[inhumanly neat print]

[emotionl4arobot.livejournal.com]

Disregarding other events last night, does this message mean anything to anyone? Beyond the obvious, of course. It was played before the... other effects manifested, so there's a possibility they're linked in some way.

0101010001101000011001010010000001100100011001010110000101100100001000000110001101100001011011100010000001100010011001010010000001101101011011110111001001100101001000000110000101101100011010010111011001100101001000000110011001101111011100100010000001110101011100110010110001101101011011110111001001100101001000000111000001101111011101110110010101110010011001100111010101101100001011000110110101101111011100100110010100100000011100110110001101100001011100100111100100101100011101000110100001100001011011100010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011000110100101110110011010010110111001100111001011100100100101110100001000000110100101110011001000000111010001101000011001010010000001110001011101010110010101110011011101000110100101101111011011100010000001101111011001100010000001100111011010000110111101110011011101000111001100101110

For those lacking knowledge of binary: The dead can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.

...I suppose considering other events, it's also possible that I may have misheard part of it, so if someone has a different version, I'd be interested in hearing it as well.

- Brainiac 5

Comments

[number-crunch.livejournal.com]

There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
Those who know binary and those who don't.

[see-my-back.livejournal.com]

That's not ten, that's two, dumbass. If you're trying to be funny or something, it's not working. And if you know how to read that stuff, do something helpful like tell us how to decode it instead of wasting time.

[141-12.livejournal.com]

Ahh, it's a math joke. Sorry about him. But "10" is binary for the number 2. The ones and zeroes represent placeholders rather than numbers, and you have to read it from left to right. One is full, zero is empty, and each placeholder has a different value depending on where they fall on the line. The first is 1, the second is 2, the third is 4, then 8, 16, 32 and so on. It's the place number by the power of two.

So for 10, the first placeholder is empty and the second is full, representing the values of 0 plus 2, equaling 2. In 1010, the second and fourth placeholders are full, representing 0+2+0+8=10. Get it?

1010 also represents the letter A in hexadecimal. It gets a little complicated here. The binary for zero to nine represent 0 to 9 in hexadecimal, then the binary for ten to fifteen represent A to F. These represent all the units you can create with just four places, and these four-place units can be used together to represent letters, among other types of characters. Computers store information in binary for simplicity's sake, and translate into coherent symbols based on the placement of ones and zeroes. Translating it isn't intuitive, but I'll try to break it down for you anyway.

Take our message up there and break it up into four-place units. 0101 0100 0110 1000 0110 0101 0010 0000 0110 0100, that's 5 4 6 8 6 5 2 0 6 4. 54 translates to "T", 68 translates to "h", 65 is "e", 20 is literally the "character" for a space, then 64 is "d", 65 is "e", 61 is "a"... you get it. So 67 68 6F 73 74 73 is "ghosts" — like I said, not intuitive, but it's not really meant to ever be spoken like I.R.I.S. did.

[see-my-back.livejournal.com]

Very funny, I'm sure.

So this binary thing is more or less a number code. I wish someone had said it so simply before. It's not that hard, I think I understand it now. I guess it's a good thing someone caught it all from beginning to end like that. If they'd been just a couple numbers off, it could've thrown the whole thing out of whack.

Thank you, this has been one of the first posts that was actually helpful.

[emotionl4arobot.livejournal.com]

I tend to have a very good memory for such things. It's nowhere near my normal capabilities, but it's... functional. I suppose.

And I apologise for not clearing up the confusion sooner. Binary is such an ancient language, and almost intuitive for my people, I... forgot that others might not know of it.

- Brainiac 5

[see-my-back.livejournal.com]

And I thought I had a decent memory. But there's no way I could get something that precise without at least a couple of repeats. That's pretty impressive.

It's alright, I feel like I'm learning a lot. I think it'd be good to pass word around on how to decode it, just in case others aren't around the next time we hear it. Well, if it ever happens again.

[emotionl4arobot.livejournal.com]

I suppose it is when compared to the average human mind. I'm normally able to recall things in exact detail whenever I wish, so I find the change rather frustrating. I'm not sure if my memory would have been as accurate if I weren't already familiar with binary.

Well as the above explanation has already been provided and is accurate, you're welcome to pass it around to others if you wish. And I'd be happy to answer any other questions or help out in any way.

[see-my-back.livejournal.com]

I'll make sure to do that. I'm Sakura by the way. Haruno Sakura. I appreciate the help!

[number-crunch.livejournal.com]

[Someone has left a small, but fairly complex tesselated origami dodecahedron attached to Otacon's note]