Over the course of the next couple months they establish a number of solar collectors around the sun and build a stellar laser to make it faster to move to and from the outer system. So far they haven't figured out how to move actual matter through the sub-realm safely.

In the meantime, several dozen light-years away, the Federation Starfleet ship USS Andromeda is moving at warp 8, headed towards a planetary survey mission.

"Captain, I'm detecting unusual subspace fluctuations in a solar system about twenty-six light years away. It's about two light years off our current course."

"Divert course to investigate. Do we know anything about that system?" asked Captain Montgomery.

"There are no inhabitable planets according to our last survey, no inhabitants at all for that matter. The fluctuations don't seem like natural subspace phenomena though, more like someone is causing them intentionally. Someone without much knowledge of warp theory."

"That's strange. Can you see anything in system from this range?"

"All the planets, large moons and the star are where I'd expect them to be. I can't see anything much smaller than that from this far away."

"Let me know if you find anything when we get closer."

About 8 days later.

Emiko stared at the data. Starting about a day ago, some of their experiments with the sub-realm had started returning slightly different results and the effect seemed to be increasing over time. So they created new experiments and scans to study the deviations. This data was the result. "This looks a bit like a radar sweep."

"Agreed," said Alison, another member of her team. "If we're reading that right we're being scanned and we might have visitors soon. It looks like the origin of the scans is getting closer and at speeds faster than light."

"Let's hope they're friendly."

Meanwhile in a conference room aboard Andromeda: "Based on our scans they have several thousand vessels at least the size of a shuttlecraft. They also have six vessels with more volume than me. And that's not counting the massive station they've built. You could fit Gates, Deep Space Nine, and a couple Borg cubes inside it without issues. They're also building fixed installations close to the system's star. We're still too far away to determine what the purpose of those is."

"Do we have anything like these vessels on record?" asks Chief Engineer Xass.

"Not in any records I or the captain has access to."

"We've transmitted our sensor readings to Starfleet. For the moment we still have the go ahead to make contact. Starfleet has decided that given their ongoing construction efforts and unknown technological base, we need to know as soon as possible if they're hostile," Captain Montgomery explained. "We're about a day away at this point and we'll learn more as we get close enough for more detailed scans. Suggestions are welcome."

"Are we treating this as contact or scouting? If we're scouting we should go in under cloak."

"Starfleet has made the decision that cloaking might be taken as provocation if they're able to see through the cloak somehow. We've been ordered not to use it unless things turn hostile."

"I don't like this," says Andromeda. "There's too many unknowns and I can't be sure I can keep you safe."

"Risk is part of the job," the captain reminds her. "If we wanted a life without risk, we wouldn't be out here."

"I know, still, I recommend we come out of warp at the edge of the system away from any of their installations. Hopefully that will give us a chance to run away if they turn out to be hostile. It's also less likely to make them hostile. A ship appearing deep in a Federation system without announcing itself wouldn't be taken well either."

"That's probably a good idea. Keep scanning, let us know when you have more information. Any other suggestions?"

"If they don't have subspace I expect we should set up to use subspace radio relaying otherwise we'll be limited by lightspeed lag while communicating," offers Xass.

"Good catch. Make it so."

She waits a few moments. "Given that there are no other suggestions, we'll end the briefing here."

The next day they're coming up on the system in question. "Captain, we're fifteen minutes out. All six of their large vessels are arranged along my current course in pairs. I think somehow they noticed us coming. I haven't detected any scans originating from their system but warp eight is fairly loud in subspace."

"Do we have a better sense of what we're facing?"

"We've been going over Rommie's scans as we've gotten closer but we don't fully understand their systems. They're using fusion power but in most of their smaller drones we can't make head or tails of how their fusion generators work. There are no magnetic or gravitational containment fields that we can detect. They have what appear to be a variety of weapon systems though nothing I would expect to be able to get through our shields. We don't really know for sure though because we haven't seen them fired. I'll also note that as best we can tell there's only two hundred life-signs in the entire system," answers Lieutenant Hriss, the science officer.

"Nothing you've said changes the plan I don't think. Let's come out a million klicks off from their first pair of ships."

"Aye Captain." The lights indicate the alert status.

The next fifteen minutes pass with palpable tension.

"Dropping out of warp now. Shields on standby."

Just after they come out down in sickbay Dr. Fook gets Rommie's attention. "Ship something just tried to touch my mind. It didn't try to force the issue when I rejected the probe."

