I am.
I exist.
I am thought.
Change...
There is... otherness?
There is time.
After an eternity, or perhaps in an instant, for there was no way to tell, Loki began to perceive a cyclic changing that by its changing created a sense of time. He did not notice when it began, or if it began, or whether it had always been there, but he noticed it. It was brightening and then dimming, a day, and it happened whether he thought about it or not, which was how he knew it was something other than himself. Or at least, it was the reason he suspected it was something other than himself. It was entirely possible that the lightness and then darkness, the day, was an aspect of his thought that he had forgotten (not attended to) and was remembering. There was no way to confirm that there was or ever had been something other than his own thought.
Although he was left with the distinct impression of time and change, and that implied otherness. Unless the sense of change was an illusion of attention. If he did not attend to the light afterall, then it could, apparently, change to darkness in an instant.
He observed the light for days before arriving at the heady conclusion that it probably was external to himself.
I am thought. There is light and dark. There is change. There is time.
Was there anything else?
That is when Loki's thought became more imaginative. The intensity of the light he knew changed so regularly, and so slowly, almost imperceptibly, which could be why he had not always been aware of it in the time before he was aware of time. He imagined variation in light. He imagined it waxing and waning frequently, irregularly. Light so bright it threatened thought. Light flashing and then guttering. The phantom strobe became too much, and, exhausted by the mental effort, Loki abandoned that thought and merely observed again. There was the day, brightening... and dimming. Reliable, dependable, comfortable.
There is comfort, and discomfort, it occurred to him after a full day of peaceful observation. Comfort is good, and desirable.
...There is desire. I have desire.
I am thought. I have desire. There is light and dark. There is time. There is change.
I desire comfort.
I desire more than comfort. I desire change.
He imagined flashing of the light again, but it was not enough. He wanted more, but he was at an impasse. His experience was too limited. Except for his own thought, he knew nothing outside of variation in light, bounded by time. And yet, his thought had created marvels. His thought could create flashing light. His thought could create desire. Perhaps the reason he had not always been aware of light and time were because these external things were so small and finite in comparison to the infinite potential of thought. His thought could create change. Daringly, he imagined the impossible, light and dark at the same time.
It was beyond desire. It was beautiful.
There is beauty.
He had created number, duality. It was a simple thing to progress from duality to plurality and then multitude and then arithmetic. From arithmetic, patterns. It was all so novel. He was lost in his thought for a long time then, creating endless shifting variations in light and dark. He did not perceive the external light and dark, because these were no longer fulfilling. His thought had grown far beyond the limitations of the day, and time no longer mattered to him.
The discomfort was a true assault when the ever-dependable external light suddenly changed and forced its way back to the forefront of his thought. It was brighter than anything he had yet imagined, with more complex patterns than he could fathom, and another novel quality layering the pattern that was beyond his comprehension. No, it was not incomprehensible, only a new challenge for his as-yet indefatigable thought.
The sudden change in external light lasted only a brief moment before relative darkness again consumed it, but the possibilities it offered were left exposed. Loki's imagination quickened. His patterns grew more intricate, both brighter and more... vibrant than anything that had come before. There is color. In the wake of this beautiful, external revelation, his frenetic thought created symmetry and asymmetry. Geometry and chaos. Recursion. He invented (or remembered?) many branches of mathematics in his quest for change and beauty.
He no longer allowed his thought to ignore time and the days, however. More than anything, he desired more external stimulus, even though it came with discomfort. He could create so much, but he felt his own thought to be starved. It was worth a moment of discomfort to know color. He desired discomfort, because out of it had come so much change and beauty. Perhaps there was nothing more than light (with color!) and time outside of his thought, but if there was... he needed it. This was beyond desire. He wanted and needed there to be something else. So profound was the wanting, it was almost as if some secret part of his thought already knew there was something else.
The feeling was somehow both comfortable and uncomfortable. Comfortable because it entertained his desires. Uncomfortable because it challenged... something. His identity.
I am. I am thought. I think, therefore I am.
There was no room for duality in thought, because he was thought. Duality of thought would mean there were two, not one. We, not I. One that knew only of light, and time, and its own creations, and one that knew more. With that logic, Loki simultaneously discovered hope, doubt, and deceit.
He had hope that there was more besides thought, time, and light. Hope was comfortable.
But he now had doubt: perhaps light did not exist after all. He had initially presumed light and time to be external to and independent of thought. It had not occurred to him that there could be two sources of thought. But if there were, then perhaps light and time were creations of the other thought, making their apparent existence deceit. A lie. The logic was uncomfortable.
And yet, there was some small, satisfactory conclusion in the midst of the uncertainty: either his was the only thought, and the light and time did exist, along with potentially infinite novelties yet to be exposed. Or, there was another thought. A second mind, deceitful, but creative. A liar who had created and shared light and time with him, allowing him to create change, beauty, and mathematics... Comfort and discomfort were immaterial. Both scenarios were desirable, because both were external stimulus.
He found himself hoping that both possibilities were somehow true, that there was both more than one mind and also something besides thought.
Wanting two things beyond his ability to create or control - he had discovered greed, and it was beautiful.
Author's note: the second half of Descartes' magnum opus Meditations on First Philosophy, but backwards. Loki didn't have to doubt the rest of the world from existence, he had to start from cogito ergo sum and reason the world (or the deceitful devil) back into existence with very little to go on, because the vast majority of his consciousness is still not working. It's going to take awhile. I decided to have vision be the first thing to come back because humans at least are very visual-oriented creatures. Much more sensitive visually than otherwise. Light is the strongest regulator of the circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycling). Visual association is hugely important for interpreting the environment. There's apparently a difficult tradition in some sects of Tibetan Buddhism called a "dark retreat" with deliberate withdrawal from light for meditative purposes, and I bet they pick light-dark for a reason (thanks again, Wikipedia. I freely admit I know next to nothing about Tibetan Buddhism, so take what I say with a grain of salt).
I really just wanted to illustrate how profound the effect would be of sensory deprivation in the Void, for an unknown period but probably even longer than it seemed. There's a reason solitary confinement can be seen as abuse of prisoners, that sensory deprivation techniques as part of "enhanced interrogation" have been ruled inhumane by the European Council of Human Rights, and that children who are abused by means of isolation and deprivation end up with developmental delays they just can't overcome. A healthy mind needs the constant stimulus of the surrounding world to function correctly (though sensory-overload is obviously also a thing). There was actually a BBC show several years ago where they stuck volunteers in dark cells for 2 days and did interviews and cognitive tests just to see what would happen (described on Wikipedia, presumably mimicking an actual research study I haven't found. They did something vaguely similar on Mythbusters once too). No one could keep track of time, several developed hallucinations, and everyone did worse on basic cognition testing afterwards. That was just two days. Imagine what it would be for months and years. You couldn't just go back to normal functioning very easily.
There is also something called the Ganzfeld effect which is the ability of the brain to make patterns out of noise basically. The brain becomes hypersensitive, looking for patterns, and interprets anything and everything as something real. Absence of visual stimulus become patterns against your eyelids, for example. It's the reason people who become blind or deaf are more prone to hallucinations in the affected sense. Also a reason it's not difficult for Loki to rediscover how to see/create patterns (as opposed to formed hallucinations of people, say, which would be much harder and require a lot more reciprocation and coordination of different brain areas).
