Hello and welcome to Letters From the Knot, an extended exercise in worldbuilding. Each piece I post takes place in the Knot, an inverted tangled city, 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.
And if sci-fi’s not your thing, I also release a more traditional newsletter on the off weeks. Enjoy!
Haunting
I’m up first so I slip out of the grav straps and float down to the floor. I can drift around our apartment in the dark. My legs have learned of their own accord the amount of flex needed to carry me from the bed all the way to the kitchen without touching a surface, without making a noise.
I twist as I move and land, feet first and softly, against the cabinets, knowing to plant my weight against the side of the worktop where the structure is strongest and will not creak. Lawra sleeps deeply and wouldn’t wake up regardless but I enjoy the idea of my slipping around the place without her noticing. I’ve started playing a game with myself at times like this. I like to imagine I’ve died and I’m haunting her benignly from the afterlife, taking care of lots of little things while she’s asleep.
Things like turning on the falskaff machine before she's up or putting away the glass she’ll have left out from a night of drinking or deleting the junk that’s built up in her inbox overnight.
I’d never do too much. I wouldn’t want her to realise, fully, that she’s being haunted. I’d just want her to have an easier life, to be embraced by the sense that things are easier for her, that everything happens more smoothly and comfortably for her now. Even though I’d be dead, and her heart would be weighed down by a constant sadness, she’d feel that, on some level, her life had been charmed by having lived even for a short time with me, that her acts of kindness and love towards me had earned her the right to a simpler life, a life lived in a blessed solitude, where sorrow and happiness jostle but she feels at least love’s gentle press, always.
Quietly, so quietly, I open one of the top cabinets and take out the tin of grey-brown powder. I accidentally knock a pack of biscuits as I withdraw my hand, but the packet falls idly in the low gravity and I have time enough to plant the falskaff on the counter and then bring my hand back to rescue the biscuits in silence. I haven’t made a sound, but I glance back at Lawra all the same. I am attentive in my haunting.
I pump the falskaff into the vacuum chamber of the machine but pause before turning it on. The noise of the machine might shatter the peace so, before I flick the switch, I look about to see what other little acts of kindness I can perform for Lawra. I’m enjoying the game today.
With a little push off the counter, I float over to the loungespace and rearrange the cushions under their straps. I pick up a bottle of wine that has toppled to the carpet, I open the blinds and spritz the plants and flick away the adverts from the edge of the glidebank.
I move over to Lawra’s workbench but, naturally, that’s the one area she keeps meticulous. All the little bolts and wires are tucked away in their tidy labelled drawers. The magplate has been cleaned and oiled. The lamp is curled away like a patient cat, ready to be coaxed out to oversee the day’s work. When I’m a ghost, I think, this is where I’ll spend my time. Looking over Lawra’s shoulder, watching her lose herself in her work, to better forget me.
I’ve delayed making a noise for long enough now so I drift over to the falskaff machine again, drawing in the last of the quiet as I do. I hear the grumbling moan of the Knot’s spin and, closer by, the soft and rasping pulse of Lawra’s breathing. With a sigh I press the button and the machine begins to hiss and gurgle.
Almost immediately, Lawra stirs, but I’m not ready for the game to end, so I quickly push myself away from the counter and out of Lawra’s eyeline, moving into the bathroom where I close the door almost completely. Lawra will think I’m washing and won’t disturb me. From my hiding place I can watch her through the crack in the door. She floats over from the bed to the kitchen for her coffee. She glances around to find me and her hair traces the movement in a lazy spiral around her head.
Good morning, I hear her murmur, but I say nothing back, still hiding, existing only in the shadow of my affectionate acts.
When she’s got her coffee in the flask she kicks and floats away again, to sit on the bed and delve into the inner light of her implants. I hear her speaking to me distractedly, muttering about the day to come and repeating out loud the headlines she’s reading, or our friends’ updates on the ullunet. The time has come to end the game, but I can’t bring myself to. I’m enjoying the illusion too much. I dance around the apartment like a spectre. Lawra won’t be able to see me beyond the haze of her implant, but I hum to myself, so that she’ll know I’m there, somewhere, just beyond reach.
In silence, I drink my own coffee before getting into the shower. By the time I’m out, Lawra is dressed already and hunched over her desk, tinkering, loud music playing in the background. I get dressed myself, and then gently make the bed which still smells of her.
She’s engrossed now and I feel an immense sense of pride in my morning’s haunting. I’ve made her comfortable, seen to her needs, enabled her to work, but I suppose the game must come to an end. I drift up behind her at her desk but she’s so deep in the work that she doesn’t notice me. I see her fishing around in the draws, planting a circuit on the mag plate, pulling out a soldering iron, attaching the wires. Why does this game bring me such peace? I think because the work she’s doing is so important. It’s because I would give myself to her, totally. If it meant an eternity of this, I would give it to her. And because there’s every chance one of us will be lost in all this.
She finishes her soldering and deposits the whole detonator carefully in a box to her right.
Lawra, I say, too softly, for the music drowns me out. She doesn’t hear me, doesn’t turn. And suddenly I want the game to end.
Lawra, I say again but still she doesn’t respond and all the enchantment slips away at once and it feels like she's a thousand spins away from me and I’m so cold and I just need her to look at me.
Lawra, I shout, and reach out and grab her by the shoulders.
She nearly dies of fright.