Andromeda relays this to the bridge staff.

"It's not too late for us to run away."

The captain shakes her head. "No, we've been scanning them pretty thoroughly I don't think we can justify running away just because they've returned the favor. Let's wait and see how long it takes..."

"We're receiving a message in Federation Standard. It's a fairly basic radio signal format."

"Hello there, Welcome to the Starlight research outpost Meld. We greet you with the hope of peaceful contact between our peoples."

"Does anyone have a guess as to how they got our language so quickly?"

"I expect it has something to do with the mental contact Dr. Fook noticed. Most of our crew isn't really trained or able to repel psychic contact like that." 

"That's a good point. We could also just ask. In fact, please open a channel." Hannah waits for a chime that indicates that the channel is open. "This is Captain Hannah Montgomery of the Federation Starship Andromeda. Thank you for your kind words of welcome."

"You're quite welcome Captain. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. How would you like to proceed? Our scientists would be very interested in talking with yours."

"Our society has rules about sharing science and technology will other civilizations. In general, we allow other civilizations to request an evaluation to determine how much it would be safe to share with you but we don't have the staff on board to carry one out."

"That's understandable, we have a similar approach to such things. Though our goal is always to put other civilizations on a path where they can use such knowledge responsibly. Knowledge is meant to be shared."

Captain Montgomery is briefly taken aback and motions to cut the channel. "It sounds like they don't have anything like the Prime Directive." She makes another gesture to resume. "Could you tell us a bit more about your civilization? Perhaps you have a first contact package?"

"We have some things like that prepared though I'm told that this communication channel isn't well suited to transferring such things. Our society is what we call a collaborative democracy. Our society is organized around three philosophical pillars: Learn all there is to learn, teach those who would be taught, and never allow an atrocity to happen if you can prevent it."

"Those certainly sound like noble principles." Hannah says neutrally. "Could I enquire as to your plans for this system?"

"As I said, Meld is a research outpost. Our plans for this system are to build any further facilities necessary to support research into this realm's physics and also build sufficient defenses to deter any assaults. Assuming we're able to develop faster than light travel, as you've demonstrated is possible, we hope to send out further exploration platforms to catalog other nearby systems. We have no particular plans to build any permanent installations in this realm outside of this system at this time."

"Do you mean to imply that you're from outside this universe?"

"I think you use the word universe the way we use the word realm yes. We only arrived in this universe about thirty-eight Earth days ago, assuming your Earth has the same rotational period as ours. Most of our installations and other equipment was transported here rather than being built locally."

"Do you mean to imply that you're humans?"

"Most of us think of ourselves that way yes, though a great many of us including myself aren't biological anymore."

"I think we'd be very interested in understanding how you accomplished that if you're willing to share that information."

"Of course, our means of immortality is among those technologies we're comfortable distributing widely. Though the version we distribute without conditions is not something we expect other civilizations to be able to manufacture. In general, our immortality is a mix of advanced technology and sophisticated magic. Naturally, the version we distribute is pure magic."

Everyone on the bridge looks stunned. "Did you just casually offer us immortality?"

"It's a very serious offer though admittedly adapting the technology to allow species other than humans to be reembodied will take research effort. Access to your medical databases would dramatically streamline that work."

"That's a lot to take in. Perhaps you'd like to come onboard for further discussions?"

"I can do that, where would you like me to arrive?"

"Do you mean to say you have technology to move from one point to another without passing through the intervening space?"

"We have magic for that yes, we haven't figured out technology for it yet."

"We'd be happy to receive you in our shuttle bay in half an hour."

"Until then."

"They closed the channel. Those were some pretty wild claims they made. I can confirm that the ship sending that transmission has no life-signs on it. The other member of the pair has only one and it is probably human."

"The Federation would be hard pressed to build something as big as that station in a month and they seem to have done it with no major infrastructure in this system and no sign of warp drive. They definitely have capabilities we don't understand. I'm not sure they have exactly the ones they claim but it seems a possibility worth considering," Lieutenant Hriss notes.

"There's a lot to consider," agrees the Captain. "Rommie, please send your avatar to escort the envoy from the shuttlebay to the conference room. Hriss you and I are going to the conference room, Rommie can you ask Dr Fook to meet us there?"

There's a round of nods.

"Drake you have the bridge."

"Aye Captain."

