Zan’s supervisor tossed the glass square onto their rusting desk. A glass-rendered construct of a silver ticket hovered in the air, text shimmering. Zan held their breath as they re-read it until they were sure their credentials were correct**.
Congratulations, Sweeper R-C00543, Z. Ortega-Lyons, you’ve won one (1) ticket to the Third Quarter Celebration as a special Re-Collect guest! Join the Seven Corporations to revel in profits.
“You know how rare it is for one of us to go to a quarterly party?”
Zan tried to appear baffled as they shrugged. “Just lucky I guess.”
“Yeah, sure. Probably cheated somehow using one of your glass-render tricks.”
“I’d never risk my rank and standing with Re-Collect,” they said.
This wasn’t a lie. They needed to look like a legitimate, obed…
Zan’s supervisor tossed the glass square onto their rusting desk. A glass-rendered construct of a silver ticket hovered in the air, text shimmering. Zan held their breath as they re-read it until they were sure their credentials were correct**.
Congratulations, Sweeper R-C00543, Z. Ortega-Lyons, you’ve won one (1) ticket to the Third Quarter Celebration as a special Re-Collect guest! Join the Seven Corporations to revel in profits.
“You know how rare it is for one of us to go to a quarterly party?”
Zan tried to appear baffled as they shrugged. “Just lucky I guess.”
“Yeah, sure. Probably cheated somehow using one of your glass-render tricks.”
“I’d never risk my rank and standing with Re-Collect,” they said.
This wasn’t a lie. They needed to look like a legitimate, obedient worker, and Zan regretted incurring his animosity in the process. He was a kind supervisor, and funny. In another reality, he could’ve been a friend. But what Zan intended to do, after months of constructing and failing and redesigning after the long Sweep hours, would ruin any pretense of camaraderie if he found out—which he wouldn’t.
Not unless Zan was discovered at the party. Not unless they got caught.
An alarm blared and both Zan and their supervisor tapped the glass panel stitched to their uniforms. The glass interfaced with their vision and hearing. Instruction text hovered, perfectly centered, as the text to speech intoned, Rival building abandoned in Sector One. Sweep immediately. Prioritize: data chips, upper management offices. Free-for-all: non-tagged valuables such as abandoned credits, desk decor, non-priority data.
These were the usual rules Zan lived by day-to-day. It wasn’t enough credits to survive on, which was the point. Never get too comfortable.
“Whatever, let’s go. I’ll up my rank by kicking you out a hundredth floor window,” their supervisor muttered as he stomped away.
Zan watched as he walked right through their father’s ghost, the image swirling like smoke before reconfiguring. Their father unsettled them, but they no longer flinched. He was dead, that was the point. He was a glass-rendered construct only Zan could see. He wasn’t real, he wasn’t. This was the plan Zan and L designed.
As Zan prepped to jump into yet another building to steal more pointless data for a corporation they despised, the thought of L made the weariness ease and their impatience heighten all at once. Knowing they’d finally see her at the end helped get through the exhaustion of another ten-hour shift.
Tomorrow night. Only one more shift until Zan and L used the construct wearing their father’s image to break this all down.
• • • •
When Zan was five, Plenti, Inc., claimed their father wasn’t exposed to anything unusual on a Sweep. Their father’s report on being forced to clear out a biohazardous building went missing. He was fired and denied assistance.
Other corporations refused to hire him, each move to one of the seven sectors more desperate than the last. Even though Zan and their mother had medical coverage, their father didn’t. Coverage was based on age and individual occupation. Unemployable for daring to report a corporate secret that affected his health, their father tried his best to downplay his symptoms and focus on Zan. Every little occasion was a major celebration, until he could barely walk anymore.
He died a year later. Zan never forgot. The older they got, the more the story repeated for others around them. Over and over as every manager congratulated shareholders for record profits.
• • • •
When the Sweep ended, they were finally allowed five hours rest time. Their apartment door screeched shut, snagging on a rusted bit of metal Zan couldn’t afford to repair. It didn’t matter; they hardly noticed the sound anymore.
Dim, yellow light flickered to life, highlighting the emptiness of the small space, the water-stained ceiling, the threadbare rugs they threw over the decaying underbelly of their life.
The only newer (though not undamaged) objects in the place were Zan’s prized possessions: their glasstop and their rig. The glasstop was a thin, clear rectangle the size of a dinner tray. They were still climbing out of the debt incurred buying that glass. One left corner chipped off a few weeks ago when they dropped it, its jagged edges a warning Zan ignored, the fractures veining out more and more. The flowering greenery spilling out of it smelled of petrichor (or what Zan guessed was petrichor). Bits of half-finished code peeked out from underneath. Once L admitted plants were her favorite, it became Zan’s default away state. It was nice to come home to a facsimile of living things, to imagine L’s reactions.
