He smiles back and sits down in the space she's offered. "Yeah, this is my first time in Miliways. I lived on Callisto before, if you can call it living. What planet are you from? From your clothes I'd peg you as a Venusian-skyliner but you sound like you're from my side of the asteroids." 

Blink. "I'm from Earth. Are you from the future? Or just another world with an Earth in it? I hear they're pretty common."

Blink. "Earth? No possibl-- wait, the future? What do you mean 'world with an Earth in it'? Is Earth not a planet where you're from? I'm sorry, I don't really have any clue what's supposed to be happening here. Um, Earth is a planet where I'm from but no one as, well, clean and pretty as you would be from there. My Earth is pretty used up and gross. Smoke and poison everywhere. No animals or plants that weren't made in a lab. Everyone's sick. No one lives there who can afford to live anywhere else. It's kinda in the middle of a mass evacuation...  I guess... I could be from the future or something? Let's hope not, or else your future will really suck, haha!" He laughs nervously, keenly aware of how crazy he sounds.

"By 'world' I mean, you know, universe, dimension, plane of existence, something like that. There's lots of those, and the planet Earth happens in a large part of them, but not all. Humans are usually from there but they also come from other kinds of worlds. Do you know if your world has magical girls and witches...?"

Some kind of multiverse. He notes. Alright, I can work with that. 

"As far as anyone knows, magic isn't a thing where I'm from. And my, uh, world, is really extremely old, so I don't think a secret of that kind could have stayed hidden. I suppose you're probably in the clear, hooray!" He smiles, genuinely pleased in spite of himself. "Are you, um, a witch, then? Did you use magic to heal me?" 

"I did use magic but I'm not a witch, I'm a magical girl. Witches are these weird scary space-distortion monsters only people with magic or people who could have magic can see, and that's only girls."

"Huh, you know, that's really cool! We don't have anything like that in my world." He can feel himself becoming engaged with the crazy mythos of this place. "What kind of magic can you do? Is there a magic for boys too, or do girls get to have all the fun?"

"Well other worlds must have magic for boys, too, and I guess the Kyubey's a boy but other than him it's only girls. The main thing we do is fight witches, it's what we're for, if we didn't exist they'd kill and eat everyone, so every magical girl has fighting magic, but we also have minor things like telekinesis and healing—my telekinesis is better than most because of my wish—"

Meteor tilts his head and flashes a friendly smile. "Wish? What do you mean?" 

"Oh, the way magical girls get their magic is that the Kyubey—it's this small cute furry magical animal—finds girls with the potential and offers them a wish, and then in exchange for that wish they become magical girls and have to fight witches. And they usually get powers related to that wish—for instance, I was trapped in rubble after my building collapsed, so I wished for a way to get that off me and got enhanced telekinesis in addition to my other stuff."

"Huh, what a neat concept!" Meteor picks up his notebook and pulls a ballpoint pen out of the binding. He clicks the pen, then pauses, catching himself.  "Do you mind if I write that down in my notebook? I write down all kinds of ideas here and someday I'm going to write a book. Or, I guess, I was going to... before I-- before I found myself here."

"Sure. And, you know you can still go back through the door, right? You aren't dead, you can write whatever you like. Could even write it here while time's paused and then go back and publish your book there."

"But I--! Mary, even if that's true-- I arrived here by accident, you see, I was being chased by... by some very bad, very powerful people, who wanted-- want to kill me. If I go back, they'll find me for sure. I can't go back. I don't want to go back... when I asked you not to cure me of insanity... that's what I was trying to say-- Even if this place isn't real, it's better than where I was."

"Well, it is real, and there's a lot of magic here, and time's paused. I bet you could get some people or magic to help you with them."

Meteor grows quiet, considering Mary's proposal.  He writes while he thinks. After a moment, he sets down his book and looks Mary in the eye."...Ok, let's say this place is real. Magic is real, the multiverse is a thing that can be traversed, and I'm one lucky sonuvabitcoin, because time is somehow stopped and I have all the time in the world to plan and prepare. Even if all that's true, who would risk their lives for a stranger? For all you people know, I did something horrible and I deserve to be killed..." His voice trails off again.

"Sure, but time being stopped means you have all the time in the world to find someone who would, and even if that's, like, zero point zero one percent of people you'll eventually find them." Pause. "Unless the landlords don't want you to, I guess."

Meteor tried to imagine a world in which one in ten-thousand would be willing to commit a potentially-fatal act of charity. He couldn't picture it. "You must come from an exceedingly nice world, Mary. In my world, there's no one like that at all. We've got a saying, 'Everything's got a price tag or a body bag.' ...wait, who are the landlords? Could I talk to them?"

"No one can talk to them, we're not sure they exist. And, uh, I mean, how many people are there in your world? Mine has like seven billion."

Meteor chuckles. "Well, my world is... So you have an Earth, right? I assume it's a planet? It orbits around a star? Including my Earth, my star has eight such planets, and they're all inhabited to one degree or another, along with most of the moons, and all kinds of space stations. 7 billion is maybe a big town or a small city where I come from. We estimate that there are something like 2.6 septiliion humans in the Sol system, but we can't be sure. My moon, Callisto, had 2 billion people living on it, and it was considered a very small town..." 

"Yeah, same solar system I think... and you really think people wouldn't help you? Like at all? Are you sure you're not just from a really bad neighborhood?"

"I guess it does kind of sound absurd, doesn't it? But that's really how it is, where I'm from. You have your family, your contacts, and your employer, who might be willing to help you with something if you offer them something of equal value. Everyone else expects profit from even telling you the time of day. It sounds harsh, but when you have that many people who all need energy, you can't afford to trust." Meteor leans back, musing, "It goes deep, too. We teach our children from an early age to demand trade from each other, and aim for profit. I remember being praised by the teacher when I sold my eraser to a girl for her lunch ticket. Offering someone charity in my world would probably be seen as either a mockery or an attack, honestly..." 

"...well other worlds aren't really like that and there's lots of them, you could probably still find nice people. And, uh, maybe some people nice enough to want to fix that because wow your world sounds bad."

Meteor tilts his head, confused. "Fix what?"

"The thing where no one helps anyone else—like, sure, I got a wish out of it and managed to not die crushed by rubble but I'd totally have wanted to be a magical girl to save people from monsters anyway."

"Wait, you're saying-- fix the philosophy of 2.6 septillion people? Now that would be some magic, hahaha!"