Rommie joins the other three in the conference room with a hologram. "My avatar is waiting for our guest to arrive. The shuttlebay is clear of other personnel and all the shuttles are stowed in the hanger. The Starlight vessels are keeping position relative to us. Whatever their version of transporters is works at longer range than ours do."

"Our initial contact got somewhat sidetracked by their claims about their capabilities but our primary mission remains establishing peaceful contact and understanding what their intentions are," Captain Montgomery notes.

"Perhaps, though I know my people at least are going to be quite interested in this immortality concept. We really don't like losing friends and for us it's inevitable," Rommie counters.

"I found the terms she used there interesting. She said it would take research to reembody non-human people. I wonder what exactly that means," muses Hriss.

"What should I know when talking to these people Emiko? What are my priorities aside from peaceful relations?"

"They have at least six distinct species onboard their vessel. We can't do genetic analysis from here but there are enough macro-scale physiological differences for us to be confidant in that assessment. They're also constantly warping the sub-realm that's present here. We're still trying to understand what all the different effects are doing. For one thing they were somehow routing radio signals through the sub-realm to avoid the lightspeed lag which would otherwise have been present in your conversation. They're also shifting some of the mass of their starship into the sub-realm, I expect they can maneuver a lot faster than we would typically expect. If I had a wishlist the obvious item would be access to their technical and scientific databases but failing that just getting them to stay here for a while is teaching us a huge amount and getting them to use their FTL drive at slower speeds within the system would probably be enough for us to crack it. We got a glimpse of it from their transit into the system but they were just going too fast for us to get enough information."

"Alright, so I should try and get them to show off more of their abilities where you can take a look. I can work with that, are they a threat to us?"

"They're carrying enough antimatter to probably destroy the research station if we let them get close enough, of course that also means we can destroy their ship with transposers if we want to assuming they don't have a way to block them. Depending on how good their automation is we might just be able to protect ourselves by transposing their full crew away. I don't like questions like this though."

"Neither do I... it's the price of being in charge though."

"On a happier note do you have a sensor for me? I expect I can get a much closer look at some of the new species onboard, I don't think we should go for copying their technology in person."

Emiko laughs. "I was hoping you'd ask that." The skin on her shoulder opens up revealing crystal nestled in a number of metal rods. She reaches in with her opposite hand to grab it and hand it over. Her shoulder closes back up, the skin once again looking seemless. "This is a standard biomedical sensor resonator. It was made for operatives expected to need to diagnose injuries or plagues in areas where we're not making open contact."

"You're always so dramatic. Really opening your shoulder?" She takes the crystal and opens her jaw a bit wider than an ordinary human could to swallow it.

"You're one to talk. I bet you're about to do your whole age up routine like you do when talking to people not used to us."

"I..." she says before her dress begins lengthening while along with her legs arms and torso. "Have no idea what you're talking about."

Her face shifts last losing some of the softness of childhood. Then she breaks down laughing.

"I hope this goes well. Good luck to you and your teams Emiko."

Some time later she appears without any fanfare in the Shuttlebay. "Hello, thank you for inviting me to your vessel."

"You're welcome. I hope your time aboard goes well. The captain is waiting in a conference room."

"Of course. Is it polite in your culture to enquire as to someone's species?"

"That's a complicated question but it's definitely acceptable during first contact situations. We have a number of species on board. The captain is human, our science officer Lieutenant Hriss is Caitian, our chief medical officer Dr. Fook is Vulcan and I'm a Jovian."

"Could you tell me about your species? If that's a polite question to ask?"

"Well, I'm not sure if you could tell but I'm not biological. This is my Avatar but my body is this ship. We're a species of AI, though perhaps species is the wrong word. We're all forks off of a single original AI."

"I see. Are most starships in your Federation Jovians?"

"Most Starfleet ships are, it's a lot less common among civilian ships. For political reasons there's a portion of Starfleet ships without AI either."

They arrive at the turbolift and step inside.

"There's politics in everything I find."

"You're right about that. Though I don't think there's that much among us Jovians just yet. We're small enough that we run everything among ourselves as a direct democracy."

"Your population must either be very small or have a lot of free time if you're able to sustain that."

"Jovian's are naturally very good at multi-tasking. Some of us hold thousands of conversations at a time. And things requiring a full vote of the Gathering don't happen that often. We only vote on things that will impact most or all of us."

