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Cargo Manifest Audit
The launch window opens in twenty minutes and the cargo bay is, to use the technical term, a disaster. Crates of freeze-dried rations, antimatter containment cells, spare drone parts, and seventeen identical boxes labelled "definitely not contraband" all need accounting for before the ship can be cleared to fly. The inventory computer took one look at the pile and crashed, which the chief engineer insists is a coincidence, and which the computer has notably declined to confirm.
That leaves you, a clipboard, and mental arithmetic at a pace the launch window will not renegotiate. Speed matters far more than elegance. The dock hands who do this every morning say to grab the easy tallies first and bank them while the clock is still feeling generous, and to break the ugly sums into friendly pieces, since seven crates of fourteen is really just seven tens and seven fours wearing a trench coat.
The seventeen boxes are new, in the sense that yesterday there were sixteen of them. Nobody will say whose they are. The xenobiologist was seen near the loading ramp at midnight, whistling, which she never does.
Count fast and count honestly. Every number you get right is another box safely aboard; every one you fumble becomes the customs officer's problem this evening, and the customs officer has a long memory and a longer form. Down the corridor the reactor is already warming up, and it does not like to be kept waiting either.
How to play
- You have 60 seconds. The clock is not your friend.
- Type your answer using the number pad and press OK to submit.
- Each correct answer is worth 100 points.
- Difficulty scales up with each correct answer, and mercifully back down with each wrong one.
- Use the +/- button for negative answers.