When the FunCar stopped at Gabby's house, Zaela gave her a hug before she went in. Gabby walked up her manicured lawn as slowly as possible and stopped when her foot hit the front porch.
She glanced back at the FunCar speeding away from her house, and then remembered that she hadn't checked her LifeScore in hours. She couldn't recall a time that'd she'd gone that long without looking at it.
Her LifeScore waited at the periphery of her vision as a dull gray number indicating no change in the last few hours. Normally it was a healthy green.
Gabby was about to check and see how she ranked versus the rest of her class, when the front door opened.
Standing just inside, still wearing his business skin, her father uncrossed his arms and walked inside, clearly indicating that she should follow.
Already her hands had begun to shake again and her face had numbed. Her father had put a major debuff on her. Gabby took a deep breath and went inside.
Chapter Four
Their one story ranch normally felt like a grand palace, ten times larger than the space it actually occupied. Walls, covered in fantastic landscapes, turned the rooms into wide living spaces.
Her mother constantly changed the scenes so one day Gabby might walk into a castle entryway, and the next it would be a room on the moon.
Today the living room was nothing more than the shell of its normal, unaugmented self, only modified enough to cover the dust on the cabinets. Her parents sat on the couch and a chair had been strategically placed in the center of the room.
Her father ran his hand through his dark hair and motioned for Gabby to sit in the chair. His grim face reminded her of a stern statue.
Gabby clasped her hands behind her back to hide the shaking. Though her lips and face were numb, she willed them to make words.
"So what did the LGIE tell you?"
Her mother offered a half-hearted smile. "Honey. We want to help you. We know you didn't do anything, but some fringe element is messing with your files and the LGIE need to know what they're doing." She propped up her smile a little higher. "The LGIE is here to protect the sanctity of our system."
Gabby squeezed her hands together. "But those are my files. I don't want some weirdos snooping through them just because someone else was looking at them."
"These Frags are not just looking at them," her father said. "They've modified something and the authorities need to know what."
Gabby stomped her foot. If she ever got to meet these Frags, she'd punch them in the face, first thing, for messing up her life.
"So what if they've modified something? They're mine. I can take care of myself," Gabby huffed. "It's bad enough the LGIE tracks our TPS's."
Her father's eyebrows went up in surprise. "You know about that?"
"Yeah, Administrator Bracket told me. Was trying to give me a compliment about my high TPS scores," said Gabby.
"Get used to knowing your TPS, Gabby. We've been using thoughts per second metrics from some years now, ever since Western Brazil started passing us," her father explained.
"But that's not right! They shouldn't get to monitor your thoughts."
Her father shook his head. "They can't see your thoughts. They only use the capabilities of the neural actuator to see how fast you're thinking. In both raw brainpower and the speed at which you activate the neural activator."
Gabby paced. "It's still not right. It's like the LGIE is—" She remembered the books she had in her backpack and what Blair had said. "—the Stasi. Why do they even need to track your TPS?"
Her father's face betrayed an uncharacteristic level of worry. He normally kept his stoic, man-of-the-house face for them to see. It didn't help he had minimalistic skins on.
"Just gaming for new strategy developments isn't cutting it anymore. It's not fast enough. We're not always matching the right teams together and we're getting beat on the global market." Her father put his hand to his forehead, pushing his thinning hair backwards.
"The Brazilians pioneered thoughts per second as a way to find your best performers," her father continued. "They test TPS versus task oriented jobs and then decide how to fit the teams together. Low TPS scores are dropped to lower rank companies."
"That's okay, dad. You've always been at the top of the company rankings. I'm sure this doesn't change anything," Gabby consoled her father.
"The problem is the games are getting harder and faster. Harriet and Sam got dropped from the company for low TPS scores just last week. Sam's house was empty when I went by on the way home." Her father stood and put both hands on his head.
"That's why we need you to cooperate," he said. "So nothing affects your LifeScore and your chances to get into University. You've worked so hard, sweetie."