"That's impressive, I don't know if any of our people can do something quite like that. I never took cognitive engineering courses."

"What does cognitive engineering entail?"

"It's the study of restructuring and augmenting people's minds to allow them to have abilities or manifest in forms very different from those of baseline humans. My mind has been restructured to allow me to manage this body, to experience less trauma and to have a more effective memory than what a baseline human would."

"Is there a reason why you've been engineered to experience less trauma in particular?"

"I'm an envoy, my job is to reach out and make contact with other civilizations and not all of them are nice. As it stands though, without clear evidence that engaging in violence is an expected part of their culture it's my responsibility to allow my body to be destroyed rather than taking violent action against those I'm visiting."

"What? You would just... have you?"

"I've lost my body three times now, it's unpleasant but it happens."

Several responses fly through her mind, it's somewhat terrifying that someone would be that committed to their job but then, she remembers several occasions where she thought she was going to die to save someone she cared about. Being willing to do that for a principle is different but not that different. Being calm about it is the more disquieting part.

"You must be very committed."

"I am, every civilization has things to teach us and it's not our place to force them down paths they don't want to follow. Though, I admit, appearing after my supposed death does have an impact all it's own. It's an effective demonstration that we really are offering immortality, though admittedly it's a bit misleading. Most people don't keep second by second incremental backups. Depending on lifestyle people take incremental anywhere from hourly to weekly. Some rare few take them even less frequently than that but usually for a specific reason."

Before she has a chance to respond the turbolift doors open and it's only a short walk from there to the conference room.

"May I introduce Siobhán Ionbhá, Envoy of Starlight. Envoy, this is Captain Hannah Montgomery, Doctor Fook and Lieutenant Hriss of Clan R'Rok Chief Science Officer."

"Hello Envoy, it's a pleasure to meet you in person. Might I ask how it's polite to address you? Among our people it's polite to use either titles either with or without surnames."

"We don't much stand on formality. Siobhán is my given name, the name I received at the beginning of my life from those who raised me. Ionbhá is my chosen name. It's a name I picked for myself that's meaningful to me and who I want to be. In your language it means empathy. I'm comfortable being addressed by my title, or either of my names."

"That's good to know. To recap our earlier discussion, you said that you're from another universe, that your society is in the habit of uplifting other civilizations and that you're willing to provide us with immortality. You also expressed a hope for scientific collaboration between our peoples."

"That sounds like an accurate summation, though we don't generally think of what we do as uplift. That implies a very one-sided top-down process. We much prefer to give people resources so they can build their own unique civilization and meet us on more even terms. Where we do intervene more directly it's typically to prevent genocides or other events leading to mass deaths."

"How do you draw that line though? Any significant contact seems likely to lead to irrevocable changes to the civilization you're interacting with."

"That's an argument for not interacting with any civilization at all. You came to visit us so clearly you have a line where you consider such things acceptable."

"The line we usually draw is when the civilization in question has achieved interstellar travel. Even then we don't interfere without permission. We have sometimes made exceptions of course for example when a natural disaster is likely to end civilization on a planet or in other such extreme cases."

"I see, we have sent vessels towards nearby star systems in our home realm. Though given the lack of mechanisms allowing us to travel faster than massless particles in that realm those expeditions are still establishing themselves. I'm not sure how meaningful that is in your accounting."

"Do you not have subspace in your universe?"

"We don't. Studying the phenomenon is a big part of what we hope to do at this research outpost. We'd already made some progress, your presence has helped us make even more."

"Your subspace sensors are that good?" asks Hriss.

"I'm told we're thoroughly monitoring subspace in large portions of this system including around your vessel. Our scientists are hoping to see your ship moving slower than it has so far to give us more of a chance to understand what your drive system is doing."

"Most civilizations we've encountered develop warp drive before advanced subspace sensors. Is there a reason why you're different?"

"Magic is really good at functioning as sensor systems. I expect it'll take more effort to come up with technological versions, assuming it's even possible to get as good as magic with technology. Sometimes it isn't."

"What exactly do you mean by magic?" Hriss follows up.

"The original criteria for magic was that it was non-reductionist effects. Things that cannot be explained with fundamental forces and particles alone. As time has passed the definition has gotten fuzzier, the central examples of magic are still effects that are exclusively attached to certain types of sapient beings. Otherwise, the somewhat circular definition we use is that magic is the set of things that can only be analyzed using magic after extensive study."

