Puzzles/HalesStory

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[edit] Puzzle

[edit] Hale's Story

(Solved)

Tuesday, August 19 - After Hale was voted to receive the next injection, his results became available.
In his dossier was placed the lab results of his injection.

--Transcript--

Hale is labeled as "P.A. SUBJECT #849324LF" with "PEL# cp55792a"
Attempting to GET file CP55792A returns a folder list of additional document numbers:

Name:
Hale, Nathan

Service No.
849324lf

PEL:
cp55792a0
cp55792a1
cp55792a2
cp55792a3
cp55792a4

Subsequently, GETing each of those files leads to one text document and four image documents:

CP55792A0 is the text document reading:

Due to the existence of  non-government issued ordinance-related materiel in this
soldier’s personal effects, along with the present heightened security issues, the item
in question has been forwarded to WDABL for further analysis.

Forwarding Ref: WD894846BL

this leads to the file WD894846BL, concerning the history behind the bullet in Hale's personal effects, but it provides no direct leads.

The remaining files, CP55792A1, CP55792A2, CP55792A3, CP55792A4, are images:

CP55792A1

CP55792A2

CP55792A3

CP55792A4

CP55792A4 has a new lead: an associated document stamp leading to file RF992388LS, an audio document (direct link 2.2MB MP3) and the primary puzzle for the week.

The audio, apparently being broadcasted from an unidentified location, consists of a series of electronic beeps of various tones.

[edit] Solution

(as described by thebruce)

First, download the RF992388LS mp3 file
note "1200hz (Duplo)" in the MP3's ID3 title tag
open the sound file using a spectrogram program, and get an image of the audio from start to finish. (I personally prefer Sonic Visualiser for spectrogram analysis)
note the two layers of extremely long strings of dots and dashes through the sound file - these are not morse codes!
1200hz is the approximate frequency of the main signal in the sound, but the signal does drop to about 800hz about a third of the way through, before returning to the original level - but that's not important to the solve.

notice that every 3 (in some cases 2) sets of 2x3 blocks, ends with its top row of 3 being empty
following the idea of 'duplo' (duplex, or essentially doubled, stacked), place each block on top of the previous one
in whichever order you want to do it - just make sure at the end you flip the entire string vertically - the text is mirrored if the map y axis is low to high frequency (consequently, if the spectrogram frequency was mapped from top to bottom, flipping wouldn't be necessary to correctly orient the text)
so, each 'letter' is comprised of 3 (or in some cases 2) sets of 2x3 blocks. once correctly grouped and the letter/number determined, throughout the entire sound file, you get the resulting message:

..............CQ CQ CQ CQ SRPARU9 SRPARU9 SRPARU9 DE SRPARU9 SRPARU9 SRPARU9 DE SRPARU9 SRPARU9 SRPARU9 SRPANETHQ SRPANETHQ SRPANETHQ PSA KKK ITEM RETRIEVED, PHOTOGRAPHED AND REPLACED WITHOUT SUBJECT'S KNOWLEDGE. ALL APPEARS IDENTICAL TO AS DETAILED IN DM177532 SOURCE OF ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT UNIDENTIFIED. WILL CONTINUED SURVEILLANCE. SRPARU9 ---OLT..............

Continuing, this leads to the file DM177532, a russian transcript. It contains no leads, but following previous naming conventions, the file DM177533 can be downloaded. There is no DM177534, but in this instance, there is a fle DM177531, and and file DM177530

DM177532

DM177533

DM177531

DM177530

DM177530 is a classified photo of (Research Station Genesis?). This is the location of the next Document Control Number. In the upper center is the stamp: