Extraordinarily rare technological devices constructed upwards of a billion years ago by the long-vanished spacefaring civilization known as the Slaver Empire. During their heyday, the Slavers often carried valuables — sometimes including highly advanced weaponry — inside stasis boxes, containers in which time stands still. Some stasis boxes discovered during the twenty-third century have contained technologies capable of revolutionizing science, while others harbored dangerous weapons or even completely ordinary, innocuous items. Stasis boxes also constitute the only means, other than pure chance, of finding other stasis boxes.