Then there was the rig.
Zan’s rig wasn’t beautiful and had barely any glass outside the helmet, but it was custom built and reliable and sturdy. Mostly. A halo of dented metal circled the dangling helmet, and chaotic cablework threaded out from the gloves. Cable management was never their strength. Two slots for the suit’s boots poked out of the rig’s base.
Groaning, muscles screaming, they discarded their uniform, tossed away the vest, the glass square and visor plinking on the floor. They peeled off the sweaty white undershirt underneath and loosened their binder. Discarding their Sweeper self was ritual at this point like taking off a false skin or molting out of a far too constricting shell. They immediately squeezed into the rigsuit.
The angular helmet hissed shut as they clicked it into locking mechanisms on the suit. They sighed in relief at the glass-rendered feeling of reality shifting, the lower level and poorly filtered apartment air replaced with a cool breeze.
Some liked their default to be a classic cityscape, from before the seven corporations took over. Others preferred mountains, oceans, prettier versions of their own living spaces. Zan opted for a meadow and rolling hills, with yellow marigolds, white peonies, purple orchids, and black dahlias. Flowers they never saw and only guessed at their beauty based on corporate ad archive footage. They weren’t sure if they got the smells right, the size, shapes, or textures. But it was their favorite construct.
An encrypted message pinged, scrolling in the center of the sky. They had sixty-six seconds before it was flagged by corporate readers. It made their exchanges too brief, but Zan savored every second.
> Almost time. Hope it’s ready, and I hope you liked my gift. Enjoy the ticket. L~
Zan smiled. “Not long now. Seven Obelisks is causing bleed at pace, and should be ready for infection in time,” they said, watching their words translate to text. They wanted to say so much to L, but they never had long. Soon they would meet face-to-face. The thought of more filled them with a desperate ache.
> Can’t wait to finally meet, to see this through. To see you, feel you.
“What if I don’t recognize you?” It was a real concern. They never exchanged profiles or images, not in all their years of scheming. L was Re-Collect upper management and couldn’t risk discovery, and upper management profiles were redacted anyway.
> After all this time, you know me as well as you know your own heart. See you at the party, Z.
The message bubble disappeared, giving way to the image of their father.
He stood in the field, far closer than Zan liked. His short, curly hair and dark brown eyes, those thick wire-frame glasses taped together on the side, the lens cracked. He turned and smiled. That was new, proof that the bleed was getting worse. They wanted it to get worse, even if they weren’t sure what it would do to them.
Their father said something in Spanish, but they didn’t know enough. Their mother never wanted to teach them, and their father never got the chance. The only words they caught were mija, I love you and beware then something followed by Seven Obelisks. They didn’t need to know the words (they wished so badly they knew the words) to remember what their father used to say in English to them as a kid. It was too much.
Zan ripped their helmet off, chest heaving. Their dad was dead. He died a long time ago, when they were little. His image served a purpose; they’d designed it that way. It wasn’t real, but it had to be real enough. They needed to hold both in their mind**.
“Ignore the bleed. You need this to happen; it’s part of the plan. Ignore the bleed,” they mumbled to no one, to their anxious thoughts, to any hidden cameras their landlord (or Re-Collect) installed. Even as their dad stared at them in the buzzing silence of the apartment, they repeated it over and over. Let anyone listening think Zan was a glass-renderer suffering from intense bleed effects, struggling more and more to tell reality from the false worlds they designed. When a construct was too real, it infected the mind. Eventually, the glass treated the construct as real, too.
This was what Zan was trying to achieve with the bleed. This was why they didn’t dismiss their father, why they let their mind long and ache to see him again. But not too much, not yet. Too fast and it might cause them to have seizures or worse. Besides, they had some last-minute adjustments to make, and an outfit to steal from someone far richer than them. They opened the program with no name, only a logo: a spire morphing into the number 7 on the right side.
A keyboard appeared. “To Access Seven Obelisks, Press Enter,” their father said, monotone.
It was Zan’s signature, their personal touch. Something about the ridiculousness of hitting Enter on a keyboard, of making any construct request that on activation, brought them a tiny bit of joy. They couldn’t help adding it.
They hit Enter.
“Run bleed calculations for Seven Obelisks.”
“Total infection estimated for thirty-six hours, forty-three seconds.” Their father’s voice warped as he said the time.