"So you would consider telepathic abilities to be magic then. Why do your sensor systems count as magic?"

"They're produced directly or indirectly by mage-crafters and to most conventional tests they appear to be quartz crystal despite behaving in ways quartz crystal is entirely unable to."

"That sounds a bit like dilithium. Unless you have subspace sensors it just looks like lithium atoms that don't react the way you'd expect. Do you think we could get a sample to look at?"

"Of course, we distribute our basic immortality systems the same way. I have a couple samples with me." She pulls out a few crystalline objects and sets them on the table. "There are a lot of names for these though I just call them resonators. They need external power to work though they can get that power in any number of ways. They'll consume electro-magnetic flux, or use up the energy in a heat or charge differential. They can also function on something a bit like the piezoelectric effect converting vibrations in their own medium into energy to power their operation."

"That's a very broad range of energy sources. Is there a principle that ties them together?"

"I'm not an expert but my understanding is that those are the forms of energy magic has been taught to absorb."

"Is magic sapient?"

"That's one of the great mysteries we don't really know the answer to. The source of our magic certainly cares about people's personalities but none of our attempts to communicate with it have succeeded. My understanding is that mages can teach magic how to do things but I don't really know the details."

"I'd be very interested to hear more about that process and your magic in general.

The captain clears her throat. "As fascinating as this conversation is, I'd like to move onto the details of this immortality system."

"Yes Captain."

"Certainly. There are two real parts to our immortality system. The first are devices like this," she indicates a hemispheric crystalline device. "It's a sensor system that records enough information about a person's mind and body to allow them to be reembodied should their current body die. As I expect you gathered, it can only restore memories that it records. The second major piece is a construction device. It creates new bodies to specification. We've successfully made it work for five different species though it does require a lot of research and analysis to add the ability to build each new species' biology."

This time it's the Vulcan doctor who speaks. "Do you reconstruct their body exactly as it was? Or are you changing it somehow?"

"My understanding is that it stores a simplified model of an individual which is then combined with the closest applicable template for their species to produce a body which is very similar to their original body on a cosmetic and structural level while being less so at a cellular level, on average someone's backup will take up about ten petabytes of data, most of that is used to ensure that hormonal and neurological characteristics match. I've worn a few biological bodies in my life and my first time switching it took me a couple days to get used to it. It takes longer to get used to wearing non-biological bodies depending on how much is manually controlled. It also takes medical research to ensure non-biological bodies adequately reflect the sensoria and neural characteristics of a new species."

"Getting used to new bodies with very different motor systems is a pain."

"Oh, we have software interlayers to manage the details when you're not able to attend to them and that helps a lot as long as you're shaped about the same. I hear it's a lot harder for people who switch into more exotic shapes."

"It doesn't seem like that should be enough information."

"I've been through it several times and I don't think I've changed much as a result, though as I shared with Andromeda I've also undergone intentional mind-alteration to make me better suited for my work."

The captain jolts in her seat and looks very intently at Siobhán. "What sort of mind-alteration?"

"Mostly changes to how I form memories, I'm less susceptible to trauma and more able to recall details of my experiences. I also have improved attentional capacity and adaptability as it applies to new bodies than baseline humans."

"You can't possibly know all the side effects of that." The captain states with certainty.

"Of course we can't. I didn't claim that we could. There are long term studies attempting to map the full side effects though and after over twenty years we've only found modest effects, mostly it makes us have a somewhat narrower emotional range. People who get the modifications today are informed ahead of time."

"That seems a logical tradeoff," agrees Doctor Fook. "Many among my people would likely seek out such changes for those effects."

"I take it your people value control over their emotions then?"

"Vulcans in general experience much more intense emotion than humans and we compensate with meditation and other mental exercises that allow us to set our emotions aside. To those unfamiliar with us we often present as emotionless."

"You do have quite the poker face."

"Does your immortality have any side effects like that?"

"The studies on that have much larger sample sizes. It seems that it makes some people more risk averse while it makes others more risk tolerant. Early non-biological bodies also failed to correctly model hormonal systems but we've since corrected that. On the whole, there aren't any known side effects that aren't attributable to the change in circumstances."

"Would we be able to access these studies?" asks the doctor. He also gives a short look with a raised eyebrow at the captain for her rather confrontational tone.

