What do you mean by client?
The way I see it, we were meant to find this. First BMRF.us changes to Black Mesa Research Facility website, which wasn’t the case since early days of ARG, (correct me if I’m wrong) and changes phone number to something that is valid, and then terminal.BMRF is working again, with different text, telling us to “PLEASE CONTACT IT DEPARTMENT: EXT 12”. Too much coincidences if you ask me.
But again, it’s just my 2 cents, you could be right.
What I meant was it’s a way for the owner of the telephone number to “sign in” to the system and set it up or perform maintenance, etc. etc. Therefore, I thought it was unimportant.
I forgot about the “EXT 12” portion of that, however. It could therefore be extremely important!
EDIT: Found something new!
If you type “*21” during the message, it plays some kind of German speech (it may not be German, but that’s what it sounds like to me since I can’t make it out) and a weird sound effect. Kind of sounds like an airplane in the background. This is definitely something new that we haven’t seen before! I’m going to try and dissect the short clip to see if I can figure out what it is, what its origin is, and if there’s anything hidden!
It sounds kind of like those hidden image sound files, where putting it through a visualizer will create an image. Going to try it now.
Hmmmm . . . the resulting spectrogram results appear as though it may say “LIE” in the part of the message that has the squealing sounds:
[attach=5045,none,718][/attach]
I’m also trying to work with slowing it down and whatnot, and it almost sounds like the first part is “Get out” or “Get down”–also, there is an underlying flute-like sound throughout the recording before the high-pitched squealing at the end. Are there other ways we can analyze this? I’m thinking the spectrogram “LIE” at the end may just signify that this message is part of the ARG, and that the first part is actually the part we want to dissect.
Okay, it seems that the best way to tell what the person is saying is to slow it down to 4X slower speed–I can almost make out some words in a male voice that kind of sounds like one of the scientists. I can make out “Get out” said twice, and something like “I’d give anything” or “I didn’t do anything”. Other than that, it’s completely up in the air what he’s saying. I’m just guessing based on the intonations of the voice and the fragments I can hear clearly.
Just a tip, I suggest using Audacity to mess with the tempo and noise reduction, and SonicVisualizer for the spectrogram. There is definitely something hidden there. When I ran it through a few things on Audacity, it definitely sounds like one of the scientists. It could also be the one screaming during the resonance cascade.
Are you sure it’s something else other than scientists yelling at resonant cascade? Because when I try *21 (even some other random numbers, tried it with *75, *41, *81 ect.), I get scientists yelling, then it hangs up. I think this is wrong input type of stuff, since it’s not only for *21, but also for some random numbers, and they even say “Shutting down…”.
I too am hearing what @Jacky described (the scientist yelling “Shutting down! …”). It sounds similar to a sequence in the launch trailer, starting at time index 01:16.
NEW DEVELOPMENT: I just made another call and got what sounded like morse code, and then it would fade back into the EAS message. Unfortunately, I wasn’t recording, I’ll try again…
So as I’m looking for password, I came across this on Wikia. Now, I know this has been ruled out from ARG as easter egg, but take a closer look at the picture. There is a window saying "This is a terminal test", which could be terminal, as in terminal.BMRF, then there is phone dialer, and lastly, error message saying "The Windows password you typed is incorrect.". I might be just going crazy, but there might be a link between recently discovered phone number, and that picture/last part of that Wikia section (Dr. Sezen’s computer monitor).
Very Interesting development! Unfortunately I cannot reach the number from here (Germany) - I actually tried this morning, adding the predial of the US (+1). Do you think you can post the Audiofile you described as “sounding german” here? I can have a listen and see if there is something to it.
You need to use 001, not +1, since it requires 3 digits. But that is not free, since you are calling from outside US. Use Skype, which is free, and you don’t need Skype Credits, since this is toll free number.
I know it’s 001, but thanks for clearing that up :thumbup: I just wrote it the way it usually is written. But for some reason I still couldn’t reach the number.
Really? That’s odd, I could have called it from landline in Croatia, but it warned me that the call will charged by something federal (I hanged up the phone at that point). By the way, i dialed 001 800 786-1410, and it worked.
ok, I may try it again later. I tried to call from my mobile phone. I think I dialed 001 1 800 786-1410, so that may have been a mistake. Thx!
EDIT: I just tried it right now via skype and it worked, thanks again, Jacky!
God this emergency message is giving me the creeps. I heard this kind of morse code, as well. Sounded like telephone buttons beeing pressed. If it was morse code, I found the speed of transmission pretty quick. I mean the space between the “clicks”. then again, I really cannot transscript morse. Might really be a code!
I haven’t heard anything that sounded german, though. They must have changed the message recently.
EDIT 2: I called again and now the code was gone. I dialed *21 and heard the “Shut it down!” scientists. It was pretty clear that they were the scientists from AM.
After that I called again, and the morse code was back. I think the morse code is transmitted by chance. Listening toit more often, it really sounds like a morse code! Like some scientists from within the BMRF trixing to send some distress call to the outside.
EDIT 3: Dialling *12 (instead of *21) triggered an automated voice saying: “Password…Login incorrect. Please enter your password, followed by the pound-key” Anybody got an idea, what the password could be?
Ok, I’ve made a recording of the part that sounds like morse code: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rjs74WOPM3NGdzQW92ZlFGdkU/view?usp=sharing
From the frequencies (770 Hz and 1633 Hz) it looks like someone is sending morse code by pressing the B key on a DTMF keypad.
EDIT: I’m not so sure this is morse code after all. I can’t make any sense of it. The duration of the pauses between the beeps seem to be roughly the same throughout the transmission. If it were morse code, then there would be longer pauses separating the letters. This must be something else.
