Welcome to Letters From the Knot, a regular newsletter and an extended exercise in worldbuilding. Once a month, I post a piece of fiction that takes place in the Knot, a tangle of debris turned space-bound city. My aim with this project is to gradually populate this fictional 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 week, an letter and an opportunity.
I’ve recently gathered together my sci-fi stories into an e-book for those who like to prefer to read in that way. You can download it here and, if you’re looking for some other e-books, you can download a bunch by following this link.
And finally, if you don’t like sci-fi, I also write some other nonsense in a more traditional newsletter form on the off weeks - you can read the last one here:
Walking the Knot
Brother, it’s been a while, but please don’t dismiss this letter and please bear with me. I wouldn’t waste lead and paper on you if it wasn’t worth it. If you’re reading this, it’s because brave Sandy has made it all the way to you so be sure to thank them for me, and give them something for their time - they’ll not be returning, as I suspect they’ll explain for themselves.
The kids and fine and the Knot’s still spinning and blah blah blah. More importantly, I’ve got an opportunity for us both, a chance to make us both some money, certainly, but also, null willing, to reverse the silly Selman restrictions on your passage and to free you from that grim place. Now forgive me if this feels like a lecture.
The Knot wasn’t made, brother, but formed. It may seem a subtle distinction, but it’s a pertinent one. Because of its origins, the Knot has never been static, but a place of continuous discovery and enlightenment and mysteries. There are voids and forms within it that defy human or animal logic, spaces formed between spaces, without purpose. Even a cave has a sort of geographical coherence to them, but not here, not the Knot. The Knot has the upset sense of a collapsed ruin.
There are, by the best count of Selman nullwalkers, more than one thousand ships in the Knot. At its centre, where those initial crushing forces have acted longest, it's almost impossible to reckon one structure from the next, the metals have moulded to one another, fused to form new shapes, astral alloy constructions seen nowhere else. Ever since the Knot was set spinning, the pressure on these spaces has reduced somewhat, as the centrifugal forces have eased apart the compressed ships. Now, much of the contents of these forgotten ships has been crushed to spacedust, melted out of existence by pressure, and much of what may have remained accessible has been torn out of a rent into the null to be left behind by the Knot’s endless corkscrew passage.
And yet! Though difficult to explain, there are still spaces within the Knot that have survived all of this time. There are whole ships, brother, that have remained cocooned for all these years and are now starting to peek out amidst the mass.
Now to the point, and save your anger or indignation because, as you can plainly see (and as Sandy can confirm) I’m perfectly fine. I’ve recently become engaged with connected with a group of, lets call them intrepid individuals - self funded and admittedly acting without formal sanction and admittedly a little rough around the edges and admittedly not the kind of people you’d usually approve of - who have helped me negotiate access to an airlock, long forgotten and rusted shut but fixable. Useable. You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve had to do to hold this arrangement in place, but it’s a cocktail of legitimate and illegitimate deals and permissions and favours and I’ve had to use up no small part of the family’s dwindling social capital to hold the whole thing together but, well, the point is we've got it, a window. We can get outside, into the null, to walk the Knot for ourselves, to explore these places. You’re always talking about resistance. What could be better than this? I can scarcely imagine a thing the Selman’s would want less than to have people like us walking the Knot.
The really big thing is that we’ve had a sort of tip (don’t ask from where) about a ship, a specific ship, close to the centre of the Knot, half crushed, long rumoured, the subject of many whispers. We’re putting together something of an expedition. Honestly it’s all very exciting. You see brother the rumours are that this is the ship that belonged to the Gliesan ambassador. The ship that started the war that brought the Knot into being in the first place. You know as well as I do, my brother, that the Knot is a place that likes to tie itself up in stories of itself. Imagine the power this place could have. Imagine the unravelling potential of a story like that.
But likewise, our money is dwindling, fast. The economy of the Knot, as I’m sure you’ll remember, can be restrictive. In short, we need an injection and, given everything, I think I’d say you owe me that don’t you? It seems to me we owe one another some sort of consideration, if you follow me? Don’t make me beg, you know I don’t like it. Sandy has some of the details I was loathe to commit to paper, but don’t go all sulky and spend days and days mulling it over for god’s sake. Get on with it. Do something.
I love you so so much, come home.
F x
P.S. If you haven’t already, open a bottle and catch up with Sandy. They won’t say it but they miss you. Their eyes lit up when I asked this favour. You don’t realise that you’re loved, either of you, and it’s frankly pathetic.