Det här är en partiell match, jag misstänker, men Eric Nylunds Signal to Noise har en liknande premiss av utlänningar som skickar oss instruktioner till en fantastisk maskin för att hjälpa oss att rädda oss, en form av teleportation, i utbyte mot information om mänskliga genetiska sekvenser.
Jack Potter puts computer cryptography to work for the highest bidder: sometimes for private corporations, sometimes for the government. Sometimes the work is legal; if not, Jack simply raises his price. But one day, Jack discovers something cloaked in the hiss of background radiation streaming past the Earth from deep space: a message from an alien civilization. One that's eager to do business with humanity -- and its representative.
Before he knows it, Jack has entered into a partnership that will open a Pandora's Box of potential profit and loss. The governments, the multinationals, and mysterious players more powerful still, all want a piece of the action -- and they're willing to kill, even wage war, to get it. Now Jack is entangled shifting web of deceit and intrigue in which no one, not even his closest friends, can be trusted. For Earth's cloak-and-dagger business practices are writ large in the heavens...and hostile takeovers are just as common across light years as they are across boardroom tables.
Som det visar sig finns det en enorm marknad för information i galaxen och Wheeler, den främling som kontaktade Jack, har mindre än noggranna motiv. Bland annat
He does not disclose that the teleportation device he provides only works terrestrially, and uses up a bit of the Earth's rotation every time its used, eventually resulting in the destruction of the planet, which Jack and a handful of others escape via another device that does allow for interstellar travel.