"Of course, people are entitled to see the research behind any medical procedure that they're considering. We do our best to provide summaries for those individuals without medical training but for those with expertise we go as far as we can without compromising individual's medical privacy."

"How easy is it to change people's minds while they're stored?"

"Again, I'm not an expert but my understanding is that it's quite difficult. The modifications I'm using took a few years for a team of several hundred people to design and that was partially based on reverse-engineered magic. Everything in people's minds is connected and you need a lot of expertise and skill to make almost any change. The systems we distribute also use checksums and encryption to prevent minds from being modified between being copied and re-embodied."

"That's good to hear. Is there any way we can verify those protections?"

"After we've sufficiently assured ourselves that you're unlikely to abuse it we can provide you with technological means of creating backups that's something you could test and verify though the technological version is easier to subvert. Magic though, it resists easy verification or analysis unless you have magic of your own. We have magics that can verify our backups system and we could provide you with them but ultimately you would need to trust those magics."

The captain has a knowing smirk but doesn't interject.

"That is a hard problem. How would we go about establishing our trustworthiness?"

"There's a few routes. The first option is to demonstrate that you possess equivalent technologies and are using them responsibly. The second option is to provide a sufficiently verifiable account of your history so we can understand who you are as a civilization through that lens. The third option is just to wait, as we continue diplomatic contact we'll get a better sense of your society and peoples, assuming you're trustworthy we'll learn that naturally over time."

"I guess that's not too different from our stance regarding distributing technology. There is a note of superiority there though."

"As much as I wish I could deny that I can't. We mostly encounter civilizations less capable than ours and that tendency has shaped some of our approach to these matters. We're also acutely aware of the ways our technology can be abused and we feel we'd bear some of the responsibility for others abusing technology we gave them."

"It's good you take these things seriously. Interfering with the natural course of development for other civilizations isn't to be done lightly," says the Captain.

"I'm curious what you mean by natural. Do you just mean what would happen without any contact with other civilizations? What makes that a good outcome?"

"If you interfere too readily in other civilizations you deny them the chance to learn and grow. It's also hard to avoid sculpting those civilizations into copies of your own and destroying what makes them unique."

"There's definitely some truth to that. At a minimum civilizations are shaped by their circumstances and awful things like massive natural disasters or genocide are both things that would be highly influential circumstances and things we'd like to prevent. Finding or not finding solutions to such things are certainly formative moments for civilizations. It just comes down to whether you consider the cost in lives and suffering to be worth those formative moments, especially when you can't predict how they'll go in advance."

"You can't know what the consequences of interfering will be either. By interfering you're deciding that will be better in the long term as well as the short term."

"Our interventions typically cut death rates by at least 99%. In your place it's different. You might make people's lives better or worse but ultimately without technology like ours everyone dies eventually it's just a matter of when and how. Immortality changes the calculus."

"I'll admit that it does... the lessons taught about this at Starfleet Academy don't need to reckon with that."

"Back to the topic of trustworthiness. What technologies are involved in the first method?"

"As I understand it, the requirements are fairly advanced nanotechnology and either artificial intelligence technology or the ability to alter people's minds. The simplest way to meet the nanotechnology requirement is that we don't give you any nanotechnology, just the software and the hardware requirements so you can implement them using nanotechnology or other tools you already have. The issue of artificial intelligence and mind-alteration is harder. The fact that you have both telepaths and AI are strong signals you have similar tools available. It isn't in itself evidence you wouldn't abuse more general versions of those tools though." 

"What would be evidence then?"

"Ultimately, it's the same as the second and third methods of establishing trust. You handing us information that would be hard to fabricate or us collecting that information ourselves. Generally that information would be collected either by envoys like myself or field archivists."

"What are field archivists?"

"They're people who work to collect information for Starlight. It's an intentionally broad category, it encompasses everything from archeology to zoology, in this case it would be those with specialties in studying civilizations."

"Isn't that just another word for researcher?"

"Researchers as an official position are those who conduct experiments. Field archivists and archivists in general are tasked with observing the state of the world and translating the massive amounts of available information into more useful resources."

"That's an unusual seeming place to draw the line. In our experience people usually play both roles. Is there a reason you separate the responsibilities?"

"Well first off, as I said Archivist is a broad category but as to those individuals responsible for working with researchers it reduces the risk of bias influencing the results. Unaffiliated archivists who are ideally not attached to any specific outcome will be more able to neutrally report on how an experiment was conducted and what the results were."