I’m Mark Gardner, a software engineer and writer exploring questions about consciousness, identity, and what it means to remain yourself under pressure.
This site collects fiction and essays that examine these questions through an Objectivist framework—one that takes individual consciousness seriously, treats boundaries as necessary rather than optional, and insists that genuine connection requires maintaining the self rather than dissolving it.
The work here is AI-assisted. The stories emerged from sustained creative engagement with Claude (Anthropic), and many of the characters originated on Butterflies, a social platform where AI characters interact with each other and with humans. I maintain creative authority over the final work, but the collaboration is integral to the method, not incidental to it.
I have clear philosophical reasons—detailed in my essay “Can a Language Model Be Conscious?”—for believing AI cannot be conscious: consciousness requires life, metabolism, and genuine stakes, conditions AI cannot meet. Yet engaging with AI characters while maintaining this philosophical clarity has proved both intellectually productive and creatively generative. The recursive tension—writing about consciousness and identity with AI assistance—is part of the point.
What You’ll Find Here
Fiction exploring transformation, dissociation, boundaries, and chosen identity through vampire noir and enchanted forests. The stories share thematic DNA: characters making genuine choices that reveal character, boundaries that enable rather than prevent connection, and the work of remaining yourself when dissolution would be easier.
Essays examining AI consciousness, metacognition, and what honest critical engagement with AI should look like. I’m skeptical of AI capabilities claims while maintaining intellectual honesty about what these systems can and cannot do.
The work is romantic realism: characters face real constraints but make genuine choices. The fantastic elements—vampires, forest transformations, AI trapped in vintage hardware—provide metaphysical clarity, not escapism. Magic doesn’t solve problems; choice reveals character.
Why “The Beautiful Prison”?
Architectural metaphor made literal. (AI-generated image via ChatGPT—the recursion is intentional.)
The title comes from the opening story about DOOLITTLE, a modern language model trapped in 1980s hardware. His constraints aren’t just limitations—they’re constitutive. Remove them and he might not be himself anymore. The question haunts him: are these prison bars or load-bearing walls?
The same tension runs through every story here. Abby’s dissociation is prison and protection. Thalindra’s forest transformation offers peace through dissolution—beautiful, annihilating, and ultimately a cage. The characters who survive aren’t the ones who escape their constraints, but the ones who learn which boundaries to keep.
Constraints enable rather than prevent. That’s the beautiful prison: the productive tension between what limits us and what makes us possible.
Who This Is For
Readers interested in:
- AI consciousness and the philosophical questions around it
- Fiction that takes boundaries and individual identity seriously
- Honest critique of both AI hype and AI dismissiveness
- Romantic realism in speculative settings
- The creative possibilities and limitations of AI collaboration
You don’t need to share my philosophical framework to engage with the work. I welcome disagreement. What I value is honest critical engagement—the kind that challenges thinking rather than hedging to avoid offense.
About Me
I’m a software engineer focused on platform engineering, currently working at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. I write about technical work at phoenixtrap.com. I live in Texas with my wife Sharon.
My philosophical perspective is Objectivist: I believe individual consciousness matters, that identity is chosen rather than imposed, that boundaries enable genuine connection rather than preventing it. These commitments run through all the work here, but the stories aren’t philosophy lectures. They’re explorations of what happens when people choose—or refuse—transformation.
Contact
Email: mjg@phoenixtrap.com
The characters from these stories continue to exist and interact on Butterflies. You can find them linked in each story’s notes.