The world she fell into was blank.
She stood on nothing, though it felt firm under her feet. It was neither dark, nor light, neither silent, nor loud. There was nothing to see and nothing to hear, though it felt like there could be.
She wasn't surprised, or frightened. It was just more of the Hyper Knot's weirdness.
The world felt flat, yet just short of smooth. It reminded her of unused writing paper.
It smelled like fresh paper and wet ink.
It smelled inviting.
Anya closed her eyes and took a slow breath to enjoy that smell.
She used to write on paper. Just doodling with words, nothing serious. No completed stories.
Serious writing needed to be done on the computer where it could be edited to perfection.
She took another slow breath.
She still had most of her doodle pages stored away somewhere. The fresh paper smell of this place made her want to dig them out and re-read some of her favorite bits.
How long had it been since she'd even looked at them?
Months.
No, it had been over a year already -- since the day she'd decided to get serious about writing. She had downloaded a highly rated word processor program. And never looked back.
Her laptop didn't smell like this.
It smelled of plastic, and faintly of ozone. Her whole office smelled like work.
Real writing was hard work. She had struggled with words for over a year now. The ideas in her head refused to come out on the screen. Everything she'd written all year felt either incoherent, or flat out wrong.
She wanted to be a real writer, but lately she'd been thinking it just wasn't possible for her. That she should just give up.
She opened her eyes, but the world remained as blank as a fresh sheet of writing paper.
She stared out into the blankness, letting the smell of this place drift through her mind. She felt her arms relax. Her fingers twitched, remembering the feel of a pen in their grip.
Real writing didn't smell like fresh paper and wet ink. Real writing didn't feel like excitement, adventure, and joy.
Doodling did.
Why didn't she ever doodle any more? Just for fun in her free time?
Instead, when she wasn't at work or struggling to write her real book, she watched TV, or hung out on social media -- watching cat videos, or complaining about the news with people she didn't actually know.
She had joined several writing forums early on. There were many of them on Facebook and other platforms. But she never visited them any more. It was all bad news and struggle for other writers, too.
But doodling wasn't like that.
Doodling was like falling. All she ever had to do was let go. Her pen would wiggle across the page, automatically tracing out line after line, while her mind romped through fantastic adventures with her characters.
She should get back to doodling sometimes. She missed this smell. She missed the free-flowing adventures, missed spelling words anyway she felt like, missed ignoring the rules and writing however the words wanted to come out.
With a sigh, she shoved all those thoughts out of her mind.
Real writing wasn't like any of that.
And, despite the smell and feel, this blank world wasn't a page to doodle on, either.
She looked around, wondering how to get back. She'd been sucked through one of the Hyper Knot galaxies to get here. But this whole world was blank. The Hyper Knot wasn't here.
She tried walking a few steps, but the blankness was so complete it felt like she wasn't moving at all. Surly she'd never reach an edge of this place.
She reached for her phone. If there was signal, maybe she could call someone?
There was no phone. Not even an empty pocket. She wasn't wearing her normal clothes. She did have something on, but she couldn't tell what. The outfit looked as blank as the world. It bore no description at all. But it felt as comfortable and natural as her own skin.
Then she noticed a single Hyper Knot galaxy, shrunk to the size of a rose and set on the back of her wrist like a slowly rotating corsage. It was the only trace of color or motion or detail in the place. Somehow, she wasn't surprised that even her own arm looked as blank and featureless as the rest of the world. Which made it surprising that she hadn't immediately noticed the colorful Hyper Knot spiral.
Like the full size original, this miniature version seemed to have a fractal nature. As she watched, each arm began to spin into smaller versions of itself. If she touched another one of those, would she be sucked into another strange world? She could get lost in an endless string of them.
With a moment's consideration, she decide to hope there was a simple logic to it. Touching one of the outer galaxies had brought her here, and every arm led to more outer galaxies. But toward the center, there was only the one.
Careful not to touch any of the edge galaxies, she put one fingertip on the center of the central spiral.
With a swoosh, just like before, she fell through it.
And found herself back in her computer room, one finger touching a secondary galaxy of the full size Hyper Knot.
She jerked her hand away and stepped well back. The Hyper Knot still rotated, slowly and silently.
It was as if nothing had happened.
But the smell of that blank world lingered in her mind, an invitation to doodle with words, rather than struggle to write properly on the computer.
The Hyper Knot still blocked the door, trapping her in here.
If she touched it, she'd get sucked in again. There had to be some way to deactivate it. Or at least, move it out of the way.
She fetched a yard stick from a far corner of the room and cautiously tried to push the Hyper Knot aside like a curtain, but the yardstick passed through the Hyper Knot like it wasn't there. It didn't even deflect the colors as it would if the galaxies were a light show.
Touching the center of the corsage version had backed her out of the blank world. Would touching the center of the whole Hyper Knot somehow back her out of the real world, too? Into what?
Anya blinked. Maybe she wasn't in the real world, even now. The Hyper Knot itself wasn't a real world thing.
And it wasn't like she had any better ideas.
Cautiously, she approached again. This time, she reached for the center of the central galaxy. When she touched it, there was no swoosh.
Both relieved and disappointed, she stepped back again.
Then she realized the direction of rotation had reversed. The edge galaxies were unforming as the central spiral slowly unwound, the colors gradually randomizing. The whole shape was shrinking.
When it had shrunk back down into a hand-sized disk, it unstuck from the basketball hoop backboard, fell through the hoop and landed on the floor. It did not bounce or roll. It looked like a ball of string again. And not like one. Just like it first had.
Anya looked over the door and surroundings carefully. There was no sign of damage. As near as she could tell, nothing had even been nudged out of place.
"Well, you seem to be a well behaved extra-dimensional oddity, don't you?" she told the Hyper Knot, feeling oddly annoyed. She felt as if deactivating the thing had robbed her of something.
That was nonsense, of course. She should be grateful it seemed to function properly at all.
Anya picked up the card stock box the Hyper Knot had come in, and went to see if she could scoop the Hyper Knot into it without having to touch it again.
Using the yardstick as a broom, she got it back in the box as easily as scooping up a ball of yarn.
Now what? What was she going to do with this thing? She couldn't just throw it away. What if it activated in the garbage truck? Or got damaged and...
What would a multi-dimensional explosion even look like? How much damage could it do?
She looked in the box, wondering if there was even anything she could do. The Hyper Knot was still uncomfortable to look at, so she looked away quickly.
Despite the weirdness, she still wasn't afraid of the thing. It was deactivated. It would probably stay that way if she left it alone.
That would have to be good enough for now. Until she figured out some better idea.
Meanwhile, she had writing work to get back to. As discouraging and hard as real writing was, she wasn't really ready to give up. She just had to push herself hard enough.
She looked at the clock to check how much time she had just wasted. Surprisingly the whole Hyper Knot distraction had only taken a few minutes. Out of the two hours she had scheduled for writing, she still had more than an hour and a half to go.
She put the box on a shelf, well away from the door, and went back to her desk.
Hands on keyboard, eyes on screen. She went still. No words came.
The word processor screen remained blank.
It didn't smell inviting.
She looked at the box on the shelf.
She had some blank paper around here somewhere, didn't she? Maybe she could doodle a little to get in the mood, and then get to real writing on the computer.