Gamers - Amazon Read Online Free PDF Page B

system.
    Radial blooms of light appeared around her like a field of glowing flowers, or a small galaxy frozen in time. Gabby ran diagnostics on everything and couldn’t find a byte out of place.
    Frustrated, she decided she needed to put a message out. The best places were the hacker hangouts. Someone would know how to contact them.
    Gabby swiped her hand and her system files disappeared. She called up the projector, which would send her virtual presence to a far-away real place.
    The transition scene gave her a bit of vertigo, but instantly she was placed into a small room. It was the entryway to The Black Gate, a hacker bar, a place you'd never hear of unless you were supposed to hear about it.
    The physical location changed frequently, it'd never been in the same place twice. A year ago, she'd heard it was perched on one of Jupiter's moons.
    Supposedly, some rich guy had sent a sensor cluster to the Jovian moon so he could hang out in style with his friends. The Black Gate's benefactors had found out and took control of his sensor cluster, partying it up before sending his multi-billion dollar satellite crashing into the moon's surface.
    Getting into the bar hadn't been an easy feat, either. Bits of code required to enter was spread out across the world in different locations. She'd had to steal each section and then reassemble them into a working program so she could access the space and even then she'd had one more barrier to pass, one that she was currently blocked by, standing in the entryway.
    As a mericlusive bar, one couldn't enter unless one proved that they deserved to be there. Wanna-be hackers had to solve a puzzle to enter each and every time they visited the bar.
    Gabby was still new to the scene and had only gotten in once before. She hoped tonight she had the skills to get past the guardian puzzle.
    Before her, in the middle of the empty room, a table with a two-sided scale appeared. The flat saucers on each side, hanging by a bronze chain, reflected an invisible light. Gabby stared at the apparatus and wondered what puzzle she would have to solve.
    To her left, just outside the wall, another shadowy cube formed, exactly the same dimensions as hers. A shadowy male figure in the cube next to hers, turned its head toward her.
    Gabby groaned. In addition to solving the puzzle, she would be racing another low level hacker. She might solve the puzzle but still not gain entrance to the Black Gate.
    When a spotlight formed on top of her, she jumped and held her hand over her face to shield her eyes.
    A cheesy sounding announcer began to speak: "Ladies and gentlemen! We have two runts desiring entrance to the Black Gate!"
    Gabby had the horrible feeling that the whole bar was now watching them. She wished she'd worn an outrageous skin so they wouldn't recognize her if she failed.
    "Are these merely bots or will they succeed?" the announcer continued. "So contestants, tonight's challenge is to find out which puzzle ball weighs more using the scales the least amount of times. When you have completed the task, hit the red button!"
    A big red "TEN" formed above the table and started counting down. Gabby assumed her opponent was seeing the same thing. When the number reached "ZERO," eight white balls formed on the table and the announcer shouted, "GO!"
    Gabby took a deep breath and thought hard if she'd seen this puzzle before. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't rely on memory. The Black Gate puzzles were often twisted versions of the originals. Even if one thought they knew the answer, they were advised to think deeper, lest they be lead into a dreadful trap. They were a community of hackers so they prized creative thinking.
    After running through a couple of scenarios using factors and solving equations, a simple and logical solution came to her, but she hesitated to pick up one of the balls. She could find the heaviest by putting four balls on each side, and then whichever scale tipped more, split those four balls