Is this some close alternate world where they'd plausibly have a genetic drift closely overlapping Ev's?  No, not if they have enough "suicide bombers" for that to be something that actually comes to people's minds!

"Go ahead; do it.  I'd love to see how far out we are - we both look human, so maybe our ancestors both came from the same world long ago?  Our ancient history isn't that great, I'm afraid - how's yours?"

". . . Please give me a rundown of how your world's ancient history is supposed to have gone. I wouldn't want to poison the well by reporting ours first. You'll have many opportunities to verify our history yourself, once you get out, and I have no such guarantees for, ah. Your world."

How long can this guy possibly keep this up . . . ?

"Oof, what a lot to summarize, and ancient history isn't my field."

He shakes his head, and then purses his lips for a moment and shrugs.

"So, Terrin would shake his head sadly over what I'm leaving out, but... first at-all-clear records, we've got a few people in different parts of the world building cities and farming and some nobles or priests usually ruling for their own benefit.  A lot of them are talking of a lost golden age; might or might not be true.  Then there are the nomads around the city-builders - there're a lot fewer of them, and they don't leave records so we hardly know anything about them, even when they conquer a city.

"And by the way, one reason I'm being vague here is that we don't know that much.  They didn't have the History-Monks; hardly anyone even knew how to write for some reason even though it's hard to believe - and even when they wrote on clay tablets, a lot of it didn't get recopied and decayed over time without any useful summaries. 

"Earlier than that, we've got religious stories and legends that people disagree on.  One of them says that our distant ancestors got to this particular part of the world on a big ship.  The people who believe it usually think it was from somewhere else on the same world, but now that we know there're other worlds, it's possible..."  He spreads his hands.

"How about the earliest time period you do have a solid narrative for," Distorted-Yeilsi says. It should sound dry, but instead Yeilsi thinks it comes out sounding a little alarmed. Something about the way this guy is talking is freaking him out. He sounds - too calm, too focused, to be crazy, and the story is . . . not the right shape to have been made up for attention or a ruse.

"Really solid?  A little before Year One, when the History-Monks were founded.  The last big classical empire had just fallen apart and the nomadic barbarians had conquered little pieces - they were a lot more numerous now - and for that matter the other empire on the other end of the continent had also broken into a few pieces that never reunified... but we've got millennia of records before then.  All right; some contact between worlds could've happened before then and been lost.  We've even got some myths that might be confusedly remembering it - half the fantasy writers in the world like to pretend it did.  But I'm willing to stake my reputation that there hasn't been any contact between worlds involving more than a couple people since then.  And that's fifteen hundred years ago.

"How long ago does your history stretch?"

Yeilsi knows some part of him will regret not keeping tight lips and a straight face like he committed to, but in a split second he decides that Areli is probably more willing to give up information if Yeilsi plays along.

"Nine gross years and change." Empires, and he'd talked like they were important, like of course they should be the primary social units of reference . . . In the tone of a dryly not-really-indulgent trainer: "Your world's history is made of governments, eh?" This ought to be interesting. On the other, non-mutually-incompatible hand, the part of Yeilsi that is checking his devices for notifications that his team has found something dangerous gets a little more CPU time.

"Nine gross years?  That sounds like my wild guess could be right...  What tales do you have about what happened before then?

"Yes, of course, there're other stories in history too, but even the ancient people knew to have governments.  Though they're a lot different these days - now most of the world has split the territorial and national governments."

Huh? "Tales - like, verbal? We don't have living oral histories that stretch further back than our written ones - just archaeology. Our species has, according to the archaeological record, apparently had fire for about - if I remember right - fifty thousand* years and pottery for about twelve thousand."

*henceforth Bywayean duodecimal will be rendered as Earth-conventional decimal

"So much for that guess, then."  Assuming their archaeologists got that right - he doesn't have that much trust in archaeologists back home - but then they should be better than his top-of-the-head hypothesis.

"I meant... either oral tales or unreliable written tales even if they're called histories.  That's what I was complaining about with the records of the ancient empires - they didn't know how to write history well, or they didn't care to, or something.  It makes for some wild tales, but you can't trust half of them.

"But what tale do you arrange your history around, if not governments?"

"Ah. You got lucky, I went through a history phase" Yeilsi can't believe he's saying this, the two or three successful suicide bombings from modern times keep racing through his head "and from what I understand, the earliest writing we have from 1300 years ago isn't really trusted to be a particularly accurate source for anything, since it's not as though the common people from back then kept diaries that survived to contradict it. But it still counts as history. I mean, it's not as though you ever get people being paid to be historians, and just running around recording things as they happen with no childish bias, that'd be a waste of time and also impossible.

