Panopticon

Up the spiraling stairs I climb, as I have done through endless aeons past. These ancient steps show the wear of time that does not pass here. Time can never pass here. Up I go, step by step, carrying the flickering flame of safety. With this tiny candle, I must light the Beacon that holds the Darkness at bay. This is my Lighthouse and I am its Keeper.

This Lighthouse is my home, and my prison. My entire world exists between the base and the beacon; there is nothing else. I could rail against my fate, but it would do me no good. There is no one to hear, except for the Darkness; and I don't want the darkness listening in on my thoughts. I am like Sisyphus; this candle is my stone, and these steps are my mountain. Over and over, time without end, I must carry this little light of mine from the Source at the bottom to the Beacon at the top. At least Sisyphus knew why the gods had cursed him; at least he had earned his fate. Maybe I did too. Maybe, once upon a time, some pantheonic tribunal had decided I was worthy of this fate; I can't remember. There is nothing left in my mind except the flickering flame and these interminably cycling steps.

The steps feel endless, but they do eventually lead to the top of my tower. I come to a suddenly open space, the darkness pressing in from all sides; relentless and inexorable. In the center of the space is the Beacon; the wonderful and terrible apparatus that lights the Darkness outside, keeping the crawling Darkness from reaching into my world. I must light it, or the Darkness will find a way in and I am lost. It glows only faintly now, feebly beating back the darkness. The Beacon always seems on the verge of burning out completely, and yet it never does. The embers always seem about to crumble into dust, yet they burn freshly and brightly whenever I reignite them with my little candle. Every dusk I must do this; I must climb those steps and relight the beacon. I say “at dusk,” but there are no cycles of day and night here. There is only Darkness without and Light within. Why must I always relight the Beacon? Why must I continually conduct this meaningless ritual? Of course, there is no answer. There never is. I only know that I must keep going.

Slowly, carefully, I put the candle to the embers of the Beacon, feeling a sense of satisfaction–or perhaps it’s a sense of relief–when the light shines bright again. The light looks like fire, but it possesses none of fire’s heat. It burns with a cold, dead Light. I shiver and stand, shielding my little candle even though the air is still. I walk to the edge of my observatory and stare out into the abyss, the revived Beacon reveals an ocean below me. It stretches out into infinity on all sides. It looks like water, and maybe it is. I will never know. I will never feel the wetness of water again. Did I know what it felt like once? I can’t remember. I lean over the edge to see black, desultory waves lapping at the rocky foundation of my Lighthouse. It always looks like this. I never see storms, and winds never buffet my tower. Hell, even the tides have decided to incur other shores. This ocean, my ocean, remains eternally flat and lifeless.

I look back up into the void above the water, as formless and empty as ever. Sometimes, if I stare hard enough into the Darkness around me, I think I can see something–many somethings–fighting the edges of the beacon's light. The razor boundary between the darkness and light bubbles and fizzes continually, boiling with more life than the water below has ever shown. These somethings are as ethereal as the void that forms them, and yet I am filled with a bone-deep terror of what would happen to me if they ever came within reach. Instinctively, I shrink back from the edge. I know not where this abject fear originates; certainly not from experience…right? I have forgotten so much that I can no longer decide what comes from within and what comes from without. I only know one thing, one overriding mandate: do not let the Darkness in.

As if on cue, a breeze softly kisses my cheek where no breeze ever blows. Perhaps in other worlds, a breeze is a symbol of respite, but not here. The breeze carries a fetor, a sickly-sweet redolence that permeates my mind and fills me with terror. They come! Behind me, the Light flickers ominously, and I turn with gnawing dread to see the Beacon fitfully fading. It fades so quickly! I hastily stumble toward it in a panic; I must relight it! I cannot let it go out! I stretch out my A, straining to touch my little candle to the sputtering embers when a bone-deep horror settles in my heart, for my light has gone out! I now understand the cunning of the Darkness. It is not mindless; it thinks, it plans. Before I had even seen a threat, it had preempted my defense.

I must relight my candle at the Source! I stumble to my feet and stagger toward the endless, cycling stair.The Darkness is closing in, beating frightfully at the fading Beacon. It knows as well as I the Beacon is all that stands between life and annihilation. It presses in on the Light with all the ferocity of hell itself. Oh beleaguered Beacon, please don't go out! I run down the stairs as fast as I can, leaving the growing wind behind; but the voices follow me down.

