You push the button.

Ding.

The light on the ceiling has been replaced with an ice cream cone.

On the one hand, ice cream! Bolted to the ceiling. If you’re tall enough to reach an eight-foot-hight ceiling, that ice cream is all yours. Enjoy. Unless you’re lactose intolerant, in which case don’t enjoy.

On the other hand, there is no longer any light in the room.

Darkness.

Complete and utter darkness.

Light itself can be measured, and it is, all the time. When something is giving out light, this is measured in "lumens". For instance, the sun emits slightly under 7 octillion lumens. A car's brights usually emit about 1,200 lumens. The average old-fashioned 100-watt light bulb emits 1,600 lumens, and a crappy old-fashioned 40-watt light bulb emits about 450. A candle gives off around 12.5 lumens, and a human can comfortably read with .5 lumens being emitted from a nearby source, although any nearby grandmothers will yell at you that you'll ruin your eyes that way, making your reading no longer comfortable.

In the room you're standing in now, there are exactly 0 lumens being produced anywhere.

Are you afraid of the dark?

Sensory deprivation is an interesting thing. It is commonly known that when one of your senses is taken away the others, to a degree, sharpen. Many people, when they want to think, close their eyes or cover their ears. Some restaurants work with reduced lighting to enhance people's taste buds. Some people, when trying to see something in the distance, unconsciously slow their breathing to eliminate smell and/or taste.

Of course, sensory deprivation can also lead to anxiety, depression, and hallucinations, among other things. Most people cannot willingly submit themselves to complete sensory deprivation for very long. There is a room in a lab in Minneapolis that absorbs 99.99% of all sound. Most people can’t spend more than half an hour in that room. It makes them itch, and sing to themselves, and fall over. It drives them mad.

Thankfully you aren't in that room. Instead, you're in a room with absolutely no light.

Are you afraid of the dark?

Humans need light.

More than that, humans crave light.

At this point your eyes have started producing a phantom light of their own. You absolutely can’t see anything from this light, but you swear it’s there.

These are called phosphenes. The prevailing theory of why they exist is that they’re caused by the inherent electrical charges the retina produces. It happens mostly when you put pressure on your eye, like when you rub your eye. But if there’s no input for your eyes to focus on, they’ll relay the electrical flashes to your brain just to prove they’re still working.

Are you afraid?

The button starts to glow, a faint red glow.

Light is an interesting thing. It reflects off everything (except black holes), and it travels pretty darn fast.

Because of this, there are different terms for when light is being emitted, and when light is being reflected. Depending on whether you’re using the metric system or not, the terms for light being reflected is either lux or footcandle. However, it is important to note that not all light is the same; it varies depending on color. This is why, even though you can read with a flashlight that’s only producing .5 lumens, it would be nearly impossible to read by a dying candle, even though at that point it’d still be producing around 7 lumens.

Now, the button is producing .0006 lumens of red light. With these .0006 lumens you could hold the palm of your hand against it and see the creases in your palm. However, anything further away from that would still be invisible. If you picked it up, somehow, you would still only be able to see the creases in your palm. This is because light travels in all directions, instead of just one. If you were to place the button on a mirror, and put that mirror directly on a piece of paper, you might have enough lux reflecting off that paper to see one short word. Like “the” or “and”. But that’s about it.

So, even though the button is giving off light, you can’t tell where the walls are or the ceiling is. If the floor was a mirror, that might help. Or if the walls were white instead of grey, that would also help.

And because what you really need is some lux when the button gives you a tiny bit of lumens, staring at it would actually help you see less.

Are you afraid?

You stare at that glowing button like your life depends on it. To be fair, for a moment it feels like it does. It doesn’t matter if you’re afraid of the dark or not, if the blackness bothers you or not; at the moment that button is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and you stare.

DO YOU PRESS THE BUTTON? Yes No