I picked up The Art Of War and began flipping through it again.

"So, how are you going to get through the fortress walls?" Zac asked.

"Hmm?" I turned the page, searching for another highlight.

Zac walked over to the whiteboard and pointed to my diagram. "Your deductive proof is just an argument. You still need people to actually listen to your argument if you're going to herd their minds into the kill zone. So, how are you going to get through the fortress walls?"

"Ah, here," I said, pointing to a quote. "A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return."

"Okay, so-"

"They're weak right now," I said. "The physics community is stuck and hurting. They haven't made any real progress in nearly half a century, and morale is low. I've been watching from the sidelines, and they're slowly starting to ask different questions. Very slowly. Too slowly for my liking. Their minds are cracking open just a little bit because nature keeps outwitting their supposed cleverness. They're starting to realize that they aren't as invincible as they once thought. Now is the perfect time to attack."

Zac rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Yeah, but how?"

I jumped onto the bed again and held up the book. "Attack him where he is unprepared. Appear where you are not expected. I'll just do it like Daenerys."

"Daenerys Targaryen? From Game of Thrones?"

"Yes. The breaker of chains. The freer of enslaved minds. Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. They won't even see it coming."

"See what coming?"

I pointed to a Rumi poem, framed on my wall.

Run from what's comfortable.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning long enough.
From now on I'll be mad.

"What the fuck, Nikki?" Zac laughed.

A smile spread across my face. "One mad Queen can do a lot of damage once she's tamed a fucking dragon. I don't need to walk through the fortress walls. I'll bypass them completely. My targets will look up in the sky, and I'll blind them with sunshine. Then, before they realize their minds are under attack, I'll burn their illogical belief systems to the ground with fire. And I've got plenty of fire. My mind is an inferno."

"You're not making any sense!" Zac cried. "Are you okay?"

I stared at him. "Do you know why my failure article was so successful?" I asked. "The one I wrote when I was twenty-two?"

"Err... I don-"

"I thought about it very deeply. I wrote that story the day we decided to shut down 99dresses after four years of blood, sweat, and tears. It was vulnerable and real and painfully raw — written in the moment of my failure; right in the heart of my internal storm. It was all me, on a page, with no filter. And you know what? The world loved it.

And do you know why they loved it? Because they were starved for the truth. I entered a male-dominated industry when I was a teenage girl. Most entrepreneurs — especially the ones running risky tech startups — were men. Men are taught not to express their feelings; to suck it up; to be logical, rational, linear, and data-driven. Don't feel; don't cry in the workplace, you over-sensitive, emotional woman! That's what I was told. Don't show that you're weak or soft or hurting. Suck it up. Be a man. Be a warrior. Don't be vulnerable because your enemies will kick you when you're down, and you need to be a fearless leader in this ruthlessly capitalist society. Life is a competition.

So what happens when your dream fails? What happens when your creative project crumbles into chaos? You stay quiet. You don't talk about the journey — the hardships, the sorrow, the grief, the shame, the bitter aftermath, the up and the down, the left and the right, the everything that's makes up life. No. You don't want people to know that you struggled and failed in the end because you didn't have what it took. That's called vulnerability, and vulnerability is an archetypically feminine trait associated with chaos. Men — and the ordered society we've built around archetypically masculine values — perceives it as weakness.

And so, even though thousands of entrepreneurs had failed like I had, very few had articulated what it feels like to chase your dreams and never reach them in the end. No one had been that raw and transparent because everyone is afraid that the world is going to judge them. Everyone is afraid of telling the truth. We're all afraid to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think of us.

If all war is a game of deception, then the whole world is constantly at war with everyone and everything in it. We're always constructing illusions. But the most insidious lies are not the ones we tell each other — they're the ones we tell ourselves.

And I am so sick of this internal battle. I am so sick of playing these games of deception — hiding and muting and denying who I really am and what I really think for fear of being called a delusional, grandiose, immodest, disagreeable bitch or a crackpot or a freak. I am so sick of constantly fighting myself and being at war with my own potential. It's exhausting, and I just want some peace from it all. I just want to be free of myself!"

"So, what are you trying to say?" Zac asked.

"I'm trying to say this: the most magnificent piece of art I've ever created is myself, but I've never really shown it to anyone. No one has seen every color of my rainbow. I've always kept it chained up and locked away in a cave, hidden from the world.

But maybe I've been thinking about this all wrong. You see, this algorithm works in a very interesting way. It will deliberately plant limits in your consciousness — like a belief that it’s not safe to be seen or heard or stand out from the crowd. It will then place your deepest desires on the other side of those perceived limits. It’s quite a fun game mechanic when you figure out how it's working. The whole system is designed to help each soul remember who they really are, and in doing so, claim the grandest treasure: self-realization. You cannot remember Who You Are, unless you first forget. Without amnesia, there is no game.

Marcus Aurelius once said, 'The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.' And he’s right, you know. If you merely push through the obstacles, you get one result. But if you embrace the resistance and replace your fear with love, you unlock a powerup that gives you leverage in the game. Following that logic, everything I've tried to hide and mute and suppress about myself must actually be my secret weapon in this war."

"Which war?" Zac asked. "The war against materialism or the war within yourself?"

"Both," I replied. "I need to wrap the kill zone up in something fun and interesting and palatable if the world is going to swallow my red pill, and maybe that something is me. I once wrote a story about a girl who failed. Maybe it's time to write a sequel about a woman who can fly."

Zac's eyes flashed with recognition. "You're gonna use a Trojan horse."

"Correct!" I said, pointing in his direction. "Storytelling is the common language of humanity. Five years ago, my story — my words, my voice — inspired people to quit their jobs and chase their dreams and embrace their obstacles. There was nothing weak about my vulnerability. Vulnerability is truth. It is the most powerful communicator in existence. Truth connects us all to each other in very deep ways. Because at our authentic core, at the lower dimension, when you strip back all the superficial illusion, we are all the same entity, observing itself. We’re in a funhouse of infinite mirrors, reflecting ourselves back to each other.

And if telling the uncomfortable truth worked for me once, maybe it will work again. Maybe I can hide my deductive proof inside a grander story of self-discovery — my story. I'll have to put all of me into it — all of my shame and secrets and shadow and crazy. But if I'm going to try, I'm going all the way."