I thought that too. I've tried putting other orders for the numbers in the machine, but they haven't taken me anywhere. I can't guess where other arg branches could be though, everything until the machine felt pretty linear
Oh I already got the code, its 28697. Its how many letters each one is shifted to decode with a Caesar Cipher, though I'm not sure why the 9 is what it is, I had to guess for that one
(Image shows Snakes being decoded and my answers for the rest of the ciphers, + the program I used)