That the light may annihilate me
> They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.
The body was found burnt to a crisp, a room of glassy walls; one hundred-million laser diodes lined this space. His family traced his form to the cloud, a set of writings stored on his Dropbox. Files in a format for something called ‘Scrivener.’ There saw he so feared the dark as to seek fill his room with light entire, the resulting to be seen.
At first he had merely increased the amount of light over a period of weeks, then it seemed as if he wished it saturate him ever more rapidly. The whole initially an unconscious affair, only later when technical concerns became predominant did he begin to concern himself with the theoretical. These signs thus arrayed in notes surrounding a series of technical documents concerning the ever-greater production of light in search of saturation. The final project was that which lined the walls, meanwhile the bathroom was filled with a complex of wires and what the police identified as microwave transformers. These drove the lasers which were his end.
His death seemed unlikely an accident, or rather as expected incidental of some other necessity. The later days show a concern with the darkness within, implicit a desire to be ‘broken open’ such that light may be pervade his very being. Here the plain motive was overt fear, a calmness overcomes these notes only in their deepest meditation on technical matters. The two danced together ever onward, problems and solutions; that the only way out was through. The same with his anxiety, for his deepening technical knowledge dragged with it his theoretical concern; and with this, his fear of the dark.
The shape of the world was reduced to two poles, cosmic forces warring eternal. He sought the order of light over the darkness which everywhere prevailed, a darkness that he saw was for most not even salient; it was this compromise which he abjured. The remainder, no less safe for their ignorance, were satisfied to share this world with darkness. He wished it definite one way or the other. This at least he seemed achieve.
Limitation is the actuality of the real, or the reality of the actual; it is the point at which thought becomes possible. This contradiction at the heart of all knowledge: at most we crowd truth into a corner. There remains a darkness that no light will annihilate, which must remain for it is all else. The whole depends upon this single point. There was a man who so feared darkness that he filled his room with light.