Dress for the Genre You Want to Be

 

“To Access Seven Obelisks, Press Enter” by V.M. Ayala (Lightspeed, August 2025) https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/to-access-seven-obelisks-press-enter/

My notes on this one say "hot nonbinary hacker brings it all down by corrupting themselves with a memory of their father." 

This short story is probably the sexiest cyberpunk short that I've listened to in a while. Like, not in an about sex way (which this absolutely isn't) but, like, actually hot. 

Our enby protag, Zan, is a lowly tech-worker who, when the story starts, wins the lottery to attend the company's annual gala. We discover as the story progresses, that their "win" was planned as part of a great hack. Zan, we find out, is working in tandem with the mysterious "L," an upper-management mole/corporate traitor and it was L who arranged the invite as part if their heist/hack.

This story also wears the "costume" of cyberpunk very blatantly. This may sound like a complaint or a dis, but it isn't. When I was a co-host on the cyberpunk podcast Mona Lisa Overpod, Ka1iban and I talked a lot about the aesthetics of cyberpunk. There are stories that 100% are cyberpunk in terms of the questions they have, the types of heroes they have, etc.,  that just do not feel like cyberpunk because they don't dress the part. A perfect example of that, to me, is Murderbot Dairies.  We did a whole episode lying out my argument as to why Martha Wells is writing cyberpunk with that series, but conclude, as I agree we had to, that is just isn't, because it doesn't LOOK like cybperpunk.

In "To Access Seven Obelisks, Press Enter," Zan is everything you expect from a cyberpunk protag, including being, in many ways, an undiscovered digital genius. They can create a glass like no one else. "Glass," in this world, is sort of like a simulated reality. I think, and I will be honest I may have misunderstood this, but Zan seems to have cracked the code, as it were, to allow this simulated reality to bleed into our own. If I'm mistaken about this, the bleed is still critical to the hack, in part because it can cause obsessive behaviors that remove someone from the picture, permanently.

If you can't tell, the plot is very plotty in this one and so, having listened to it only, I may be misconstruing critical bits. I'm not sure that much mattered to my enjoyment, though? As I note, the story is hot--the attraction between L and Zan is ultimately the highlight, at least for me? The big revolution is kind of sideline to the question of will they or won't they get together... again, for ME. You should feel free to click the link and check the story out for yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed, particularly, if you're in the mood for cyberpunk!