I'm sorry it's taken me a couple days to get back with you guys. I'm just really... overwhelmed right now, like I can't explain it. Sorry, but this is gonna be long.
You know those magical stories your read about when you're a kid? About dragons, monsters, magical swords, wizards... time travel? You just take for granted that the things that you can't see happening aren't real. Of course dragons aren't real because people would have seen them and talked about them.
But how much do you REALLY know? Have you been everywhere in the world? Can you swear 100% that there are absolutely NO dragons out there? No, you can't. Because you haven't BEEN everywhere. The reason we believe that there are no dragons is because we trust other people. We believe the people that HAVE been to those places. We believe the scientists and historians that say that dragons don't exist. But what if they were wrong too?
I feel like I'm starting to sound like Carl.
Let me backtrack a bit and explain what's going on in my head here.
Last update, you guys saw that Holdan and Joseph had discovered that burning the wires reshaped them into letters. Holdan suggested that the letters went together in a particular order to make the password to my Dad's CD.
They were right.
Eric and Janice stayed up late rearranging the letters and Janice realized that the letters, backwards, spelled ELEVENELVES. The password got us all into the folder, but once inside, we found a "Documents" folder, with six more password-protected folders, and then more folders full of hundreds of useless files with a .bin extension.
The next morning, Liam's Facebook status suddenly updated to, "73462 2482647275.png SATOR AREPO." He wasn't the one that posted the status though, so we knew it must have been the person that keeps sending us these messages. 73462 was the name of a folder in the files, and 2482647275.bin was one of the files. Only this said .png. So when we changed the file extension, we can see that the file is actually an image.
Holdan realized that SATOR AREPO was a hint at something called a Sator Square. According to Wikipedia, "The Sator Square is a word square containing a Latin palindrome featuring the words SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS written in a square so that they may be read top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, left-to-right, and right-to-left. "
The image in the files, then, must be a Sator Square. Janice worked with the letter bank and the clues from the images to come up with the solution:
MAD
ATA
DAM
Or, mad at a dam. Then she realized that one of the locked folders in the Documents folder was titled, "Hoover", so she tried using madatadam as the password. And it worked!
Here's Janice's screenshot, which she shared on Facebook.
The second thing is a journal article written by my dad. He actually talked about me in it, saying I was almost two.
Then Janice found this image... 484269301.bin in 46842:
And she solved it too, but didn't post the answer. She did, however, post the contents that are inside.
This is a court summons... or something like it. Only it's not from the government exactly, it's from the "TTG" or "The Guild". And it accuses my dad of breaking a bunch of "Guild Charter" rules and it sounds serious.
It's also dated two days before my dad died.
Janice then opened a third folder when she discovered this image 72746542.bin in 19873:
She solved it as:
MAPS
ATOP
POTA
SPAM
And of course mapsatoppotaspam got us into the "Canned" folder.
And... for the first time... we get a glimpse at C.P! It looks like he really was a real person... a person that knew my dad, that obviously worked with him. And they were friends.
Only it looks like C.P.'s scared of getting in trouble.
Geez... some guy named "James" is referenced in the first folder, where Dad says "I'll end up like James if I don't keep my mouth shut." Then my Dad gets summoned to court two days before he dies. And there's C.P. in this folder, afraid of breaking the Guild Charter.
Do you think C.P. is actually trying to get our help or something? Like we're supposed to save him from the same fate as James and Dad?
Janice found more images that seem to match the titles of the rest of the locked folders. We desperately need your help to solve them.
321425794.bin in 53908 appears to go to the Judge folder:
752468934.bin in 98731 appears to go to the Sistine folder (holy crap that looks hard):
And 1412462002.bin in 68492 appears to go to the Honda folder (gah... even harder):
Omg. They obviously just get harder as they go.
I have been really weirded out the past couple days and just keep reading the documents over and over. I actually printed them off and keep them with me all the time so I can constantly reread them. I've been taking notes all over them and here are some things I've found:
1. The seal on two of them is a sphinx, and it matches the sphinx from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. This kinda makes sense because they use the term "Time Traveller" which is how it's spelled in the book, even though it's usually spelled Traveler.
2. Something bad happened to James... Dad was called to court two days before he died... C.P. is scared of breaking the rules. Connection?
3. TTG, The Guild, and Time Traveller's Guild -> all the same group
4. Merz und Mahler - definitely sounds like German. I seem to recall that a lot of Germans populated Cincinnati in the early days.
Also... I guess the most obvious thing to think is what Janice commented on my wall:
I know that this is really the only logical idea! I just... CAN'T seem to grasp the idea that my dad was a time traveller... or that time travel itself is even possible. But what did we say about dragons? We only believe it doesn't exist because we've never seen it ourselves and trust the rest of the world that says it's not possible.
But what if they're wrong?
I feel like I'm being sucked into a strange movie. I just really hope there's a happy ending... which I'm afraid might not happen, after the incident at Devou.
Which, speaking of... now I'm wondering why somebody attacked me. Who could it have been? Not C.P, right? Because he wants my help?
I don't know what to think. Please help. :(
~^~@ Jennie