Hello and welcome to Letters From the Knot, an an extended exercise in worldbuilding. Each piece I post 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. My aim with this project is to gradually 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.
This is part two of a story called The Trap - you can read the first part here.
And if sci-fi’s not your thing, I also release a more traditional newsletter on the off weeks. Enjoy!
The Trap, Part Two
Nora greeted their new visitor in the same manner she would any average Trap-dweller. A big smile, spread arms, wide eyes.
“Happy spins,” she said, “be with you in just a moment.”
She spun on her heels, made a show of clearing one of the tables of spent stimpacks and napkins. All the while she sent rushed messages on her implant to Chipo who was still standing still, idiotic, over by the curtain with her trinkets in hand. With a blink, Nora directed Chipo’s attention towards the small pile of illicit garbage still littering the desk.
Chipo was slow to pick up on the messages, but her lack of alarm might have been a blessing. Slowly, she wandered back to the desk and, rather than sweeping all of the trinkets off the desk as Nora wanted her to, she calmly pulled a crate from under the desk and started carefully placing the trinkets in, one by one.
In the meantime the Selman pretended to browse the shop; the place looked gloomier and grubbier than ever relative to his clean clothes, his shiny hair. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets, as though even the air might make them grubby. Nora finished her flustered tidying, composed herself as best she could, and turned to the Selman.
“So,” she said, suppressing the quaver of her voice, “how can I help?”
The man smiled at her. A thin, forced, smile that lingered a little too long. “I was just taking a look, really,” he said, “browsing.” He had that Selman accent, high-scandi lilt, unusual vowels. The kind of accent Nora only ever heard on the newsites.
“Feel free,” she said, and went back to her tidying. Having stashed her collection, Chipo sat still and expressionless, eyes glimmering, doubtless seeing if she could find any record of their visitor on the ullunet.
The man did a slow circuit of the shop, browsing, looking at each shelf for a few seconds, at the rows and rows of dusty busted old tech. At the end of his tour, he took out a little square of shimmering cloth and blew his nose loudly. And again. He inspected the contents of the small handkerchief and tucked it back into his pocket.
“Is this your place?” he asked them both.
“That’s right,” Nora replied, smile still plastered on her face.
“Incredible,” he sniffed. “You don’t mind the dust?”
In her periphery, Nora could see that Chipo’s eyes had stopped glimmering. Beyond the Selman visitor, a soft breeze swept down the tunnelways, as it always had, lifting what debris the filters couldn’t leech away into the null, a ceaseless procession of motes, the grains of knotlife.
“Locals tend not to notice it,” Chipo said.
The man nodded. Chipo glared at him. Nora kept up her smile, playing the charming proprietor still.
“And what’s your line?” he asked, unphased, not a wrinkle of doubt on his ageless face.
“My line?” said Nora.
“Your trade, yes. What are you flogging? As it were.”
“Well...” Nora began.
“We’re more of a...community resource,” said Chipo. She had come around the counter now and stood beside Nora, whose heart was hammering in her chest. Chipo was the taller of them and, Nora assumed, the stronger. They didn’t have a uniform but wore the clothes of true Traps. Old garments re-mended and adorned, joints reinforced, fabrics marbled with a patina of blown dust.
“Bits and bobs, then?” said the Selman, grinning, casting his eyes around, hands safely back in his pockets.
“What is it you’re looking for, exactly?” said Nora. She checked her body again, tried to visualise the blood in her veins slowing, imagined the swell and squeeze of her lungs, bringing it all back to the core of herself, back to the calm of the spin.
“I’ve been looking around the...uh...area,” he said. “Though I’ve been turned around I think. I was wondering if you could help me with something...” He took a step forward and pulled a glide from a pocket in his linen jacket. It showed a map of the tunnelways of the Trap, but there was something wrong about it, something uncanny. It took Nora a moment to fit it together with the lifelong organic map she stored in her mind.
“So I think we’re here,” he said, and pointed to a small blank square in a row of many others. On it was the designation Cab04-443Pas. It was a number Nora remembered. It was once painted on the wall outside the shop, before she had scrubbed it out almost 15 years earlier.
“Okay...” said Nora.
“And, well, it’s an old map, obviously, but I’m trying to get to this area here.” He pointed to a larger sort of hub in the map. A circular space with several small squares around it. It took Nora a second to figure it out but she eventually recognised it as Arin, the centre of the Trap, where bars and cafes spilled out into an old terminal, grouped around the only trees the neighbourhood could claim as its own. The community had saved up for the hydroponics when she was a child.
“Right,” said Nora, keen to get this visit over with. “You’d need to go back to the left out here in the tunnelway, then first right and keep going until you get onto the main drag. Then it’s a...I dunno fifteen minute walk or a five minute ride if the tubes are running which...what day is it...no you’ll need to walk. What do you think C?”