The Darkness begins to speak to me and its saccharin whispers reverberate through my chest:

“Rest,” it says, "Lay your aching bones down.”

“No!” I yell, even as my steps slow. It feels like I'm trying to run through quicksand.

“You are tired. Don't you weary of your doom?”

“No!” I lie. I am so tired of my endless ritual.

“We know the truth, the truth!” it chitters, ‘We know, we know, we know.”

I feel the endless ages bearing down on my bones. I want nothing more than to give up and sit on these aeon-worn steps, but I cannot. I must not! I keep running, stumbling, almost falling down the steps.

“Give up, give up, give up,” the voices croon, “We know the injustices they decreed against you.”

I falter, slowing my stride down the endless steps. What injustices? I'm supposed to be here…right? I badly wish I could remember what condemned me to this monotonic existence. “What was done to me?”

“Stop and see,” the voices cajol, “stop and let us show you, show you!”

I want to stop so badly; I try to, but something wills me forward. It's as if something wrests control of my very body away from me and I stumble forward, running.

“FINE, FINE!” they shriek, “RUN RUN AND DIE!” And then I hear water gurgling from below. My hope begins to fade as it rises and I don't even have time to breathe before it envelops me.

My lungs are empty and my veins burn with fire as I drown, and yet I cannot seem to die. There is only the eternal pain as my body tries to breathe the water. I gasp and water fills my lungs full to bursting. I hear the Darkness shriek with demoniacal laughter. There can only be one end to the pain, it seems. I fight the pain that tries to shatter my consciousness and I swim downward, on and on and on.

The spiral staircase feels endless even under normal circumstances, but now, under the threat of imminent extinction, I learn that there are degrees of infinity. Mere words are finite, and cannot express the extent of eternity I experience as I crawl through the sluggish water toward the Source. Fear skitters through my mind, driven before the howling voices. What if the source is extinguished? What then? I long to let the Darkness complete its work, but something drives me forward; some external will to fight keeps me from giving up. I keep swimming down and down and down and down.

Unimaginable relief floods my fire-riven veins when I see a flicker below me. The Source lives still! My depleted muscles find new reserves and I push downward. I find the bottom of my Lighthouse and I swim down well wherein the Source resides. It is not deep and I'm soon within reach. The Source burns with the same cold fire of the Beacon, but it feels warm and lively in comparison to the Darkness surrounding me. I touch my candle to the Source, reigniting it. I'm afraid that the fraught upward journey will prove too much for this weak little flame, but what choice do I have? I carefully cup the light against the oppressive Darkness and I begin paddling upward.

The darkness presses down with such ferocious intensity that it feels as though the law of buoyancy has been reversed. Inch by inch I crawl through the cleaving, viscous water. I know not from whence the strength comes to keep pressing upward, because my body is as empty as the void. I pass in and out of time and space as my body fights ever upward.

Time uncounted passes before my head breaks the surface of the sluggish water and I gaspingly inhale the first air my brittle body has had in ages. Crawling on forearms and knees up the steps, I struggle to protect my guttering little flame from the water pouring from my lungs. Slowly, the ringing in my ears dies and the maniacal laughter of the Darkness pierces hot needles into my soul. Fear renewed, I stagger to my feet and begin climbing the stairs. Around and around I go, cupping my hands to protect my light. The voices scream epithets into my mind, but I've been inured by pain and exhaustion. I've been pushed well past the limits of body and mind. All that remains is singular purpose.

I reach the top and horror besets me as I behold the nearly extinguished embers; the Darkness has neatly won! Cyclonic winds batter me and manic chittering scuttles across my mind as I crawl toward the Beacon, carefully sheltering my tiny candle. The last ember is mere moments away from annihilation when I touch them with my life-giving flame, and the Beacon blazes again, gloriously revived! The Darkess howls and curses, but it can do nothing as it's beat back and imprisoned again at the edge of the light. I collapse, exhausted to a death I know will never come, no matter how I might wish for it. I look at the boiling edge between light and void, and a gangrenous disquiet enters my mind. How did the Darkess mount its assault? What did it learn for next time? Did it lie when claimed my imprisonment unjust? Try as I might, I cannot dislodge these thoughts from my mind, and what little peace I had before flees forever.