Encrypted system?

Feb 6 21:33 UTC 2000

I was in a system the other day, but because everything was scrambled, I had
no idea where I was or what I was doing. I was only able to make out numbers
that were listed. There was a prompt, where I typed the numbered choices and
that got me through the system. But unfortunately I couldn't read anything.
Any comments?

response 2 of 2:

Feb 8 02:22 UTC 2000

sometimes if you try to read binary files, the ANSI (or is it ASCII) 
characters can mess with your terminal..its best to use the command
"file" to see what kind of file it is before you "cat" it...Im assuming
you were on a *NIX system.