The Site cafeteria was quieter than usual.
Robert sat with his legs lazily stretched under the table, spinning a plastic spoon between his fingers like it was the most fascinating object in the universe.
Across from him, SCP-507—Steven, as Rob insisted on calling him—looked completely refreshed
"Rob," Steven said, gazing at him intently.
Rob stared back
"Yes?"
Rob nodded.
"That bed you created for me? It was amazing, i could finally sleep without getting nightmares"
"No problem man. So, how about we start talking of those unique worlds out there"
"...Okay, lets get this over with"
Steven sighed deeply, the kind of sigh that came from years of being dragged through dimensions against one's will.
"Fine. I stopped counting years ago how many worlds I've traveled to"
"Rough estimate."
"A lot."
"That's not a number."
"That's because I don't have a number."
Rob pointed at him with the spoon.
"That bothers me."
"Everything bothers you."
Steven rubbed his face.
"Some are small shifts. Some are entire realities. Some look almost identical to ours except something is horribly wrong. Some are so different that language itself stops making sense. Time behaves differently in some of them. Physics changes. Sometimes I'm there for minutes, sometimes months. Sometimes I come back before I even left."
Rob's eyes sharpened a little.
That part interested him.
Steven was an interesting guy
Not because he was particularly powerful—he wasn't—but because he was the first person he knew who had traveled to another world.
Most people lived inside one world and believed that was the entire stage.
Steven had seen many others
"Tell me about the strangest one."
Steven gave him a flat look.
"You need to be more specific."
"The one where you thought, 'I absolutely should not be here.'"
Steven took a long drink before answering.
"That narrows it down to most of them."
"Excellent. Start anywhere."
Steven leaned back, eyes drifting toward the cafeteria ceiling.
"There was one world where everyone could fly."
Rob blinked.
"That's your opening?"
"Do you want the story or not?"
"Continue."
"It looked peaceful at first. Beautiful, actually. Floating mountains, islands in the sky, cities built on clouds. People walked around carrying swords like it was normal. Everyone dressed like they were auditioning for some ancient fantasy drama."
Rob slowly lowered the spoon.
"Oh no."
Steven pointed.
"Yes. That reaction. Exactly."
"Cultivators."
"Oh, so they are called cultivators?."
"I know the type. Continue. I want confirmation."
Steven nodded.
"I arrived in what looked like a small town. I thought it would be simple. Buy food, stay unnoticed, survive until I shifted back."
He paused.
"A teenager in white robes bumped into me."
Rob already looked tired.
"Let me guess. Arrogant, punchable face, wanted to kill you, told you "You are courting death"."
Steven pointed again.
"You know this world too well."
"I know enough."
"He looked at me like I had murdered his ancestors."
"That sounds right."
"I apologized."
Rob physically winced.
"You fool."
"I know that now."
Steven continued.
"He said I had insulted the honor of the Heavenly Jade Crimson Something Pavilion—"
"Always too many words."
"—and demanded I kneel."
Rob covered his face.
"Please tell me you punched him."
"I did not."
"Coward."
"I was trying not to die."
Rob nodded.
"Reasonable. Continue."
"Before things escalated, another young man stepped in and saved me."
Rob raised an eyebrow.
"Oh? That's new. Usually nobody bothers with background characters."
Steven pointed at him.
"That sentence was unnecessarily offensive."
"And accurate. Continue."
Steven sighed.
"He looked calm. Too calm. Cold face, barely spoke, and before I could even understand what was happening, the first guy was already on the ground."
Rob slowly lowered his spoon.
"…Don't tell me."
Steven frowned.
"What?"
"Cold face. Silent. Solves problems with murder."
Rob leaned forward.
"Tell me he killed the arrogant one without even changing expression."
Steven stared.
"You really know this world."
Rob looked at him like a man trying to understand how someone had survived walking into a minefield barefoot.
"He's either a demonic cultivator or the main protagonist of that world."
He paused.
"Most of the time, he's both."
"By demonic cultivator, you mean…?" Steven asked, cold sweat running down his back.
"Yeah, someone who literally kills entire villages to 'Level up' in power. So, how are you alive?"
Steven shook his head.
"I escaped by dimensional shift before I found out."
Rob nodded.
"You were lucky."
"Never trust those Main characters. Most of the time you will die for them to grow up, or they will kill by mistake while fighting their enemies"
Steven smirked slightly.
"For the record, I think you'd be a disaster there."
Rob looked offended.
"I would thrive there."
"You would start a war in under twenty minutes."
"I would ask for directions."
"Exactly."
Rob considered that.
Steven laughed for the first time that evening.
It was rare.
Most people around him either treated him like a dangerous anomaly or a walking tragedy. Rob, somehow, managed to treat him like a mildly interesting travel blog.
It was oddly refreshing.
Steven continued.
"There was a world with magic towers too," Steven continued. "Classic fantasy nonsense. Nobles, kingdoms, academies, mages who thought fireballs solved every social issue."
"They usually do."
"No, they do not."
"They solve many."
Steven ignored him.
"The interesting part was the magic itself. Structured. Almost mathematical. People spent decades studying circles, runes, formulas…"
Rob nodded.
"That one I respect."
"Because?"
"Because if someone kills me with a mathematically optimized orbital laser, at least they did their homework."
Steven stared.
"That is somehow the most reasonable thing you've said."
"I know."
"There was a library there bigger than this entire facility."
Rob sat up immediately.
"Did you steal books?"
Steven looked offended.
"Of course I tried."
Rob nodded once.
"Good."
"Security tried to stop me."
"I assume you heroically escaped."
"I got arrested."
