Living in Darkness


“In the dark how do you know you still have ten fingers and ten toes?” I say aloud. “With the lights out, all one can hope to do is explore by touch. But have you ever been to one of those exhibits at a science museum where they let you reach into a box and try to tell what's in it? I never guess correctly. Now, I press thumb to forefinger, feeling the contact or imagining the increasing soft pressure. It feels smooth and comforting in the blackness, but I can't know if its real. Sight orients the the cosmos in a way that the other four senses fail to do. You know there's more than five; there's the sense of pain, of time, and of humor. And if you stand still long enough there is the sense of balance. But, these fail if the stimuli abandon the sensor, until all observation ceases.

How big is the room? Perhaps that which appears to be a room devoid of light is the best view as the inevitable heat death of the universe approaches. Not in a small box, sides reachable by hands pressing against walls, but a infinite container. One that you can't touch or break out of. The best decision is to walk, walk, walk. No, run. Until you stumble over an object and break an arm. Wait, inch cautiously around, placing finger tips upon the ground. The slightly rough, nondescript floor that is not dirt and not grass. It's not alive, but it probably never was. When you're certain that enough distance has been traveled, sit down. Maybe you're back where you started, lost in the dark on a circular disc. And when you stop, consider, is there floor in front and behind? It's possible to be standing at the edge of a precipice and not know it, or to have maneuvered along a perilous path and avoided disaster. It could have existed before, but vanishes now.

….

When you look into darkness what do you see? Emptiness and despair, or a blank canvas on which to renew a promise? I see a ship sailing through the night, solitary and safe. It can survive in a vacuum for eternity, floating past obstacles, feeding on its immense energy reserve drop by drop. It drinks on a rationing system, but it can not survive, for nothing within the ship lives. Though it may sail for a time beyond imagining, it too will fail. There will be nothing left, and there will be no way out. No subtle knife can carve a door through this old box into a new.

The ship was an explorer, venturing for no one, watching for no one, aiding no one. Alone and not alone, for nothing can not be lonely, it would be a memorial to remember. Humanity's final message, its cry into the night. It would document the end and then it would float until its conclusion.

….

At least that was the plan of others. For I had another, to be the surveyor of the end. The recorder in the twilight, who documents for no one but itself. To see and examine. For when all lights have gone out, and there is no way to rekindle them, this little light will shine to see the wreckage.

Into the darkness I went, hiding in the blackness of gravity and waiting for the diminished passing of time. With no sound, no light, and only the skin tight contact of a suit did I exist. For many years of dark time did I hibernate, passing from one method of sense-death to another, awaking only to confirm the arrival of the end. I ask you, if there is no balance to maintain and no pressure except the comforting pressure of the womb, does one exist? There are no memories of this existence, for there was nothing to experience. And I ask you, you who do not exist and can not reply, what is life without memories? Existence matters not a bit if there are no memories. There is nothing to record them, to make them immortal. If nothing remembers them, they never existed. The memories that you believe you own are like scraps of paper that will be thrown into the fire, or more appropriately buried under the eternal coldness. That is all that is eternal: matter, cold and dark.

In spite of this, that my memories too are useless, I needed to see for myself. I needed the biting chill of emptiness and endless solitude to realize what can not be realized in the comfort of the home, awaiting the end. To see the bleak stretch of the universe from the best vantage possible.

Do you realize they crowded this one-way voyage with relics of our civilization? A copy of the Constitution here, a statue of the Buddha there. They understood about the memories too, but couldn't face it. They thought the object makes the memory, but that isn't it at all. Objects mean nothing without an observer. We know, Space and I, that memories are inscribed on the neural pathways of living flesh. Oh, sure, the ancients of the 21st century thought self-aware artificial intelligence would supersede us. But scientists found it more efficient and more palatable to augment wetware than to work in software. They installed an AI on board, but it's more of a nervous system, only the most minimal intelligence, like the brain stem. To avoid repeatedly blundering into object after object I junked them. Whatever couldn't be inserted into the small matter converter I tossed out the hatch. It's no different to them, here or there. Wherever the object rests it will do just the same: nothing.

And I leave the universe with these final thoughts, for they are the last thoughts of the last person. They enter the shadow and they do not leave it, nor impinge upon it, they create no mark. I am ascending from the deep darkness, the shade of a tree that nurtured me until the moment of my birth, which is also the death of all. Though I have lived in artificial unending darkness, the majesty of true blackness holds me in thrall to emotions no one else can comprehend. Perhaps I blubber, wasting the last gulps of precious oxygen. And as my eyes close I offer a prayer no one can hear, for my son and my daughter, eternally lost to the emptiness of space and the frailty of mind.


Note: Written while listening to soundtracks from Child of Light and Transistor.

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