  We study the dynamics of light-like tachyon condensation in a linear dilaton
background using level-truncated open string field theory. The equations of
motion are found to be delay differential equations. This observation allows us
to employ well-established mathematical methods that we briefly review. At
level zero, the equation of motion is of the so-called retarded type and a
solution can be found very efficiently, even in the far light-cone future. At
levels higher than zero however, the equations are not of the retarded type. We
show that this implies the existence of exponentially growing modes in the
non-perturbative vacuum, possibly rendering light-like rolling unstable.
However, a brute force calculation using exponential series suggests that for
the particular initial condition of the tachyon sitting in the false vacuum in
the infinite light-cone past, the rolling is unaffected by the unstable modes
and still converges to the non-perturbative vacuum, in agreement with the
solution of Hellerman and Schnabl. Finally, we show that the growing modes
introduce non-locality mixing present with future, and we are led to conjecture
that in the infinite level limit, the non-locality in a light-like linear
dilaton background is a discrete version of the smearing non-locality found in
covariant open string field theory in flat space.
