Captain Northman Plum · The Vitalogue · November 7, 2026
Captain Plum has spent much of his life wondering about a remarkable little mystery.
Not the origin of the stars. Not whether aliens exist. Not even why a printer can detect that it has no paper but cannot offer the sensible solution of printing anyway.
The mystery is rather closer to home.
I am.
Two short words. And perhaps the strangest thing any conscious being can say.
Start Where You Are
You are reading these words. Perhaps you can hear something in the room. Perhaps you are comfortable, tired, cheerful or slightly irritated that Plum has once again wandered into philosophy.
Whatever the circumstances, something is happening: there is an experience of being here.
You might misunderstand what you see. You might be dreaming. You might be wrong about why you feel a certain way. You can question the reliability of your senses, your memories and your ideas.
But even the questioning is something you experience. That is the modest starting point of Vitalogy: “I Am.”
But Who—or What—is the I?
That’s the delicious complication. Saying “I am” does not tell us exactly what the “I” is. A brain? A person? A process? A soul? Something else?
Science has discovered extraordinary things about the brain and consciousness, but the question of how and why subjective experience occurs remains a subject of serious research and philosophical disagreement.
The fact of experience is immediately available to the experiencer. Its ultimate nature is not.
Plum finds that distinction important. A mystery is not a licence to announce that you’ve solved it.
From Something Is to I Am
The original Codex Vitae begins with a broader philosophical observation: something exists. The early Vitalogy book calls its opening chapter Something Is.
“I Am” gives that beginning a human face. You do not need a telescope, laboratory or sacred book to encounter the first question. The experience of being you is already here, right now.
Vitalogy then asks whether consciousness is something fundamental to reality rather than merely an accidental afterthought. That’s a Vitan metaphysical proposal, not a conclusion proven by two words. It deserves argument, evidence and the freedom to disagree.
Why This Matters
If your inner life is real and meaningful to you, it becomes difficult to ignore the possibility that other beings have inner lives that matter just as much to them.
That doesn’t by itself prove a complete moral code. But it gives us a powerful reason to ask better ethical questions: who can suffer, who can flourish, and how should conscious beings treat one another?
Here Vitalogy introduces its three guiding commitments: Order, Truth and Love. Not as magic words, but as standards by which we can examine our answers.
One day the Captain hopes the mysteries of consciousness will be understood much better. Until then, he will keep exploring, asking and making things with the Sparks aboard the Ark.
And he will keep returning to the simplest astonishing fact of all.
I am.
And so, while you’re here, what will you do with this extraordinary opportunity to be alive?
For a careful explanation of what the first axiom establishes—and what it does not—read I Am — The First Axiom of Vitalogy in the Arkademy.
Order. Truth. Love.
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