Rob was silent for a moment.
"…less heroic, but still respectable."
Steven sighed.
"Got nothing."
"Obviously. If a normal human could casually steal something valuable from mages, that entire world would deserve to collapse."
Steven looked sad.
"So…" Rob said, moving his spoon. "What happened after that?"
Steven looked genuinely nervous.
"I got thrown into prison. Sentenced to one hundred years of forced labor."
"That's harsh."
"Yeah. I got sent back just a few days into it."
Steven regretted everything.
"There was also a modern world. Mostly like ours. Phones, traffic, bad coffee. But every few weeks, gates opened."
Rob blinked.
"Dungeons."
"Yes."
"Hunters?"
"Yes."
"Let me guess: society decided the best solution to extradimensional monster invasions was capitalism."
Steven slowly pointed at him.
"You have absolutely been there."
"I refuse to answer on legal grounds."
Steven sighed.
"People awakened powers. Rankings. Guilds. Governments pretending they were in control while one rich guy with an ego problem could level a city."
"Also sounds right."
"One man cut a building in half."
"Tuesday for them. The architects in those worlds are either slaves or rich. I hope it's the latter.
"There were worse ones," he said quietly.
That changed the air.
Rob noticed.
He stopped joking.
Steven stared at the table.
"Places where people had already lost. Worlds that were still moving even though they should have been dead."
Rob stayed silent.
"There was one where the sky was red for months. No governments. No cities. Just ruins and people trying to pretend tomorrow would happen."
His fingers tightened around the cup.
"And another where nobody remembered the sun correctly. Every person described it differently."
Even Rob said nothing.
Steven exhaled slowly.
"There was another world where everything was covered in darkness. Only the light of special torches could keep it away and allow human settlements to exist."
The cafeteria seemed colder.
For once, Rob had no immediate joke.
Because Steven wasn't talking about adventure.
He was talking about survival.
That mattered.
After a while, Rob spoke.
"Do you ever wish you had never seen any of it?"
Steven answered immediately.
"Yes."
Then he paused.
"…and no."
Rob waited.
"If I hadn't, I'd still think this world was the center of everything. That the many wonders out there were just fiction… But at least I wish I could control this ability of mine, even if it was just the selection of worlds. Every time I'm transported, I start to think, 'What if this world is toxic? What if I suddenly die out there?'"
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Rob leaned back again, staring at the fluorescent lights overhead.
Different worlds.
Different laws.
Different systems.
Cultivation.
Spiritual pressure.
Magic circuits.
Dungeon awakenings.
Divinity.
Anomalies.
Every world thinks they're the normal one. They're all wrong.
Every world believed itself to be the standard.
Annoying.
Deeply annoying.
Because if Rob had learned anything, it was that universal truths were rare
And just thinking about the many travels waiting for him in the future already made him tired.
Every new world required translation.
New rules.
New power structures.
New people dramatically announcing nonsense.
He needed efficiency.
He needed organization.
He needed—
"A butler."
Steven blinked.
"…what?"
Rob sat up.
"I need a butler."
"No, you absolutely do not. How the hell did you manage to think about that after listening to my travels?!"
"Yes, I do."
"You are saying that because I described cosmic horrors?"
"Yes."
"That concerns me."
Rob ignored him completely.
"Not a literal one. Probably. Maybe. Depends on budget. But I need something that handles the administrative suffering."
Steven stared.
"The administrative suffering?"
"Yes. Information. Analysis. Translation. Threat assessment. Power comparison. Cultural warning signs"
Steven nodded slowly despite himself.
"…that is actually useful."
"Obviously."
"You said butler, so I assumed nonsense."
"It can be both."
Rob stood up and began pacing like a man possessed.
"A guide system. Something elegant. Something that filters stupidity before it reaches me. And also something that takes my work while i just chill"
Steven folded his arms.
"You're inventing a cosmic secretary."
"I prefer 'executive dimensional assistant.'"
"That is somehow worse."
Rob kept going.
"Every world has its own power scale, which is ridiculous. A guy from one universe says he's a Ninth Heaven Saint Dragon Emperor and expects me to know what that means"
Steven snorted.
"That sounds real."
"It probably is."
He pointed dramatically at nothing.
"I need standardization."
Steven should have stopped him.
Instead, he asked:
"What kind?"
Rob's smile was dangerous.
"A universal scale."
"That sounds arrogant."
"It is arrogant, but it works."
He started counting on his fingers.
"Lets start with the lowest tiers"
"Tier One: Mortals. Normal people. Farmers. Bureaucrats. People whose greatest threat is taxes."
"Reasonable."
"Tier Two: Enhanced. Peak humans. Low anomalies. Trained fighters. Early superhumans."
Steven nodded.
"Still reasonable."
"Tier Three: Transcendent. Real monsters. People who stop asking permission from physics."
"Tier Four: World-Level. People who can ruin civilizations by having a bad morning."
Rob's eyes narrowed.
Steven blinked.
"That is… actually smart."
"I know. It's exhausting."
He sat back down.
Steven stared.
"…what would you call it?"
Rob looked thoughtful.
For three full seconds.
Then smiled.
"Guide."
"That's it?"
"Yes."
"That is the least creative option possible."
"Correct."
Steven stood up, grabbing his tray.
"I'm leaving before you start building omniscient customer service."
Rob pointed at him while sighing
"And here i was thinking of gifting you a system to help your travels..."
"...What are you talking about, its our project, isnt it?"
Steven, without any shame, looked at Rob seriously, like he was the mastermind behind the system
Rob smirked
"I knew i could count on you pal. Now, let's get to work.