"And here's where I confess to not having done all my reading, but what directive was broken?"

"The Prime one. - Have its contents not come up?"

"I've been looking at infrastructure and learning everyone's names, haven't even poked the galactic politics files yet."

"The Federation obeys a directive that no civilization which has not developed warp technology is to be contacted or interfered with in any way, shape, or form, even if they're busy nuking themselves to death, freezing and starving because their sun went out, being exploited by similarly warp-incapable neighbors who are nevertheless close by enough to do that sort of thing, plagued with trivially curable illnesses, etcetera. I took a low-profile job as a solo deep space surveyor, found and declined to document planets that could squeak by as plausible inventors of warp even if it could just as easily have taken them a couple more centuries, identified scientists likely amenable to discreet plagiarism, and dropped warp equations on their desks. I got a number of them into the Federation or at least trading partner status before I was predictably caught and sentenced to life in prison."

"That is the best criminal career in the entire multiverse. That's a candidate for the best thing in the entire multiverse. Congratulations - why the hell -"

"Why what?"

"Why would there be a law against helping people?"

"So that no one is inclined to colonialistically exploit them and so that cultures can develop without being warped by contact with larger, older civilizations."

"That's - great, if they're not literally dying -"

"They're always literally dying. We don't have naturally immortal species around in any quantity. They are always literally dying and they could almost always be doing it slower. And a lot of cultures could stand some warping."

"Well. We're allowed to do it now, right?"

"Our federated structure is not the Federation, I've managed to sort out my citizenship to a result of 'not', and accordingly we're no more bound by the Prime Directive than the Klingon Empire is."

"Good. And congratulations."

"Thank you."

"She has a little program which takes relevant data and re-runs estimates of how many people are alive now who would be dead if it weren't for her."

T'Mir blushes green.

"That's adorable."

"Thank you?"

"Saving the lives is extraordinary, writing up a program to keep count so you know how many is adorable. It's not really a very principled distinction. Anyway, I was already very impressed by how you two were going about this enterprise but it's all the more of an honor to work for you on it."

"I'm very glad Boots and company showed up to teleport me off that moon so I could get another project underway."

"There's - not a multiverse law that a Bell will drop on you just in time, exactly, but there's something that looks like a multiverse rule that a Bell will in fact drop on you."

"We're so droppable."

"You are like magnets for miscellaneous random accidents."

"I really want to know how templates work but I haven't the foggiest idea how to find that out."

"My father's Luster alt has been lobbying aggressively to be allowed to wish for knowledge about that but Gem's worried we'll break the universe or her wish machine."