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A glassworks town! It seems to run on a sort of guild system. Farmers' guild, toolmakers' guild, and so on. There's nothing obviously wrong with the place.
The next town after that is a democracy. Then a sort of oligarchy composed of a dozen 'houses' with exactly zero non-houses members. Then an obviously-piratical group of pirates. Then a benign monarchy. Then another democracy, this one in the middle of elections.
No presents for the pirates. Everyone else: presents! If a candidate in the democracy seems obviously better than their opponents Cam might drop an endorsement.
He encounters one of the first towns he gave presents to. They've tripled in size as people decided to move in, and would certainly appreciate more stuff. And another slave-having town after that. And more and more towns, so many towns... Democracies seem most common followed by socialist governments of various sorts, then monarchies, and the rest are hard to categorize.
Cam takes notes, because of course he takes notes, but mostly he just distributes presents, rescues people in need of rescuing, and hops around being "angelic".
And Dr. Shen's team completes their end of the gate even faster than they expected to. Forty days flat. Is Cam ready to start the gate up?
Diagnostics look good... Power looks good... Cam doesn't actually have to press the button, the computer can do it, but it's rather traditional isn't it?
The starscape visible through the ring changes. Success.
Lyl Jupiter says, "Sorry if it seems inhospitable but we don't exactly have a welcome parade planned. Getting the gate running was a big rush already. So are we supposed to come through to you, or you to us?"
"I was expecting visitors. I'm the only person on this end who could possibly address anything that came up if something did."
One of the 'stars' starts getting bigger. Yep, it's a ship.
"The native has many excellent traits but no magic powers or relevantly advanced technical expertise. And he's not here."
The ship is a very stylish thing that manages to be both sleek and stately, a fair bit bigger than Cam's little shuttle. It efficiently maneuvers to the station's docking bay without any visible exhaust or engines. Even though Cam fixed the station's life support, the people who get off it are still wearing spacesuits. Remarkably compact spacesuits barely bulkier than a 21st century winter coat, but spacesuits none the less. One has green skin, and most of them have strange eye colors. They're also followed by a small swarm of drones whose purpose is not immediately clear.
The first figure to approach is a short tanned man who introduces himself as "Jones Newell, Registered Diplomat. Never thought I'd see the farside of a dead link. I look forward to working together, Cam."
"Nice to meet you," says Cam. "I did repressurize the station for you, you know."
On a second look, the suits do show evidence of fashion choices. In an understated, professional sort of way, these being diplomats.
"Up to you. You'll look out of place if you go to Cloudbank like that, for sure."
A lady with bright gold irises has her suit peel itself off into a little bundle revealing a shorts-and-shirt combo, though. She makes a hand gesture and one of the bulkier drones picks it up. "I'm Vinga," she says, "No last name."
Introductions and polite handshakes all around. Then Jones asks, "How do you want to move forward?"
"I've been spot-infrastructuring various Cloudbank towns for a while but it's hard to get any sort of comprehensive set of them. I've run into duplicates often enough that I think I may have gotten to more than half of the large settlements - it's not that densely populated. I don't know what your plan to reintegrate them with the wider galactic culture might be. Nor am I sure where or how you'd like to collect your bribery."
"There's some economic rules on our end, most notably a lockout of any non-United Systems-affiliated corporations here until the local government is running, to prevent corruption. And thoroughly restricted immigration until the local government exists well enough to decide for itself. We have plans for the... Bribery... But I imagined you'd want to talk them over with someone who has full authority. I'm just a diplomat."
"Are you planning to completely supplant the individual governments of the towns? They've got a bunch of different ones and many of them are quite functional. Or are you just spearheading an effort to sort of federate them?"
"A federation is one of the common choices which will be described in the instructional materials. If Cloudbank's inhabitants decide on a federal structure with individual towns acting relatively freely, then they'll get a federation. I believe such a federation would be obliged to enforce United Systems law on the individual towns, however."