"What are the odds that there are two copy-pasted Earth civilizations in this sector of space?" Kirk asked as they listened to the primitive planet's broadcast about sun worshippers and gladiators and slaves mixed in with petrol-based car engines and burgeoning nuclear reactors.

Spock looked dissatisfied. "Too astronomical to be a coincidence, sir."

Elle suddenly remembered. "Space Jesus!" she blurted, and started giggling.

"What?" Uhura asked her.

"Son, not sun."

"Elle."

"I'm serious! It's Space Jesus! These guys, the slaves, the wanted ones, they're Christians. The real kind, not the political, weird ones."

"This is an episode?" Kirk asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Oh yeah. McCoy fights a gladiator. It's, really funny actually."

"That does not sound funny at all," McCoy informed her, scowling.

"But the people you're looking for are down there," Elle said. "Captain what's-his-face is some big-shot political guy or something."

Kirk sighed. "Of course he is. That doesn't make sense, though. He dropped out in the fifth year of the Academy, he wouldn't be..."

Spock frowned. "Were you told why Merik was dropped from the Academy?"

"He failed a psycho-simulator test. All it takes is a split second of indecision. Hardly the type to become a political strongman."

Elle scowled. "I remember why I didn't like this episode. He sold his crew out to the Romans. The leader, the, what is it? Pro-consul? Knows about the Federation."

"He violated the Prime Directive?"

"He obliterated the Prime Directive," Elle said. "Like, stomped it to death and stabbed it with a little sword."

Kirk pinched his nose and sighed. "I don't think I like this mission, either. Whatever remaining members of the Beagle crew, we have to find them."

Elle offered the remaining details she could remember and went below to let them figure out a plan that wasn't "send the three senior officers to fight gladiators."

-/\-

"Okay, but how did they end up here?" Elle asked Commander Samir.

"We have no idea. We're still scanning the planet and the captain is debating if it's worth it putting someone in undercover to go look in the actual paper archives."

"Undercover?" Elle asked.

"It's not as exciting as you think. It's a lot of 'nobody talk to me because I'm going to miss a cultural cue and you're going to kill me'."

Elle frowned. "Oh. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Most likely help Communications with filtering the radio transmissions. You can learn a lot from people's communication networks."

"No kidding. That's why the Vulcans ignored humans till Cochrane."

Samir snickered. "Pretty much, yeah."

After that class, Elle made her way to the Comm Dept. "I want to help."

Lt. Uhura parked her in a chair with an earpiece and a tablet. "If you hear anything interesting make a note in the corresponding frequency."

Elle scanned through the radio frequencies and settled briefly on one that seemed historical in nature. Educational, maybe?

"...Jupiter said to the man, "A new land for worthy..."" Not historical. Religious. But that's gotta be a good source of creation myths, right?

Elle tried to concentrate but she had a psychological block at listening to the televangelist type of monologues and she kind of zoned out for a minute.

"...And he gave them his Sacred Aegis, and his Chosen One carried the Aegis on their banner, and they led the worthy to a new land, where Rome reigned supreme..."

"Aegis?" Elle realized, eyes widening. She turned up the volume and took notes frantically. "Lt. Uhura? I think I might have something?"

"Let me see, sugar." Uhura tuned into the frequency and Elle showed her her notes. "This can't be a coincidence," she said. "Two human-replicate societies transferred by something called the Aegis?"

Elle punched the air victoriously. "This is so cool, we're so on to something. Interstellar archaeological conspiracies! Who needs Stargate!"

Lt. Uhura gave her a look.

"Sorry." Elle folded her arms. "Ahem. Is this something we can take as results or do we have to have like, MLA sources and a bibliography or something?"

Uhura smiled. "Two independent sources," she said. "We might have to put a person in undercover anyways because they don't have any of their information digitized."

"They don't need the internet," Elle said. "Giving the internet to Romans is a bad idea. Why don't we just beam up a bunch of books after the library closes?"

Uhura snickered. "We'll run it by Commander Spock."

"Cool."

Turns out beaming up an entire section of an alien library isn't on the anthropological handbook. "There is merit in the idea, however," Spock said, steepling his fingers carefully. "They do have a language similar to Earth English, we would be able to scan the information efficiently and then replace it before the library opened again. We would, of course, have to maintain constant surveillance of the library to prevent an alrm being raised at the temporary removal of their historical section."

"Sounds great," Kirk said cheerfully. "Good idea, Elle."

Also turns out, if you get an idea, you are expected to see it through. "Aren't there child labor laws?" Elle mock-complained, skimming the table of contents for the fiftieth book.

"Yes," Kirk replied, flicking through the pages of a dry historical tome, nose wrinkled.

Elle paused in her reading. "Really?"

"Yes, really, of course there are," Kirk said, giving her a raised eyebrow. "You can work up to ten hours a week, dependent on mental and emotional health, as long as its balanced with your schoolwork. You didn't know that?"

"...Does polishing spare parts in engineering count as work because then I should be paid overtime," Elle said.

Kirk rolled his eyes. "That does count. I'll talk to Scotty."

"No, don't, I like the work, it's soothing," Elle said. "And shiny." She wrinkled her nose at a, ahem, fancy description of Jupiter and hastily flipped the page. "Wait. Am I getting paid?"

"We don't use money, Elle," Cmdr. Samir reminded her paitently.

"Oh yeah. Can I put this on my resume? Do people still use resumes?"

Kirk looked up, mock-offended. "I thought you were joining Star Fleet?"

"I mean, maybe?" Elle said. "I know enough to just keep civilian consult-ifying until Spock's like, two hundred, so..."

Spock's eyebrows hit the ceiling at her misuse of grammar.

Kirk snickered into the historical tome.

Eventually they found it. Cmdr Samir hit the jackpot with an account of wise and powerful men carrying the aegis of Jupiter. "They brought us to a new land of prosperity where Rome could rule to eternity and then disappeared back to the land of the gods," Cmdr Samir read.

"That does fit with the long-range transporters we found on Omega Four," Spock said.

"But we haven't found any sign of them on this planet," Kirk said.

"Maybe they stopped working," another anthorpologist said, looking up from the shelves. "The Romans were fifteen hundred years before the Communist era, the technology might have died and we can't find it on scans."

"Possible," Spock allowed.

Elle yawned. "Can I go now? I'm sleepy."

Kirk took the book from her and kissed her forehead. "Go to bed, kiddo. Good work today."

"Thank you, sir."

-/\-

The ship was at warp when Elle woke up. She looked up the destination on the computer as she was brushing her teeth. "Computer, where are we going?"

"Starbase Four," the computer replied.

"Why?" Elle asked through her toothpaste.

"This terminal does not have authorization for that response," the computer said.

"Oh. Thank you." Elle turned off the computer.

She asked Chekov later.

"We are dropping off the remaining members of the Beagle and reporting the results of our investigation to Star Fleet in person," Chekov replied. "We might be asked to investigate in more detail, which will either be wery exciting or wery boring."

"Probably both," Elle said.

"Yes, probably both," he agreed. "That is the way of starship life."