24.

November 18, 1998 - Santa Barbara, CA.

Lois’s retrieval of the artifact in the mid 60’s was only half the puzzle. It was clearly made to communicate some kind of message across time…but what the message is, from where, and to whom….remains to be deciphered. The strange device beeps a series of tones which appear to change in response to the placement of its 8 “pegs.” Last week, one of our own was able to match the placement of said pegs with the aforementioned tone, resulting in a state change of the machine. After a moment of silence, the machine spoke yet another series of sounds, this time in Morse Code. Thanks to the key placed on its mounting plate, we were able to translate those tones into characters…

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December 27, 1998 - Bakersfield, CA.

…though many doubt theory “F.” Some have also postulated that the strange “24” blazoned on the surface is in reference to how many characters there are to this message. Our best and brightest have only managed to match 7 character-tones before they failed and the apparatus reset itself. Unable to test this theory, the existence of “24” remains a mystery…

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February 22, 2003 - Aurora, NE.

…until the end. In other news, new recruits appear to have turned Item 24 into some sort of game. After the department deemed deciphering it a lost cause 2 years ago, the folks in B76 stashed it away in the Vault. I don’t know what happened between now and then because it (and those iconic beeps) are back in the hands of our unit again. I was meaning to ask you, but did you want to give this thing a shot? They’ve gotten all the way to …

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August 18, 2003 - Aurora, NE.

Who would have guessed it. They finally managed to crack the darned thing. Good to know it actually…

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…try to keep the…

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…needed to know that there would…

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