Zan really hoped this wasn’t going to kill them.
• • • •
Sweeping was all Zan knew, all they were allowed to do. But they were a bitter, resourceful twenty-year-old and they took glass-rendering courses on the side. Got into bad debt over that. Instead of trying to climb out, they paid someone to rewrite their pronouns. Instead of improving their prospects by professing loyalty to any of the seven corporations, they buried themself in more and more illegal glasswork.
By the time they were thirty, they were pioneering construct usage in ways that eventually filtered out to legal markets. They discovered constructs could be vectors of infection and degradation. Glassware read DNA-inscribed data constantly, to monitor individuals, to generate constructs with varying realism. Even though Zan barely afforded small glass squares, worked off the simplest rigs for ages, they developed constructs that fooled a person—and, in turn, the glass a person used—into processing a construct rather than reality. They became expert at making middle management assholes lose themselves forever the moment they stared into their infected glass.
Once, a particularly awful associate manager had been harassing Zan for months. Mocking them, trying to get them alone. He loved this small award he’d gotten from Re-Collect once. The Astounding Manager Award. It was easy to replicate it, easy to replace it on his desk with an infected construct. Eventually the bleed made him see the trophy everywhere, and then he stopped showing up to work completely.
This was how they met L.
• • • •
The elaborate, obnoxious gala took place at the center of the city, at the top of a tower considered the one true neutral place all corporations could come and convene.
One security guard stood by the elevator in the lobby, which was veined with glass in a show of opulence. Glass-rendered constructs of cosmic nebula dust and glittering constellations danced along the floor, swirling with every attendee’s step. It synced with an individual’s glass to give it a slight floral smell and gentle grit texture as Zan walked through. It was gorgeous and they hated it. There was more glass in this entrance than in Zan’s entire apartment building.
The guard frowned, glaring at the silver rectangle with its shimmering text.
Zan didn’t have time for this. The bleed was getting worse, and they needed to initiate the final countdown before the bleed became viral and got Zan arrested in this lobby. “You mind letting me through? I’d really like to see what’s up there.”
His blue eyes were cold and full of hate. “I should kick you out.”
“You think the bad PR is worth it?”
The guard scowled for so long Zan worried this was it, the plan had failed before it even began. With a resigned sigh, and with an eye to the agitated elite behind Zan, he stood aside and let them into the elevator. It was made of pure glass, with a picturesque view of the city. They let go of the breath they’d been holding as the elevator door shut.
Soon, they’d see L. Soon.
They pulled up the render buried deep in their files, the spire morphing into the number 7 on the right side. It was time.
Zan’s father appeared (he never fully disappeared anymore). He held a keyboard in his hands. Zan reached out and tapped the key. A countdown in the top corner of their vision began speeding down. This was it. Twenty minutes, and then the construct would bleed into Zan’s existence. Twenty minutes left to meet L, kiss her, be with her, infect her.
The rooftop of the skyscraper was tall enough to see all the sectors, but shorter than the seven corporations’ towers. They loomed in the distance no matter which direction Zan turned. They could spin in circles and never escape it.
What caught their attention, after they buried their existential dread, were the actual living plants. A rainy mist settled over the skyline, becoming semiopaque rolling hills glowing with the city’s neon lights. Vibrant greenery burst from every fine wood trellis or marble side panel, droplets of water clinging to their surfaces. None of it was fake or glass-render projections. They cataloged every aspect: the crawling ivy’s leathery leaves, how petrichor from fresh soil had a slight earthen musk rather than the typical rancid sour odor of rain on concrete.
If they succeed tonight, if they weren’t caught and imprisoned for life (or worse), those little details would drastically improve the realism of their constructed foliage. Maybe when this was over, they could build a park construct for L. That much green space was reserved for the wealthy, and Zan was often hired to replicate it to minor degrees. It would be nice, to build something with her after.
• • • •
> Thanks for getting rid of that thorn in my side. Never would’ve thought to construct the award and make it a virus.
Zan stared at the message for two days before replying, “If this is upper management’s attempt to figure out what happened, it’s very transparent.”
> I do have high access credentials. Research level.
“And?”
> Might be useful, don’t you think?
Zan scoffed. “What, you grow a conscience and decide to play renegade?”
> You don’t know shit about me. I clawed my way up here to bring it all down. Lied, killed, betrayed people I cared about—all for a shot at destroying the seven corporations.
“And how do I factor into that?”
L didn’t answer for a week. Then, finally, a message appeared.
> How do I know you won’t sell me out if I tell you more?
