Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss death by suicide. The source text also refers to people who are unhoused using problematic and offensive language.

At the outset of the narrative, an entrepreneur is considering possible ways of dying by suicide. The person remains nameless, but she is a woman in her late thirties and is the founder of a technology company. She also has garnered an excellent reputation, though she lost some of that reputation and status as her company began to initiate her removal from her leadership position. Feeling betrayed by those in the company she built, the woman is now at a point where she is second-guessing herself and the course her life is taking. As she thinks over what the text calls “the dangerous deed,” the woman notices a ticket to a personal optimization conference. Not usually one for attending such conferences, the woman decides she has nothing to lose and only something to gain and makes up her mind to attend it.

The narrative shifts to the conference where a man known as “the Spellbinder” is speaking. He is an older man in his eighties and has built a career on motivational speaking, inspiring others to become, in the text’s view, the best versions of themselves they can be.