I arrange my history around power. Who has the biggest guns, the most heavily diversified investments and fortified compounds, and how that skews absolutely everything in those peoples' favor - which it should, because they're smart." That should spur Areli into elaborating about the omnipresent all-important governments.

"People just recording things as they happen is exactly what the History-Monks are.  Of course we can't get rid of all our bias, but we've been working on minimizing it or clearly signposting it - it's been centuries; I'd say we've got good techniques by now.  We were originally paid by different kings and churches; now we sell books and teach people but we still get a lot of our funding from different nations' governments because they trust us to do a good job.

"And... big guns and fortified compounds skewing things in people's favor... that sounds something like a government?  Maybe one of the bad governments that doesn't care for its people but just wants to grab things for itself?  We don't see them so much anymore now that nations usually aren't territorial, of course.  Or if they're not a government, are they... large-scale thieves, like some of the Barren-Power folks might've been?"

Yeilsi's veins are admittedly kinda icy by now. If this guy's not actually from an alternate branch of history where governments are the default explanation for everything, he is giving off an impression of that that is starting to convince Yeilsi. Would this be happening if Yeilsi's parents had secured his benighted high chair? Whatever. Stay in the game.

"For-profit companies. And occasionally cults, especially back when the social fabric was thinner so small cults didn't have as much herd immunity to theft."

He's just going to ignore that point about companies for the moment.

"Cults...  We've got a lot of those too, and we still do.  Sometimes one of them gets guns or law-twisters and makes itself a theocracy.  My friend was just fighting one of them last year."

Yeilsi turns halfway to his apprentice. "Oleyyah, do you think you could scribe this in the text editor and still keep your eyes on the cameras?"

Oleyyah considers. He can't see it going horribly wrong. "Yes sir."

"Okay. Don't try to catch up, please, just start with that business about - what did you say, Areli? Your world's cults having 'la-curlers' and 'thecorasy'?"

Blink.  Well, they don't have governments here - at least not going by that name - so they won't have those either.  "Theocracy is when a government makes everyone it's governing practice one particular religion.  Law-twisters are... well, it's not a profession; it's an insult.  People who're skilled at twisting the law around to make it seem to say the opposite of what people think it says.  Some of them in the larger nations do make a profession of it - being advocates or advisors - but usually not, because it looks bad for people to hire them.

". . . sorry I'm stuck on what a 'law' is?" Yeilsi never actually got that into deep government lore, during his egregore-research edgelord phase.

Oleyyah, his anxiety melting to his task of scribing, is noticing that something very weird is going on. He notices himself not expecting the incursion Areli to turn out to have any kind of motivation drawn from the pool of previously known possibilities. But the only other person who would be available for a bet on this topic is Yeilsi, and you do not generally distract your coworkers by betting at work but you especially do not distract your boss with bets when he is busy.

"... What a law is?  Something the nation says you should do, or you need to do? ... How do you settle disputes with people without laws?  Or keep track of your visions?"

. . . Yeilsi wonders if Areli is trying to get away with method-acting like he's gone so insane that he's forgotten what the Code is, so that in the end he can have his reputation cake and eat his suicide-bombing too. It might work halfway on enough particularly stupid and sympathetic fools that 'Areli' would actually have any friends after the dust settled, but it's still the kind of gallingly stupid and doomed idea that's only entered Yeilsi's hypothesis space because nothing about this stranger makes any sense.

"I am throwing out most of all your suitcases here, but - "

A message from Dar brightens Yeilsi's terminal: "Finished. No currently dangerous non-biological hazmat known to us could conceivably be hidden in the section my team and I swept."

Well, that's good, at least. Yeilsi notes the time in a thing-that-would-look-to-Earthlings-like-a-'spreadsheet' in another window. Assuming Dar's team don't turn out to have actually missed anything, in which case they'll be fired and possibly die, they were fast enough that their pay for this event will be steep. Yeilsi sends his acknowledgement and thanks. Now he's just waiting on the others. 

" - but - what do peoples' visions have to do with what a government would command? Don't most governed people end up just - acting as limbs of the egregore, without it being possible to meaningfully say of them that they have individual visions?"

For the villains/[background characters] of this genre of comic book, at least, Yeilsi is pretty sure this trope is almost universal. It wouldn't be much of an egregore-horror otherwise? (Yeilsi's not really the type to get deep into subversive parageneric literature.)