Gabby still couldn't believe what they were saying. They wanted her to give up her personal information. They might as well be sending her off to get strip searched.
"You're not listening," Gabby said. "They are my files. I get to decide if I'm worried about it. Letting me know the Frags are messing with them is all they should be doing."
"Honey," her mother said. "I don't think you understand the level of danger there is with these Frags 'messing with your files.'"
Her parents shared a concerned look. Her mother leaned over and whispered into her father's ear. He thought for a moment and then nodded. Gabby didn't like their quiet conspiring.
"Back a few decades," her father began. "A group sympathetic to the Southlands started infiltrating a large group of children's files."
Her mother grabbed her father's hand and squeezed it. Something about their sudden change in mannerisms creeped Gabby out.
"Through subtle changes in their surroundings they were able to brainwash a large group of kids into joining a Southlands rally. The infiltrators also modified LifeScores to interfere with our competitive edge," he said.
Gabby shook her head. It was like a madness debuff had been cast on her parents. She barely knew what they were talking about, even worse than normal.
"Kids can't be brainwashed just because they see some crap on their eye-screens. Otherwise, wouldn't all that advertising they're constantly assaulting us with, work?" said Gabby.
Her father stood up and pointed at her. "This is not a joking matter, Gabriella. This infiltration was a serious assault to the freedoms we hold dear in the GSA. If these Frags have any nefarious intentions, the protectors of the GSA need to know."
"The LGIE probably made up all that brainwashing crap back then to convince you all to give them power," spat Gabby. She couldn't believe her parents weren't going to back her.
"Have you been wasting your time studying history again, Gabby? You should be focusing on your LifeScore and your games. Not worthless history lessons," said her mother. "If that's what you're learning at the Library Museum, we might have to ask you not to go there anymore."
None of this was making any sense to Gabby. She half-thought that maybe the Frags had infiltrated her files and were making it seem like everyone around her had gone crazy.
If she let the LGIE into her files, they might see that she'd been hacking school files and ban her from University. If she didn't let them in, then she would probably get banned, too. She'd been grinding at her LifeScore since before she could remember, burning through the ranks, trying to stay at the top so she could keep progressing and making sure Zaela was there, as well. Now all that work would be for nothing.
She was so angry that her hands had stopped shaking. She looked up to see both her parents standing, staring at her with their arms crossed.
Gabby made her choice. It was the one that would give her a little room to maneuver. She couldn't let them in.
"Mom. Dad." She looked at each of them in turn, trying to calm her voice so it wouldn't break and sound immature.
"I think those files are my choice. It's my life. But I also know that you are my legal guardians and can give those files up whether I want you to or not."
Gabby paused, taking a deep brea
th. "I'm—" She almost said begging, but realized she needed to show more strength. "—informing you that I do not wish my files to be exposed to the LGIE and if you give them permission, I will sabotage my LifeScore so I lose rank and not make University."
Her parent's eyes widened, until she thought they might fall out. Their jaws followed closely behind. She'd totally mezzed them, and they'd dropped agro on her, probably wondering if she'd gone crazy or not.
Gabby assumed behind their quiet stares, her parents were busy mind-texting, determining the next course of action.
Her hands took to shaking again while she waited. She had no intention of giving up all her hard work, but she hoped it was enough of a bluff to keep her parents from acting on her behalf.
When the mez wore off, her parents finally spoke up in one of those dual speaking modes, where they each finished each other's sentences and overlapped so much it was hard to actually tell who was speaking.
"Honey. Sweetie," said her parents. "We know you're under a lot of stress with your Final Raid next week. You've been working so hard, for so long, and maybe this is getting to you."
The parent duality paused, and Gabby realized then how much they were caricatures of parents in their shiny skins, buffed to a fine glow. She wondered why she'd never seen this before.
