So we man the stations of the multiverse, repairing these lines in scorching heat and bitter cold, maintaining what there is left to maintain.
Welcome, traveller. It's cold outside tonight.
What's that? Where are you? Well, you're on the Lampeter, my friend. Or what was once the Lampeter. It's seen better days. Used to be that you could travel from Orchard to Halocrest on these trails, but that was the old days, when the L-NESC was at its height, before the Foundation took it over. Now, it's just people like me; trapped in a tiny metal box at the side of a station, directing the trains going to and fro.
Oh, you want to know how you got here? It's quite simple, really; you took a wrong turn in a train station, or a bus station, or you got on the wrong ski lift, or you stepped into an unfamiliar alley. There are so many different ways. Sooner or later, statistically, some version of yourself has to come here. You can go back, of course. Most do. But for some of us…
Well, for some of us, the open sky is all there is left. So we man the stations of the multiverse, repairing these lines in scorching heat and bitter cold, maintaining what there is left to maintain. That's what the Lampeter is; the desperate, the lonely, the cold, standing vigil over a forgotten and unloved set of backroutes.
Does that sound like your kind of life?
The Lampeter is - or was - a vast interdimensional transport network. In the (supposedly) "prime" universe, it has an SCP designation - 7005 - but there are so many universes, and so many Foundations trying to record the totality of what it is.
Its basic form is made up of a diverse series of mundane transportation forms which, instead of taking the passenger to a location in their own universe, instead cross multiversal lines, taking the vehicle (or whatever else) and passenger to a different universe. The technology used to accomplish this is unknown, and the Foundation has been unable to replicate it. Complementing this are a number of pocket universes, used as transportation hubs, maintenance offices and other, diverse institutions necessary to the line's management. SCP-7005 gives the following examples of entry points onto the network from our world:
- A small wooden door in the back of the church of San Paolino, Lucca, which leads to an underground tram station that takes the traveller to a larger tram hub in Universe B723 "Hospice".
- An abandoned and cordoned-off jetty in northern Ishikari, Hokkaido; stepping onto it takes the traveller to a large seaport in Timeline Q944 "Mintuci".
- A lost-and-found office in a train station in Lima, Peru, which connects to a large train station in Universe H020 "Great Inca State".
- The back entrance of an Ilkhanid-era caravanserai in Kerman, Iran, which takes one to a nesting series of caravanserais, which are all located in ten separate timelines simultaneously.
- A patch of sky above northern Mongolia; aircraft passing through this area will be taken to an intra-universal airport (SCP-7005-77a), which services at least 350 universes in what the network's stationmasters commonly call the "Far Southwestern Corridor".
The Lampeter was created 700 years ago by members of the Lampeter family of Universe Z999 "Halogen", but it is now long past its prime. The Lampeter Non-Euclidean Shipping Company (L-NESC), a formal company created by the family in the 17th century to more efficiently manage its expanding network, began to decay and collapse in the late 19th century and eventually went bankrupt in 2021.
By that point, their control over the lines had diminished severely, with many outlying regions under the control of local companies, states and warlords. But the company's control over the central parts of its line remained necessary for any kind of large-scale multiversal travel. The last chairman of the board, John Lampeter, went insane, burning the company archives - and possibly himself - to death, believing the Lampeter to be responsible for the emergence of the phenomenon known as the Neon God - but that is a story that has been told elsewhere.
It was at this point that the Foundation stepped in. Recognising that its multiversal interests would collapse without some control over the network, the Foundation from our world rechristened its universe A001 "Prime" and bought out what remained of the L-NESC. But the sheer scale, the confusion, the tangled non-Euclidean webs of the Lampeter have prevented them from taking anything like full control of the network - or even the stations once under the L-NESC's control.
So, in the present day, it is manned largely by lonely, strange, desparate people. Some want to either hide away where they can never be found. Some romanticise the line, the long hours and grinding conditions to keep the world manned. Either way, rust, destitution, collapse and patchwork maintenance solutions are now the norm across the network. The Foundation's Department of Interdimensional Logistics has not been given the proper resources, its few central employees are overworked and burnt out.
As any decent seer or scryer could tell you, the Foundation's Department of Interdimensional Logistics will never establish complete control. Their intervention will keep the lines going, but more and more they'll just be the biggest fish in a diverse pond, never being given enough resources or manpower to match the L-NESC at its height. In a few centuries time, the technology known as arc blinking (a kind of multiversal teleportation) will render the lines obsolete. The Foundation will withdraw entirely, and the Lampeter will decay in total neglect.
Still, even then, a few lines will keep going, patronised by poorer or more cautious worlds. The Multiversal Cargo Train will be the most prominent of the remaining lines, a rare example of a Lampeter line travelling directly through the gaps between worlds. But even the drivers will have forgotten the name Lampeter, and the multiverse will forget that name and its history.
But the essence of the Lampeter is only partially found in the place itself. It is also in the stories told about a congolmeration so vast, diverse and uncontrolled that the mind can only partially grasp it, projecting onto it ideologies, narratives, hopes and dreams it was never built for. It is, has been, and perhaps will be a place where the forgotten, desparate and forlorn seek to escape their reality and build a new life - be it in some far-off world or on the lines themselves.