Hello and welcome to (an admittedly late edition of) Letters From the Knot where, every fortnight, I post a short piece of fiction. Each one takes place in the Knot, a mess of tangled spacecraft, an inverted city kept spinning to provide some semblance of uneven gravity, a place both figuratively and literally coming undone. This project is an extended exercise in worldbuilding, and my aim is to populate the city over time, creating and discovering new parts of it as I go. Each piece will be different: a story, a dream, a character sketch, a slice of life, a fragment.
And if sci-fi’s not your thing, I also release a more traditional newsletter on the off weeks. Enjoy!
No Fire
[transcript.02332384/Kettle1Fire/GKinterviewone]
[recording begins]
GK:...basically there are only two things banned down here. And everyone has it banged into them from when they’re a kid. No guns. No fire. Ask anyone on the ship, anyone on the whole Knot, and they’ll spit those words at you soon as you ask. No guns. No fire. So when you wake up...when you wake up...[sniffles]...I’m sorry. I was in bed, right. We live by the station, in one of the ramshacks above Far Kettle, where the rooms get bigger each floor and lean out to cover the streets like a tunnel and the shamlight can’t skewer it to light up the roads and all the kids and the grifters skulk around in the shadows. From my place you can see the whole square around the station. The stands selling vapes and meat and knockoff threads, the dark mouths of the hand tubes leading down to the depths. Then there’s these big buildings over in the far corner, been boarded up for years. Biggest one we call the Navvy, cos apparently it was a pub, The Navigator, but that’s going back before I was born so we just call it that cos everyone else does. It’s been boarded up for decades, can you believe that? We’re always talkin’ about that. About how there can be buildings that big so close to the transit ring that some Selman fucker hasn’t swept in and bought up. You know they’re starting to come here, some of these Selman people? To live? Coming from Earth and they like the fancy bits of the Knot, the Selma and the Hafgufa, but they can’t afford it…or else they just wanna feel like they’re close to the real Knot...[laughs]...only they don’t wanna ride the tubes or shop here or meet the people so they buy up these apartments in dashing distance of the transit rings and you see them walking out in the mornings, struggling with the grav and sweating that they might have to talk to a local...[laughs, sobs].
Interviewer: Perhaps it would be good for us to come back to the fire for a moment?
GK: yeah, yeah yeah yeah. God. It’s funny the things that occur to you, you know? I know the time I heard it exactly. Third spin. 1:16. Not 1:15. 1:16 exactly. I heard someone screaming and my first thought was...well, better note the time incase anything comes of this. I guess you get used to that living here, talking to the cops.
Interviewer: I’m sorry to repeat myself, but we’re not the cops. We work for the insurance company, remember? It’s important that that’s clear.
GK: Right, so 1:16, and I hear this scream and I unbuckle from the bunk and I can already tell somethings up. The light on the ceiling. That time of night the shams are dimmed right down low so you know…you get to know the colour of the light, the tone of it, and this is a tone I’ve not seen on the ceiling before. Fierce. Orange. The colour of danger. And flickering. And I go over to the vent where you can look out over the square and there it is, in the gloomy late light, that whole place, the Navvy, lit up from inside. Ablaze, Charlie called it. I didn’t know that word before but it fits, doesn’t it? Ablaze. Every crack of the place bright with licking orange lights. Out all the windows and doors and vents and cracks and all around the place people running about and screaming pure chaos.
Interviewer: 1:16?
GK: Yeah.
Interviewer: Third spin.
GK: Third spin, middle of the night. Everyone was...everyone was asleep so...
Interviewer: But, in your estimation, the fire had been burning for some time?
GK: Never seen a fire before pal, how should I know? All I know is that’s when the screaming started. Maybe it went that way all at once by surprise like? Either way the people in there were out of it, right? Dead to the world, when it went down.
Interviewer: You didn’t hear an alarm?
GK: [laughs]
Interviewer: I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s funny.
GK: You’re not from the Twins are you? No, the alarms don’t work anymore, no. The lights just about work. The handtubes only work cos it takes the workers up into the ungrav, you see what I’m saying? Nah I didn’t hear an alarm pal, no alarm. And that’s the thing. I panicked I think. I saw the flames and I woke up and I…and I…I didn’t know what to do, so I ran from room to room and banged up the doors. None of us have shift til mid-first-spin so everyone was conked out. That’s why we all live in the same ramshack, you know, cos if you’re in a mixed then everyone’s coming in all hours stimmed or doped and banging the doors and knocking the ceilings cos they’re too out of it to keep themselves on the floor. Best thing we ever did...[silence]...I just thought, well, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen anything like it and, well, it’s alright for you probably. I bet you see new sights every day. Bet you’ve been to Earth even...but here. You don’t see new stuff. Not on the Twins. I just thought everyone else would want to see it. It’s all we’ve ever been told, right? No guns. No fire. So when a fire starts you think...fuck...when a fire starts you think the world is coming apart, you think the Knot’s gonna unravel, you know?
Interviewer: Why do you use that phrase?
GK: I shouldn’t have woken ‘em up. I shouldn’t have woken Charlie up, at least. He’s so young. We all got down in the street and it was chaos, people everywhere. This fire just raging, leaking from one building to the next, working its way around the square. Everything we been told, you think it’s all about to blow, the whole thing. Me and Charlie were there and watching it and then...well for a while thank fuck, we thought. Thank fuck it was the Navvy where nobody lives and nobody ever goes. Thank fuck. But then…then the people started pouring out the door. One by one, on fire and screaming. I won’t tell you what I saw. You see stuff, down here. But not that. You shouldn’t see that. Charlie shouldn’t have seen that.
Interviewer: How much longer after you first saw the fire did the people start leaving?
GK: Say what?
Interviewer: You said they must have been dead to the world, these people? So when did they come to, as it were? When did they leave the building?
GK: I guess...I dunno. Ten minutes after?
Interviewer: Around 1:26?
GK: Sure. What you gonna do when you found the people who started it?
Interviewer: I told you, this is just about an insurance claim. I’m not a cop.
GK: I feel like I did it, you know. Not the fire I mean, but I feel like I did something to Charlie. Feels like I hurt him. I didn’t have to wake him up. It’s my fault he’s seen that. He could have just heard about it next day, like you lot. When you hear about something, you’re safe from it. Your mind works magic and you can sort of see it and not see it, you know? You know it happened and you can see the fuzzy outline of the thing, but your brain won’t let you look at it. But we looked at it. We saw the skin and the bones and the pain and my brain won’t stop looking at it. I can’t not see it, mate. And Charlie and the others had to see it too. And that’s my fault.
Interviewer: How many of you live in your residency?
GK: Why’s that matter?
Interviewer: You mentioned Charlie, how many more?
GK: Ten...why?
Interviewer: Did anyone see anything? The day before the fire? Any gatherings near the building? Any spreading of seditious material?
GK: Sorry? What are you on about? Who was in that building?
Interviewer: Have you ever seen anyone handing out such materials? Ever?
GK: Who were those people?
Interviewer: You used a phrase a minute ago, about the Knot unravelling. Why did you use that word? Unravel?
GK: I thought you weren’t a fucking cop?
[recording ends]