, but died out or left. Sleeper tech is generally as good as or higher-quality than ours, and we still don't understand its principles yet."

"...Anyway, if you can't call off the attack drones I should probably get out of their way. Can you still hail me if I go into orbit around the nearest moon?"

"Yes, anywhere within system should be fine. I can't stay around to chat forever, though: these wormholes are naturally occurring, and at my best guess the one I've come through will dissipate within two or three hours. While you're fascinating, I'd rather not end up stranded and have to pod-jump home."

"...Since you're human I can give you warp equations without contravening Federation law." She punches up impules power to zoom into a high orbit around the moon.

"...I see we need to talk about the politics of my local systems. Please, don't repeat that offer to anybody."

Another small ship arrives in system, from the other wormhole. Its IFF proclaims it to be owned by an "Absentminded Professor", belonging to the incorporated entity "SOLODRAKBANSOLODRAKBANSOLODRAKBANSOLO". It deploys small a set of four small probes, which warp away into a pyramidal formation: from their movements over the next few minutes, it looks like they're triangulating the position of the arcology.

"We have company. Stay to the secure channel: wormhole space is lawless, and I don't think we want to attract attention."

"...If you say so."

This is all really interesting, but Isabella stays ready to warp the hell out of here and leave the whole thing on Starfleet's doorstep.

The fleet warps in towards the arcology, and engages the drones there. Railgun-accelerated antimatter-fullerene rounds, hull repair nanobots, and EVE shield tech are all put on display for T'mir's scanners. Missiles, lasers, and electronic countermeasures are also in evidence.

"So, where should I start?"

"If this space is lawless, what sort of laws are in force elsewhere?"

"The galaxy can be roughly broken down into three categories: highsec, lowsec, and nullsec. High security areas are patrolled by CONCORD, and are basically safe to exist in. There are occasional terrorist acts, but CONCORD has a response time of about five minutes and a very big stick: most people with decent shields survive long enough for the cavalry to arrive, even in dire situations. Outside that, there are empire-policed low security areas: if you're near a gate or a station, you're probably safe, but if you're out in an asteroid belt you might run into pirates. Outside that, in the nullsec areas - you're on your own. That's the territory of Capsuleer nations, and few of them appreciate having strangers in their territory. This is wormhole space: it doesn't even have a proper security designation."

"I'm not sure what the legalities are between a lost human colony and the Federation. This might get complicated."

"Hence why I suggested you not tell me instantly about how to make my own warp drive like yours. It would be problematic."

"Well, where's the civilized area?"

"Through the wormhole I came from, then maybe one or two jumps after that."

"I don't think I had better go hopping through strange unstable wormholes. Could you point it out on a map?"

"Wormhole space is unmapped. I have no idea where I am right now, save that it's 'through a wormhole.'"

"...Okay, but I know where I am. Do you know where civilized space in your society is?"

"Not relative to where I am right now, or to any landmark in our current sky. Otherwise wormhole space would be mapped by now."

"And you don't remember where Earth is, so not relative to Earth... maybe you could show me the star layout in the mapped area and I could find it by that?"

"Possible. We don't know how far the original wormhole bridged."

"But right now we're in the Milky Way. Which means that you guys can bounce around distances we can't bridge without finding natural wormholes."

"So you do actually have a maximum range. Did I tell you that there's a theory that the wormholes are actually being generated by an unknown Sleeper technology?"

"Do tell."

"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."

"...What is the approximate total population of the descendants of the lost colonists?"

"Many billions: I haven't been keeping up with the statistics for ground-bound population, but CONCORD polices about a thousand systems. This is compared to a total active Capsuleer population of about thirty thousand or so. We're an exceedingly rare breed."

"That's... a lot. It is not larger than the Federation, but it's more than some of the less populous species combined."

"Well, CONCORD isn't a governing body so much as an international peacekeeping force. Empire space is actually administrated by four nations: The Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, and Minmatar. The Amarr and Minmatar don't get along: the Caldari and the Gallente don't get along. I'm Gallente, but Capsuleers as a whole tend to ignore the national divides: we're much more similar to each other than we are to anyone planetside."

"I'd say I should just turn the entire matter over to Starfleet but they wouldn't get here instantly and the wormhole isn't permanent - why are you here, anyway?"