"No - I mean, once people choose a government, they usually live within it - but even so, they want to develop their own visions and emphases -"

He throws up his hands.  "Maybe you've gotten the wrong idea from theocratic cults?  There are cults like that, ones that think the Ideal Life has already been laid out in every detail or ones that entrust all their thinking to one leader or a few leaders or even to random chance.  Maybe in a world like yours where somehow people don't want government, only those cults develop it anyway?"

He's suddenly wondering what would've happened if there hadn't been any kings or emperors before the Shift.  Would people have thought of them afterwards?  Or is it better to think of these people here as not having gone through the Shift?  Or perhaps another Shift in a totally different direction?  But without any idea what caused the Shift, that's not going to give him any real plans except remind him to keep his mind open.

Right, and 'theocrasy' was . . . (he opens a new process/window to peep the log of Oleyyah's running transcript) . . . 

when a government makes everyone it's governing practice one particular religion

. . . Interrogating a lunatic should not feel like Yeilsi is back in toddler-school, unable for the reputation of him to decipher what the sir is talking about. 

"I think we're done here, for now. If you really did, just, materialize here" obviously impossible but Yeilsi can't think what actually happened "my deepest apologies. 

The last two teams should be finished searching the building shortly. I just got word the genetic testing kit is in. If you'll spit in it for us, they'll do a final search of your person and then we have no more reason to detain you here - ah! hold on, actually, here the kit is now."

Box opening noises. Plastic tearing noises.

Yeilsi opens the door to the detainment room, politely holding up a hand, deposits the sample-collection tube on a little shelf, and departs again.

The speaker clicks back on.

"Areli, my apprentice, Oleyyah, has asked about leaving his work early today so he can accompany you in his personal capacity as guide, guard, companion, etc. as you leave today, on the hypothesis that you actually did just materialize here from Somewhere Else." And this definitely doesn't seem not in Ikkeh's interests. "Is that something you'd possibly want, conditional on speaking with him first?"

If this's magic, giving them a sample of his spit is traditionally a dangerous idea.  But he never really thought this world was magical, and at any rate, this person is so surprised and confused about Ev that it's pretty clearly not "a magical world that has secretly-to-Ev been inspiring stories of magic."

More scientific dangers... he was never really up on those stories, but he doesn't mind if some mad scientist wants to clone him.

He spits in the tube.

"Yes, thank you, a guide would be great.  And a guard too, since you don't have any governments."  What is stopping them from murdering people on the streets?  Or, what's stopping the few people who'd want to do that?  Maybe nothing, if people need a guard.

"And speaking of guides... I'd usually ask to see the lecture hall and civic palace, but I don't suppose you have those.  Maybe that's a question for him?  Speaking of which, I'm fine now, but I guess I'll eventually want some food and water" (no, it's useless to worry about fairy food) "and somewhere to sleep."

Oleyyah can feel Yeilsi very politely not making a mocking face at him about how apparently the intruder wants to be fed and housed, good luck, and is irritated. Good luck yourself, Yeilsi. This is not the first time Oleyyah wonders how someone so dull even got this job Anyway!

Great, Oleyyah gets the exciting task of chaperoning the intruder, which someone obviously had to handle and which no one was going to! He won't get paid for the rest of the day, but he's more spoons-constrained than money-constrained right now anyway.

Why would going home early and taking a pay cut, if your boss offers that, drastically decrease your work reputation? You're saving them money??? Obviously they're not going to need you around all of the time???

"Sure, we can figure it out when they release you," says a voice sounding around Yeilsi's age, and a lot nicer and more reflective. 

It is not very long before the other two teams come up empty, come back to search Areli a last time, and clear him to go and the building to be de-evacuated.

Oleyyah and Areli are ushered out the nearest exit. It's pouring rain. It's also only-slightly-the-outer-part of a huge, tightly packed, shining city! No automobile roads, just pedestrian paths - people, mainly wearing hooded light plastic raincoats, which Oleyyah is not, run or walk past.

". . . Um, sorry, we're going to have to dash to the subway entrance," says Oleyyah over the background drone of carplane engines and the rush of rain. "Follow me?"

Areli is somewhat bemused by the final search, but he cooperates, happy to get out.

He looks around the city curiously.  Things look like they're a little more closely packed than in Ev, and more... metallic?  sparkling?  than most cities at home.  He isn't surprised to not see any automobile roads - there're places without them in Ev too, especially campuses.

Huh, what's that drone from the air?