Good job there @Flavrans, I really didn’t hear morse there =O .
I have uploaded both calls, in WAV format, one with full call, and one with calling ext 12.
Full call, it repeats itself at the end (note: The stutter part isn’t because of my internet, it is intended by looks of it. Also, at around 0:12, you can hear morse code, in really high frequency)
Calling EXT 12 (note: It asks for login twice, but if you are writing ANY numbers, it will listen to them, until you press # (as end password), after which will tell you if password if correct/incorrect. After you enter wrong password twice, or it warns you that password you entered is wrong (twice), it will hang up.)
EDIT: Gonna keep updating this post
Status update: I started translating morse with Audacity, and main problem is that i cant figure out where pause is. Anyway, by the looks of it, first symbol could be a letter or a number, but a second symbol is a number. I will assume all symbols are numbers, because that would give us a password for EXT12. Bad idea, tried something else in the end.
EDIT:
I finished translating and here it is:
-…–.-…-…—…-.- -.-.-…-.-…-…-.-.[/size]…-.-.----[/size]
I was listening in Audacity and wrote down symbols, but there are few problems with this:
EDIT:
This should be rather helpful. Basically, it takes first 5(not sure) symbols, and prints out every word or letter that starts with them. You then choose word you think could be related, and after a while, you get full message.
Again, I probably screwed up some symbols, so this might not work as well, but we might get closer.
EDIT: I don’t think I’ve made much progress (if any) with morse code, because it doesn’t even look like morse anymore. Halfway through decoding, and the message I have is: tsdaeidamvwek. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, since only word in there is dam.
Yes, I’m having the same problem. I just edited my previous post where I mention this.
About the possible Morse code, i think i encountered it yesterday when i was playing with the number and noticed some strange sound that sounded like buttons being pressed.
I have another idea.
This got me thinking. I read somewhere, not sure where, that telephones (when you need to press a button to do something) don’t actually take signal that is coming from button, but rather the noise that button makes. Basically, when you press 1, noise will be different of that when you press 2 for example. So what if that code isn’t morse, but rather a series of numbers a telephone creates?
Again, I can’t remember where I saw that, nor if it is true or not, but it’s just an idea I had.
When you press a key on a telephone, it produces a sound that is a mixture of two tones, one lower frequency tone and one higher frequency tone. There are four lower frequency tones and four higher frequency tones. The combination of the two tones used determines which key signal is being sent. This is what is called Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF).
The thing is, from what I could see, all the sound pulses in the recording consists of the same two frequencies, 770 Hz and 1633 Hz. This corresponds to not a number 0-9, * or #, but the special key B, which is one of four special keys A, B, C and D. These aren’t found on regular telephone keypads.
EDIT: If we are supposed to input something, then maybe this is a hint that we need to use the ABCD keys. I found a web-based DTMF tone generator here: https://pbxbook.com/other/dtmftone.html
Well, we can finally input a password somewhere, so if anyone has any idea how, or what the password may be, write it up here. I mean, we can’t be stuck again, and we can find a way to solve this.
Few ideas I had:
EDIT:
Which raises a question. Why B? I mean, there must be specific reason to use B, and not A, C, or even some number.
EDIT:
Might be relevant:
One of the purposes those keys had were priority keys. There was this military telephone network, called Autovon. It used same keys 0-9, # and *, but it didn’t use A, B, C, D, but rather FO (Flash Override), F (Flash), I (Immediate) and P (Priority) respectively. When you were dialing a number, if you didn’t press any of the keys, number dialed would be standard (no special priority), but if you were to, say pres P and then dialed a number, that number would have priority over standard one. I would have priority over P, F over I, and FO, (which only president could use) had highest priority and dropped every other call, so president could get his word through no matter what.
Now, special key B is same frequency as F (2nd highest priority, just under FO).
Not sure if it’s related or not to our problem though.
I listened to the messages again today, and I’m wondering if the message parts I’m getting are played faster or something. For instance, you guys are able to hear clearly that the “*21” message is the scientists from AM, but to me it is played way too quickly:
Now that you’ve said that, I can of course hear the “shutting down,” but I’m only interpreting it that way because you guys have noted it. Do you get the squealing sound at the end?
Whatever the matter, I think the “LIE” message in the spectrogram is a clear sign that the message is important–especially because the left part of the “L” begins exactly where the squealing noise starts.
EDIT:
Okay, so assuming nothing is hidden within the scientist message in and of itself, how should we interpret it? Using the * and two-digit number combination doesn’t seem to always work–I tried “*45” and “*81” like Jacky noted above, and it only worked maybe 1/3 of the time. However, “*21” always seems to work for me.
Aside from that, why should the AM scientists coincide with the “LIE”? Is this another reference to the “21 into 1” message in the sense that Storm is referring to the EP-0021 sample (even though it never actually went into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer)?
Ello
I tried playing around with the postal address. It looked weird to me because we don’t add a street name to our P.O. Box addresses here in South Africa.
The first hit on google when you search “NM 87545” is the Los Alamos National lab. Don’t know if this means anything.
I’ll dig around on google maps etc, maybe something interesting pops up.
Yes, your version sounds distorted and plays back way too quickly.
What I’m getting sounds identical to what’s in the Steam launch trailer towards the end of the video (starts at 1:16).
EDIT:
It’s kind of curious and odd that these two star code sequences seem to be working consistently most, if not all, of the time:
*21 - Plays back shutdown message.
*12 - Goes to password prompt.
EDIT2:
Just an idea about the morse like code: I’m wondering if it could be some kind of pulse-width modulation signal (PWM). For example, if we can map the pulse widths to numbers 0, 1, 2 and 3, then we’ll have a sequence of base 4 numbers that can be converted to binary or decimal.
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