“You don’t,” Zan said with a twitch of a smile. “You only have mutually assured destruction if we’re lying to each other, which I think is a great foundation for a clandestine relationship.”
> Is that what this is?
“If that’s what you want,” they answered.
Another long pause. Zan hated how often they checked for new messages over the next hour. Finally, she replied.
> I’m L. I’ve followed in the wake of your viral constructs work for a year now. It’s aggressive, inspired, terrifying. What do you say we work together and do something . . . more with it?
There was something about L that, from the beginning, made Zan want to reach out and take her hand. “I’m listening,” they said, and the two decided to change things forever.
• • • •
Management from every corporation mingled on the spacious overlook, lights dangling from a hard plastic canopy that kept the worst of the rain off everyone. Zan’s outfit matched the crowd. They were unremarkable outside of being the fortunate contestant to win the only ticket ever doled out to anyone lower than upper management. The suit Zan wore wouldn’t turn up stolen until tomorrow. They didn’t wear a shirt underneath the black jacket, a matching gold necklace dangling all the way down to their breasts. It was cold against their skin, which was too warm. The damp, cool air was the only thing keeping them from breaking into notable sweat.
Their father stood by the roof stairwell exit, gone after they blinked. Mija, mija, mija, he said over and over. A rare relic of femininity they embraced, more as a proof of their father’s existence. He said it to them, once. But he wasn’t real now. He wasn’t.
The bleed was getting worse. They had to find L. If they became infectious too soon—
“You must be the Sweeper everyone’s murmuring about,” a woman in a pastel glittering blue dress said. Her dark brown skin glowed a silvery blue in the soft neon. She tilted her head coyly, waiting for an answer. Was it her? Was it finally, really her?
Zan tried to play the part of awe-inspired winner. “Didn’t realize you higher-ups gawked at people like me so much.”
“How fortunate for you. Over seven thousand entrants and you get to stare at these obelisks from the best vantage point in town.” She winked, the right words said, extending her hand. “I’m Luciana, head of Re-Collect Glass-Render and Construct Research.”
“Zan,” they answered, heart beating rapidly from more than just bleed effects.
L, this was L. So it was L for Luciana. She was here. She was real. She was beautiful, and Zan wanted to break themself against her already.
But the two of them had to pretend a little longer. It had to look like an organic first meet, a quick fling, or they’d get flagged too soon. Even though this was much, much more to Zan. Everything, even.
Luciana chuckled at Zan’s delayed handshake and strolled with them until they reached the ivy-covered railing. She leaned against it, staring out into the clouds. “So what else do you do? Sweeping can’t be your whole life.”
“I freelance glass-renders on the side.” They took a step closer to Luciana. “And I think you’re beautiful.”
“Then you’re handsome and resourceful.” She pressed against Zan. “But glass-renders are so abstract. Shouldn’t you be looking to reality? To profits?”
“I suppose I am. That’s what this whole party is about, right? The reality of how these people profit.” Zan wrapped an arm around Luciana’s waist, and her breath on their neck felt like falling. They let themself tumble into the hunger in her smile.
“No, my love. This part is better than reality,” she whispered into their ear.
Zan and Luciana had discussed the first kiss, agreed it had to be public. Zan lingered a moment, looking at her until she gave a subtle nod. Everything after was easy, a release. Zan imagined doing this for years. Her hands reached up the back of Zan’s short hair, twining desperately in their curls. If this was for show, Luciana’s lips against theirs was the most honest performance Zan ever gave.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Zan gasped, parting for air, but did not let go of her waist, didn’t want to stop pressing her against them.
“I know a place.” Luciana looked around. “There’s an office on the floor below I use sometimes when I want assured neutrality. I was getting some work done before the party. Should be empty. Being head of Construct Research has its perks.”
She took Zan’s hand and urged them toward the exit. Their father wasn’t there. The countdown was up. Zan couldn’t stop touching Luciana, her hips, her hand squeezing theirs. It was everything they dreamed for years. Zan noticed all the glances their way. The kissing was a triumph, their onlookers whispering behind champagne flutes or fans or perfectly manicured hands. Look at the Sweeper, they were likely saying, of course their type would so openly try to scramble up the ranks by sleeping with upper management.
None of them knew Zan wasn’t trying to climb up to meet them. Zan was the hammer, mid-swing towards glass.
• • • •
A year into their scheming, Zan and L ran into a problem. Zan poured themself into puzzling out how to make their construct infectious without being detected. Both agreed a quarterly party was the best chance at fulfilling the plan, at taking down the corporations. But the virus needed to bleed into the person who initially ran the construct code, and bleed was difficult to achieve on purpose. It meant the mind wasn’t distinguishing reality from rendered fiction. It required subtlety, attention to detail.