"All the rare-ore asteroids in empire space were captured and refined long ago: asteroid mining there isn't very profitable anymore unless you have a really heavy-duty rig. Wormhole space? No such problem. If I can find a few asteroids with the right material composition out here, it might pay well enough to buy me a Hulk-class hull."

"That makes sense. What do you suppose the other ships are here for, the same thing?"

"Some will be doing the same as me, harvesting interstellar gas and ore. Some will be raiding Sleeper complexes to take their tech back to reverse-engineering companies. Some will be setting up temporary bases for moon mining or more dedicated exploration. Some will be pirates looking to attack and steal from any of the above."

"The wormhole is temporary, right? There's no good way to establish permanent communication between yours and ours if so..."

"Their average lifespan is about a day: my instruments tell me the one I came through has more than a quarter of its lifespan left, but less than three-quarters. The fact that it's bridged to by a wormhole at all suggests that there will be more, though. I haven't scanned the system thoroughly enough to know which of these anomalies my computer's reporting might be a wormhole, but I would bet you a decent number of ISK that the one I came through isn't the only one in-system."

"ISK is a currency?"

"Yes. InterStellar Kronor. Currency of choice for Capsuleers."

"I suppose I can tell Starfleet where this is and they can send a ship to park in this system and wait for a wormhole to open. The Sleeper nest, if there's anything left of it by then, should help with my credibility."

"... Might work, might not. While there will almost certainly be wormholes, I can't assure you that there'll be any traffic through them. You could be waiting for a while."

"Starfleet might be willing to send someone through, which is outside the scope of my own survey. Assuming the wormholes are frequent and traversible in both directions?"

"Yes, but there's a limit on how much mass you can push through one before they start to destabilize: not only that, but finding this particular wormhole system again could be difficult."

"What's the mass limit? And difficult how? Does the same wormhole not always lead to the same place?"

"Only some wormholes are static: others wander. There's a mapping effort in progress, but I don't know which kind the one I came through was. As for the mass limit, give me a second... Low end of about 20 gigagrams per jump, high end of 1,800 gigagrams per jump: but if you do multiple jumps across the same wormhole, they compound. The highest recorded amount of mass a wormhole's been able to transmit before collapsing is in the vicinity of 5,000 gigagrams, but the low end is a tenth of that."

Isabella notes this all down. "I don't suppose you happen to know how to build an ansible and can tell me."

"No, but you can take home one of my scanning probes. They use regular light speed signals for triangulation, but they talk to me via ansible. Your scientists back home might be able to reverse-engineer it."

"I would appreciate that very much."

The capsuleer launches a small probe, which proceeds on laughably-slow impulse towards Isabella's ship.

She catches it in her cargo bay, when it gets close enough.

It turns off its engines and coasts in to a stop, descending slowly to the floor of Isabella's cargo bay as if it were moving through a viscous liquid.

"Received, thank you."

"No problem."

"So I suppose I'll carry this off and try to get it figured out while you mine your asteroids?"

"Seems like the best plan we have at the moment."

"Can I use the ansible on it to talk to you in some straightforward way up until I have someone disassembling it?"

"It's not really designed for that sort of communications, but it has sensors on it and bits I can control, therefore we can use it to pass data. It does have a maximum range, though: once I go back through the wormhole you won't be able to hail me."

"Do you know what the range is, besides 'not between galaxies'?"

"I would guess about five light-years from a base station, but you can relay it as far as you want with no appreciable loss of speed: we have an interstellar comms web."

"I'll be more than five light-years away pretty quickly, so we'd better do any talking we're planning to do while I'm still in this system."

"I can maybe jury-rig a comms chain as far out as twenty light-years with the probes I have on me and some help from your magnificent drive, but if you're going any further than that you're probably correct."

"Quite a bit farther."

"Well then, you've got a few hours yet. Anything else you'd like to quiz me on?"

"Do ansibles require any exotic materials?"

"Sorry: I don't know what they're made of."

"Well, how expensive are they, that would be a clue."

"Well, one of these drones costs about six thousand ISK. Peanuts to me - the ship I'm flying is about five hundred thousand all kitted out, and it would only sting mildly to lose it - but I'm not sure if many people planetside could afford one."

"If it's small change to at least some people that suggests it's probably not staggeringly rare, materials-wise, at least not in quantity, but if it's expensive to most the manufacture is probably complex. I could be wrong, of course."

