Detective Miles was called to a strange scene: a locked apartment, untouched, save for an antique typewriter in the center of the room, loudly clacking away by itself.
The machine wasn't typing words. It was typing seemingly random sequences of letters and numbers: H4JK L9W3 P1QM...
Miles watched the keys fly, spooked but intrigued. He pulled the paper out. The sequence repeated every 30 lines. It was a code.
He called in the FBI codebreakers, but they were stumped. The machine kept typing, day and night, filling ream after ream of paper with its mysterious, mechanical message.
Miles started investigating the apartment's owner, a reclusive former spy named Alistair Finch. Finch had vanished a week ago.
Miles found an old desk diary belonging to Finch, which mentioned a "dead drop" location in an abandoned theater. Miles went there and found a hidden message detailing a massive conspiracy involving the city’s water supply.
Miles returned to the apartment, the weight of the conspiracy heavy on his shoulders. The typewriter was still clacking. He looked at the sequence of letters, and then at the desk diary. Finch hadn't just used the diary for appointments; he had used it as a one-time pad key for his typewriter's ongoing transmissions.
The machine wasn't typing the conspiracy. It was typing the key to break a different code entirely, one being broadcast right now to Finch’s confederates. The typewriter wasn't a mystery to be solved; it was an ongoing espionage operation Miles had interrupted. He unplugged the machine, silencing the stream of cryptic truth, and called the FBI with the water supply information, deciding some codes were better left unbroken.
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