"So we're going to defer this decision until after the Final Raid. We don't want this to interfere with your LifeScore anymore than it already is." Her parents cast the sad-face, and nodded.
Gabby sighed. She hadn't won, but she hadn't lost, either. Her parents had gamed their way out of making the decision until they could find a better strategy. She could do the same. A week would give her enough time to figure out what the Frags were doing with her files.
If it were truly nefarious, which Gabby seriously doubted, then she could turn them into the LGIE. And if not, then she'd have the evidence to keep her parents from letting them into her files.
All the while, she needed to keep her LifeScore up. Final Raid was in a week and the schools like to mix things up with new games to test the students' ingenuity. Surprise games were much harder to hack too, so Gabby would have to be on her A-game.
Gabby put on her own smile and gave her parents obligatory hugs.
"Thank you," said Gabby. "I should go up to my room now. I need to get a few more points before the day is over. I would be happy to talk about this again next week."
As Gabby turned to trudge up the stairs, she let her smile fade. She needed to get busy up in her room, but it certainly wasn't grinding a few worthless points. She had to figure out a way to contact the Frags and fast.
Because she knew her parents would take the week to analyze her playback and figure out that she was bluffing. Once they did that, they'd give her files to the LGIE in a heartbeat.
Chapter Five
She'd taken the idea for her room from an old book Blair had shown her once with a golden dragon on the cover. A blonde haired woman rode the dragon and looked triumphant. Gabby had always imagined herself as the woman.
Her wall-scenes made the room appear to be near the entrance of a huge cave. The back half rested on a sand floor, while the front faced the edge of a cliff that disappeared off the mountainside into the crisp and occasionally cloudy air.
When she glanced up, she would often see dragons with tiny riders on them, soaring through the skies, belching flame at airborne parasites. Occasionally, they would land at the mouth of the cave and amble into the chamber behind her, wings tucked and metallic skin gleaming in the torch light.
But today she had no time for fantasies. So she let her room revert to its normal, boring state.
First, Gabby pulled out the two books that Blair had given her. She paged through the titleless book with the owl on the front, learning that it was about some long dead philosopher from a few millennium ago. His big innovation was to ask questions. Gabby shrugged and put it back in the backpack.
The second book was about the Stasi, the secret police in East Germany, a place that she'd never heard of.
She read sections at random. Some of the information was shocking. The Stasi had almost complete control of their population through a blanket of informers. One in six people were informing or watching the others.
A shiver went down Gabby's spine. She could sense the similarities between the Stasi and the LGIE, but not what it meant for her. The LGIE only had better technology. If it weren't for the bleeding edge encryption everyone had access to, they'd probably already be snooping through her stuff.
Which lead her to wonder how the Frags were doing the same. She threw the book onto the bed and called up her 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 to groups of two and then do that one more time to find the heaviest.
The answer using that method would be three. It would work but she was certain that answer was too obvious. She could see the shadowy figure on the other side with his hand above the white balls. He had probably come to the same conclusion. Now it was a race to see if they could figure out how to find the heaviest with only two measurements.
But it didn't make any sense to find the ball with two measurements. Gabby paced around the room, keeping her attention on the shadowy figure in the next room. If he lunged for the balls, she'd be forced to go with her initial solution of three.
The weighing saucers on each chain were wide enough for all the balls. Gabby wondered if she could balance them all onto one pan and let the heaviest one trickle off.
That way seemed ludicrous. Besides the impossible task of holding it so steady that the heaviest would fall, she couldn't be so sure that the difference in weight would be enough to create that drag, and even more so, she wasn't sure the physics model of this particular portion of virtual space would actually oblige her idea.
No. The solution had to be something else. Gabby checked the other room to find the boy standing before the table with his arms crossed.
Gabby crouched down to be eye-level with the eight white balls. She could not detect any differences between them.
Then she stood and examined the scale. It's an on and off switch, she decided. One or zero. Up or down. It would take three weighs to find the answer.
Gamers - Amazon Page 3