It was late one November evening at Captain Correa's Villa that I first saw Message 1679. Frank and Carl were pouring over it in earnest. Papers were scattered in every direction, all covered in mysterious patterns and annotations.
"Uh, what in the world is that?" I asked.
Frank gave me a quick sideways grin without actually taking his eyes off the papers in front of him. "It's a message. We received it tonight. 2380 MHz, 10Hz FSK. From the direction of M13. Sound vaguely familiar?"
I didn't have to think about those numbers very long before the penny dropped. But I immediately saw a problem. "M13? Oh, come on now! It hasn't been anywhere near long enough!"
This time it was Carl who replied with a chuckle and said, "No, it hasn't. It's just from the direction of M13. But given the timeframe, we're looking at something just over 17 light years away. Practically next door."
I closed my eyes for a moment, calling up maps in my head. "But that can't be right either. There's nothing that close in Hercules."
They both laughed and Carl said "Yeah, we saw that right away too. And now that we've just about finished decoding this, I'm pretty sure that someone in the lab is just playing a joke. But I don't think it was meant for us; judging by the result, I think you might have been the intended victim and we just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Here, see what you can make of this." And with that he handed me a paper covered with a lengthy string of 1s and 0s.
So I sat down with pencil and paper and began arranging the various bits until a pattern jumped out at me, which didn't take very long at all. After all, it was designed to be decoded with nothing more than the message itself; external tools were not required for the original, and the same was apparently true for this "reply". So it was only minutes before I too began to chuckle as the numbers began to appear.
"Well gentlemen," I said as I stood up, "I guess you'll have to excuse me. Apparently I have an appointment with some LGM; or maybe just a LNL. I'll see you both later."
Message 1679
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If you decode the entire message, you'll know pretty much all you need to know to find the cache. There's a $10 Tim Horton's card for the FTF, and finder's cards for the first ten finders. There's even some Lego in there for anyone who might be into that! And if you've decoded the message properly, you should know it. But to avoid sending you a wild goose chase, you can check your message decoding skills at Geochecker.com.