"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?"