“The Project” was too impersonal, too boring, typical. It held no real visual, nothing for the viral code to hold to. A good glass-render relied on a person’s perception of the object. The construct had to cut. It had to matter, like that manager’s award. They looked out at the cityscape that served as a faux window outlook in their rusty apartment, the seven towers omnipresent.
The thought struck them and they gasped, pulling up an encrypted message bubble to Luciana. “When I was little, my dad used to say, mija, I love you, beware the greed of the Seven Obelisks. It was his name for the seven corporations. Their towers looked like evil obelisks in the distance, always sneering down at us.”
> You want to name it Seven Obelisks?
“Yes, that’s brilliant, but no, it has to be more than a name. I want to make it in my father’s image. And it has to be me that activates the virus and smuggles the construct in. My desire to see him again would cause bleed within a couple days, if even.”
A long pause. Zan worried they scared Luciana away. With fifteen seconds to spare before they had to end the connection, more text appeared.
> Are you sure? The bleed . . .
“Will hopefully go away once the virus hops into the glassware. Or put me in a coma, I’m not entirely sure—but it has to bleed. Let me kill them with it.”
> Us. Let us kill them with it. Fine. Seven Obelisks it is.
“You don’t have to see this through with me, you know. You can just open a terminal somewhere and let me do everything. If I fail, or if the bleed I infect you with is too strong—”
> Fuck off with the lone hero routine, Z. You’re worth more than that. I’ll get you access to high-level glass. You infect me, I infect higher level corporate glassware with my credentials. We started this together, we’ll see it through together. I’m not leaving.
• • • •
The entire office was transparent glass. Muffled music from the party above echoed through the ceiling. The desk, the strange opaque swirling art piece in the corner, even the floor. All impossibly expensive. All ridiculously fragile.
Their frustrated grumbling at corporate extravagance evolved into a groan when Luciana began kissing them in earnest. This part was still necessary, touching was how it infected, but the kissing was entirely selfish. Zan was infecting her with Seven Obelisks, pouring it into her as desperately as they wanted to pour themself. Her heels clacked against glass as Zan ran a hand down the back of her thigh, lifting her halfway against the desk. The gaudy thing jostled, screeching, and left a long gash in the floor.
Zan ignored it, ignored the alert Luciana flagged and cleared before kissing them again. A single, elaborately carved glasstop ran across the entire surface of the desk, still on from Luciana working before the party. This was the real reason Luciana picked this room for her clandestine, acceptably scandalous hookup: high priority upper management access, with back doors to nearly everything in the city.
“You think that’s enough?” Luciana murmured into their ear.
Zan didn’t think so, didn’t ever want to stop kissing her. Then remembered she meant the infection, the bleed. “Do you see him?”
“Yes, but I’m ignoring him. You are all I want to see right now.”
“I’m sorry, I know there were probably better ways to get the virus in. I don’t actually know if the bleed isn’t permanent. He should leave, but he might not and I—” It wasn’t fair. None of this was right, and why did Zan and Luciana and countless others have to bleed while people upstairs laughed in the misty evening as if nothing underneath mattered? They hated it, they hated it so—
“Hey, Z?” Luciana gently tilted their chin down. “Stay with me. I want this, I want you.”
Everything became a blur of sensation. Zan moaned as Luciana kissed down their neck. Luciana’s hand shifted backward, propping herself up onto the desk.
That was all it took, since Luciana opened access before she was infected. Seven Obelisks transferred into everything. Zan watched their father dissolve, saw Luciana breathe a sigh of relief and knew he had left her too.
Seven Obelisks would project onto every upper management and glass, the seven CEOs included. Zan designed it to target only higher management credentials. All of them would be trapped in a construct so real their brains wouldn’t distinguish the difference. Within minutes they would all see To Access Seven Obelisks, Press Enter but would blink it away, thinking it a glitch, while the ghost of Zan’s father captured them, giving them infinite constructs of a false reality. They would slump over and stop moving, stop taking and taking and taking.
The music faded above, along with the sounds of conversation.
“Did we do it?” Luciana asked.
“I think so.”
Luciana looked at Zan, grinning, breaths heaving. “What now?”
“We had a whole script, didn’t we?” They ran their thumb over her lips. “Don’t stop now.”
And they didn’t stop. Even as the spire with a seven logo glitched onto every glass in the grandiose office, even as the neon lights flickered in the distance. Even as they changed the future forever, they didn’t stop.
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