"Well, that probe has a miniature warp core in it, and some pretty specialized sensors: the majority of its price probably isn't the radio. If anything, I'd expect them to be easier to manufacture than you expect."

"Ah, that makes sense."

"Maybe your scientists can take the warp core apart too: if it achieves FTL in a different way from yours, it might also give you some new physics."

"Maybe. Especially if the power consumption is low it might be useful for short-range shuttling."

"Doubtful. Our ships have specialized capacitors for a reason."

"Low compared to subspace warp, I mean."

"Well, I have no idea what kind of generator you have on that ship or how much energy 'subspace warp' takes. So my answer is a definite maybe."

"There's antimatter involved."

"I entirely retract my earlier statements: our warp drives are ludicrously efficient compared to yours if yours require antimatter engines."

"I'm not sure 'efficiency' is quite the comparison to make. It's possible ours go farther on less total energy. But there's no call to belabor the point, I suppose."

"Is there anything else... Did I remember to give you my name? I'm Captain Isabella T'Mir of the Prometheus."

"Ancien Vatti, but nobody will know me if you call me that: most Capsuleers go by call signs. Mine is Wergeldt. Yes, I know it's terrible: I was a wannabe pirate and now I'm stuck with it, along with a mildly bad sec rating. Crime doesn't pay if you're one of the little fish."

"You can't change your call sign?"

"It's legally exceedingly difficult. CONCORD keeps close tabs on Capsuleers, since we're already operating many more bodies and much more power than the average person: they take a dim view of ones who try to change their alias. If you misspelled your original call sign, you might have a chance - otherwise, forget it. Nobody wants to have you in their databases under five names and operating six bodies: that's how unauthorized forks happen."

"Forks? ...Loading yourself into two bodies at once and waking both up?"

"Yes. Your call sign is your unique identity as a Capsuleer: if you changed it, and a single cloning station that you had a clone with didn't get the memo, they could end up waking a 'you' under your old identity and a 'you' under your new identity. They might not even be recognizable as the same person: we can do extensive cosmetic resculpting, extending even to bone structure. So long as you stay the same sex and ethnicity, you can have basically whatever human body you want."

"Why is it restricted by sex and ethnicity?"

"Different bloodlines have measurably different brain structure - subtly so, but enough that it's necessary to maintain the same general genetics across clones if you want to preserve memory fully during transfer. And of course the presence or absence of a Y chromosome also has a significant impact. Beyond that, though, you can more or less build your body to order."

"...We have reasonably effective sex reassignment procedures, although they don't operate at the genetic level. You don't?"

"Theoretically possible, but I've never heard of anyone offering it as part of a cosmetic resculpting service. I think CONCORD might regard it as an identity issue, much like call sign: I seem to recall it being mentioned at a CSM hearing recently. I think it might have had something to do with neural remapping?"

"People who desire the reassignment tend to already have the neurology to accommodate it."

"Okay? I mean, it's not like I'm an expert in genetics and neurology, I just absorb what my doctors tell me on occasion. These sorts of social issues aren't something I generally take an active interest in."

Something in her hold goes 'CLANG.'

"I don't see why it should be making any loud noises. You did stow it properly, right?"

"It needs special stowing?"

"No, it just needs to be treated like something with a... warp core in it, right, your warp is not my warp. Our warp drives have interesting properties, inertially. They don't resist acceleration: they resist having velocity."

"...I may not be able to travel any useful distance with it in my cargo hold."

"If you take the warp core out of the drone, you should be able to ship the rest safely."

"Okay. How do I do that?"

"Er... I have no idea. Warp cores are generally built into things pretty thoroughly - they're not modular like most ship equipment, they come with the hull."

"Okay, what does the ansible part look like? I have some tools around and may be able to figure it out although I'm not a properly trained engineer?"

"There should be a fairly obvious communications array on one end. Take out the part that it's attached to, and that will probably be the ansible."

"I'm not sure I'm familiar enough with your conventions of what things do and do not look like a communications array to be sure I've identified one...?"

"The part with the rods that stick out."

It takes some finagling, but eventually acquiesces.

"Should I return the part I'm not bringing along?"

"Do whatever you like with it: I can replace it easily."

A last transmission comes through. "See you again sometime, hopefully."

And then he's gone.