Moose_Microscope

Losyash sat in his lab, trying for the hundredth time to discern tiny symbols through an electron microscope. His eyes were already drooping, but the damned Plutonians were still waiting for an answer. If he didn't solve their problem within a week, Earth would be destroyed!

"Why is everything so petty?!" Losyash groaned, leaning back in his chair.

Sovunya looked into the room with a mug of warm milk.

"Drink this, darling. You need to sleep, not sit up all night with these irons," she said, placing the mug on the table.

Losyash obediently drank the milk and, before he knew it, fell asleep. He dreamed of the Plutonians destroying Krosh and Hedgehog's houses with lasers...

"NO!" Losyash woke up suddenly in a cold sweat. "I have to think of another way!"

And then it dawned on him. What if, instead of trying to enlarge the image, he "felt" the sample? Like a needle in a record player! He immediately sketched out a diagram on a piece of paper and ran to Pin.

After two hours of painstaking work, the device was ready. Losyash connected it to the computer, launched the scanning program, and held his breath. Some symbols began to appear on the screen...

But the joy quickly gave way to confusion. Instead of understandable text, the screen displayed some strange symbols.

"Pin, what does this mean?" Losyash asked.

"I don't know, my friend. The program works, but the output is somehow... encrypted," Pin replied, scratching the back of his head with a wrench.

Losyash sighed. It seemed the Plutonians hadn't just written the task in microscopic letters, they'd also encrypted it. Now they needed to not only read the data, but also decrypt it. And the key to the encryption was hidden somewhere deep within the microscope program itself...

You are given an executable file microscope - the very program that Losyash and Pin wrote.

When launched, the program simply terminates without displaying anything. But hidden within it is a message from the Plutonians. Can you figure out how the "scanning microscope" works, find the key, and decipher the aliens' mission?

Author: @Ankh1rsi