The Book of Knots - Jags

Book of Knots - The Caretakers
66
It has been asked, “What is the Nature of a Thing within the Universe?”
And it has answered, “Each Thing contains within itself the kernel of its
own annihilation – and each atom of nothingness contains, within itself,
the kernel of an whole Universe.”
And so the Wheel turns, and it stops, and it speaks, and around it are
those who revere it.
The Scribes
The Wheel is tended by The Scribes, who rise before dawn to see it, and
then travel back to their low mud huts to wait for evening. They sustain
themselves on its wisdom, reading transcribed works, for sustenance.
They practice its Art – eternity through focused self-loathing, through
which they hate themselves empty and are filled by bounty of the world
around them – not because the world wishes to cherish or nurture them,
but because Nature Abhors a Vacuum.
The Scribes appear as stooped, wasted men, with loose flesh under duncolored
robes. They smell of ashes and faintly of faded flowers, and their
voices rasp dry. They are smart – they have to be – for they must pull
new wisdom from the Wheel’s koans or they will wither and die.
When they do die, they wither quickly and become dust, and their robes
lay in the narrow streets between the buildings, until a new person
arrives in town ready to drink knowledge from the teat of the Wheel.
To even think about being a Scribe, you must be nearly suicidal, but hate
yourself just enough not to be willing to end your misery.
The Bride of the Wheel
The Wheel is married to its Bride who was chosen, it is said, because she
hates The Wheel more than it hates itself.
The Bride is a column of seven hundred helium balloons that are wound
together in a DNA-like helix. The Bride and the Wheel are both mobile,
but the Wheel never goes anywhere. The Bride carries out The Wheel’s
bidding amongst its servants and in other realms. She will often dispatch
a balloon (usually a red one, or sometimes a blue one) to float afar and
deliver its message. The balloons can communicate telepathically and
can carry objects weighing less than a 16 th of a pound tied to their string.
Their strings are not prehensile. They hang limply.
Disposition Towards Man
Some years ago, the Wheel produced a series of discourses on humanity.
It outlined, in its works for that year, what is so repulsive about men and
how they can be cured.
No one is quite sure exactly what it meant (in either case), but after
much study of the book-length dissertations, the general consensus was