But Chipo wasn’t listening. She was watching the Selman who was walking now toward the curtained wall. As he went he ran his hand along the edge of the metal desk, rubbing his thumb over the worn corners. He stopped by one of the old fibreglass pillars, pressed his fingertips into the graphene runnels, looked at the ceiling where the old pine panelling still just barely hung to the struts. His eyes drifted across the glass at the front, he tapped the floor with the toe of his boot.
“Good bones,” he said, and Nora pictured the Trap as this man must picture it, a diseased body, pained and rotting. Salvageable with the right equipment, with the right attitude. “Did you know this ship is almost 350 years old?” he said, sniffing, wiping at his nose again. “A lot of this looks original.”
Neither Nora nor Chipo answered. They were beginning to sense that this man might be here to commit some act of violence. Not the physical violence of body to body, but the kind of violence the Knot was shaped by, the unbearable violence of power.
“And do you still have the...” his hand was up before Nora had the time to stop him and the curtain was pulled aside, filling the shop with the shattering light of the glide, this time a sizzling bright blue light, caustic. The man’s linen suit was for a moment lent this colour and he stood as though at the centre of an atomic blast. Chipo took three steps forward and tugged the faux-velvet curtain from his hands, too roughly. The Selman took a couple of shocked steps away into the middle of the shop. Nora put a hand on Chipo’s shoulder and nodded at her to get back behind the counter.
“Still working,” said the man. “Well they’ll have you take the curtain down either way, so...well just a heads up. I’m not here to cause you any grief...we’re just trying to be more...present in the area before construction begins.”
Once upon a time, this was a transit vessel, and these glides would spew out offers and incentives to drive weary passengers to the casinos and canteens and stores. Nora had once read that whoever was travelling in this cabin would have had the option to pay for the screen to be turned off for a period of time, so they could get some sleep, could get some relief from the barrage of advertising, some space to think. She had never had to pay for such a privilege.
“Construction?” Chipo asked from behind the counter.
“Yes,” he said, still directing his words at Nora. “You’ll not be caught up in it, don’t panic!” - he chuckled - “But, naturally, there’ll be some...spillover disturbance. This area will probably be a bit of a rat run for people heading to the station. But, you know...good for business, isn’t it? And different customers so maybe...opportunities for diversification? Further diversification, I should say?”
“What is this construction? When is it starting?” said Nora.
“Oh, a few spins from now, but like I say, not to worry. Gives you some time to get things in order.”
“But what are they building...” Nora said.
“The new station...” he replied. “They really should have...it’s been all over the...” he looked back towards the curtain. “Ah of course. Well not to worry you’ll know all about it soon.” For a moment he almost looked sorry, a glimmer of something like remorse, or pity. Then he took his handkerchief out and blew his nose deeply and loudly.
“So,” said Chipo, “she’s asked you five times. Do you want a stim? A falskaff? A piece of art? Antiques? Come here to soak up the vibe? What? What the fuck do you want?”
He smiled, a tiny cruel smile this time. He slowly folded up his handkerchief. As he did, his eyes lit up for a moment with the internal light of his implant. “I think I’ll just be going...”
“I think that’s best,” replied Chipo.
Before he left he stepped towards the counter again, towards Chipo. Nora froze, had sudden terrible visions, thinking of the things he might do, the acts of violence. Even so, she couldn’t move. She was fixed to the spot, powerless to decide.
Then the man reached out his hand and deposited something on the counter. A small trinket. “I think you missed one,” he said to Chipo, with a wink.
They both looked at it. A golden pin, wrapped in cream silk ribbon. This one wasn’t battered and overthumbed like the rest of Chipo’s collection. It was pristine, not of a kind she had seen before.
Without waiting for a response, the Selman walked from the shop, hands in his pockets like he was out for an midspin stroll, looking up and around him with the appraising eye of a person who knew deep down the world belonged to them.
When he had gone, Chipo leant forward and, with a flick, launched the Selman trinket onto the floor.
“What a cunt,” she said.
Nora was silent, bereft. She took two steps towards the wall and, with a great heave, pulled the huge curtain to the side, revealing the enormous wallglide behind it. Its light swept through the shop, nullifying the tasteful pastel neons that Nora had spent years getting right, coating every surface. It was so large that Nora had to take a few steps back to take it in.
It was a huge graphic of the Knot, the whole of the Knot. Showing the tangled ships, the struts and supports the Selmans had built, the glimmering gold transit ring that crashed through rock and metal to tie the Knot together with a civilising bow.
The animated Knot swirled and, over the top of the image emerged words like “new era” and “uniting the Knot” and eventually “Transit Ring Two”. The animation evolved and a new ring emerged, growing and glowing like a golden snake, whirling its way around the Knot, indiscriminately slicing through ships that housed millions of people; as it did, little blips popped up showing the sites of the new stations. Clessa Dean, Top Twin, Spurside Park, The Marlborough. And finally, The Trap.
“Looks like you were right,” said Chipo, bleached in the light. “The air was getting fresher.”