THE MOMENT
"Well...," Carl sighed and his shoulders slumped at the sight before him. It was golden hour and a gorgeous evening by almost any metric. A cool, gentle breeze blew across his skin, swaying the grass, and ahead, a narrow entrance stood pitch black, hiding complete darkness inside. The cave was carved into the side of a mountain and was only visible at dusk. He'd arrived earlier and was there when the opening appeared. He didn't hear any stone moving, but one second the wall consisted of solid rock, and the next it was a shadow wide enough to admit a person. "I've come this far...," he decided with a firm nod. He readied his flashlight, grabbed his pack and crossed the short distance into the unknown.
A month ago he'd moved to a new town and getting the lay of the land when he wandered into a thrift store. Carl was a writer and he hoped the small mountain town would put him in a 'cozy' mindset for his next project. It didn't take him long to find a box of old love letters for sale, and he was always curious to read how people put words together. It was almost exactly what he'd gone in looking for; the letters were the latest addition to his growing collection of diaries other personal notes written by people long-since deceased.
It didn't take him long to settle in for an evening of reading once he got home, but he went through the entire bundle in less than two hours. There weren't very many, and they weren't very long, but the most interesting thing was that they didn't seem to be very personal either.
Carl had read a lot of feelings communicated in a lot of ways, and the more he read through them, the less he believed them to be love letters. Sure, all the appropriate 'Love' and 'Sweetheart' were present, but they felt tacked on.
And, not one had a name. No nicknames either, simply generic endearments. Thanks to his hobby and experience he noticed a pattern to the sweet nothings. The letters themselves spoke about basically nothing. Nonspecific happenings to unnamed people. It all felt so phony that if the love letters were more recent than 50 years old, he might've considered them to be A.I. slop. But, the loving pattern was there in every letter, exactly the same.
Always starting with 'Beloved' as the very first word and signed 'Yours' as the final line. Those were basic enough to be generally ignored, and it was the more oddly used ones that started drawing Carl's attention. 'Enchantress' was the second one, and it stood out for always starting a sentence awkwardly. He noticed all the words were capitalized and at the beginning of a sentence and paragraph.
Angel, came next followed by Treasure and Truelove, as a single word, and much later a far more casual 'Toots', followed by a 'Turtledove'. But, despite the variety, 'Treasure' was repeated again towards the end; always, in every letter.
'Be at the moutain top at dusk early' didn't take him a month to solve, but he dove into research mode first. He wasted a month finding essentially nothing before giving up. The shop had no records where the bundle even came from and without names or postmarks he had zero starting points.
But now, he had an open door to walk in to.
For years after, Carl would remember crossing the threshold as the moment his life changed. It was so sudden that he wasn't sure it had happened, but so stark doubt should've been impossible.
The narrow passage was pitch black as he approached it, and right up until his eyes crossed over. Then, everything was perfectly bright and visible.
He was walking at a full, brave stride. His leg entered the impenetrable shadows, and he leaned forward to continue with his other leg. At the same time he shifted his weight and completed the step, he was too stunned to continue walking. He now stood in a spacious white, sealed room. There were no doors or windows that he could see, so on instinct he spun around.
The entrance was gone.
"HELLO!!!!??" He wasn't panicking yet. Carl understood things weren't normal the moment the opening appeared. And, in a sense, he was invited there. His first instinct was to try to be heard.
" 'the hell?" a voice spoke up in the center of the room, and now there was a golden Audio/Video cart supporting a large CRT television. A black cord was laying idly on the white glowing floor, obviously disconnected, but the TV was on. A gold mannequin in a crimson silk suit was shuffling index cards in his hands and reading them intently. "Love letters?" he stopped at one card and pulled his head back in surprise. At least, the motion vaguely suggested surprise to Carl, the mannequin had no eyes, nose, or mouth. "Woof, I thought we killed that one loops ago," he mumbled to himself. Then, he tore the card up, adjusted his red bow tie, and brought his hand up to his head to clear his throat somehow.
"Welcome, love-starved stranger!" The character said with a joyful voice. "You, clever cookie, have solved the mystery of the forgotten love letters! My name is Helios, and I represent Sharp Development. We're a multiversal corporation, and you've just won a free ticket to any life you want in the multiverse."
"Mystery?" Carl chuckled. He didn't know exactly what was going on, but he felt at ease at least. "I wouldn't even call that a real cipher, it was so basic that-"
"CONGRATULATIONS FOR WINNING A PRIZE, ass," Helios said. "So, do you want a new life on another Earth or not?"
"Can I think about it?" Carl asked.
"Oh, that's just GREAT!" Helios threw his hands up in fully exasperated kindergartner mode. "You find a box of old love letters in a thrift store, and you figure out they are a key to a long-forgotten mystery. And now you want time to think?"
"How'd you know all that?" Carl tilted his head.
"Who do you think set up the mystery, genius?" Helios asked. "I handwrote every single letter myself."
"That doesn't add up. The thrift store is younger than the letters looked...," he'd found plenty of information in his research, but none of it was particularly useful for hinting at what might be at the mountain top.
"Buddy, you ain't in...," Helios pulled up his notecards again and started shuffling through them. He quickly rifled through six of them before he stopped. "Oh yeah, I tore it," he chuckled and shrugged. "Whatever, you're a part of the multiverse now. Try not to let logic get in your way."
"I wanted to think about it...," Carl reminded Helios that he hadn't committed to anything yet.
"Yeah, yeah," Helios snapped his fingers, and in an instant, he and Carl were in Carl's bedroom. "Look, we closed the contest forever ago; don't expect any further support. But, if you decide you want to take a look around the multiverse, just use that," he pointed at Carl's nightstand, and there was a transparent glass card standing upright against the alarm clock. "It's called a node, and it has a tutorial. Explore or don't, whatever. I'm ready to leave, any question?" he asked, deliberately singular.
"Why are you in a TV?"
"It makes me feel pretty," Helios said. "Bye."
