It's a good thing, Right?

 "It's a good thing, Dad," the girl said, buckling her shoulder-crossed seat-belt. She wore a white button up shirt with red details on the collar.

"I know, Alice," replied the man to his tall teenage daughter beside him. He wore a reddish brown jacket with a red bow-tie fixed to his collar. He looked through the rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of his younger daughter in the back seat. "Seat-belt, Lizzy."

The younger girl complied. She had her hair pulled into a side ponytail with a bright red bow that matched her white and red dress. "Why aren't we taking Mom's car with the video?" Lizzy asked.

While her dad turned in the seat so that he could watch behind him as he backed out, Alice answered, "Because Dad's paranoid about the technology."

"No," the man replied annoyed. "We're taking this car, because it's my car and I like how it handles better." He shifted from reverse to first gear.

Alice smoothed her flowy red skirt. "And you're paranoid."

"I'm not—Okay, maybe I don't like the On-star function." the adult admitted.

"What's the On-star function?” Lizzy asked.

"It's this sing in Mom's car that allows people in emergencies to call 911. It has this geolocation built-in so they know where to go," Alice explained.

"Oh," Lizzy said. "Why is that bad?" she asked her Dad.

"It's not. It's a very good thing for new drivers and people who don't pay attention," the Dad said. He shifted gears as he accelerated onto the freeway. "I just—don't like people in some office being able to immediately geolocate me with the click of a button."

"Why?" Alice asked rhetorically. "Are you a spy, Daddy?"

"You know what, why don't we just listen to some tunes."

"That's not a denial," Alice said. She plugged in some headphones rather than listen to the oldies station her Dad turned on.

Herman Friedman was not a spy. He wasn't in the James Bond inspired international man of mystery his daughter spoke of. He had worked with spies during his long career. It came with the territory as a crypt-analyst: code-breaking.

He had always found cryptology fascinating. He spent his undergraduate, masters, and doctorate degrees studying the mysteries that could be hidden within different combinations of letters. crypt-analysts of his caliber could work in scholarship decoding ancient languages. Code-breakers and ciphers could also work with governments assisting spy work. Herman was a bit of a hybrid of both.

Alice and Lizzy were both named after woman he had admired for their excellence in cryptology. His wife Jenna had always insisted that they were named after important literary figures. The nice thing about language, code or not, is that it could represent multiple meanings. His wife told Lizzy that she was named after Lizzy Bennett, but she was also named after Elizabeth Friedman, the best code-breaker of World War II. Alice was the name of a bright curious girl in a story by Lewis Carroll. It was also the name of Alice Kober, who's extensive work helped decrypt Linear B. The language, depicted by a series of lines, had puzzled archaeologists for many decades. Alice hadn't solved the final code herself though.

"I know it's a good thing that they solved it," Herman said.

"Huh?" Alice responded, pulling out her earbuds.

"I said it's a good thing—that they finally solved the key."

"Yes," Alice agreed. "They solved it and you still credited you."

"Well they used my book and my knowledge to develop the—" Herman waved his left hand in the air while his right remained firmly on the steering wheel. "Technological wizardry."

"So why are you being a sourpuss about it?" Alice said.

"I'm not being a sourpuss. Lizzy, am I being a sourpuss?"

The preteen spoke. "Remember when I was in that soccer tournament over the summer. I could have scored the winning goal, but I passed it to Alexa?"

"Vaguely," Herman admitted.

"So I did pass it to Alexa, and she got all the credit and praise from the team for breaking the stalemate when she scored," Lizzy said.

"Right," Alice said, "Because she was in a better position to score."

"Well my head knows that, but my stomach wanted that extra winning goal cheesecake that Alexa got," Lizzy said. "Do you remember what you said to me, Dad?"

"W-w-wait," her father said.

"No," Lizzy said.

"I'm sorry Lizzy, one second. Alice, what turn am I supposed to make?"

"How'm I supposed to know that?" Alice asked.

"Alice, you said you were going to be my navigator. That's why I gave you my directions."

"Oh—" Alice said. "That's what that piece of paper was." She pulled out her smartphone.

"Where am I turning?"

"Give me a second. I'll pull it up on my phone," Alice said.

"Don't worry about that, just read the paper I gave you."

"You mean the one that I left on the kitchen counter?" Alice asked. She shook her head and pressed on. "Don't worry about it. I'll pull it up in two seconds. Science—Federation—Laboratory"

"It's not a lab. It's the Turning Auditorium. I've taken you there before."

"Dad, the auditorium is IN the Science Federation Laboratory."

"I think I would know—"

"Exit 42!" Alice interrupted.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Dad. Right—" She pointed at the exit as they drove past it.

Recalculating emerged from the teen's phone.

"Why didn't you bring the directions I printed for you?" Herman demanded.

"I don't know, Dad. Why don't you live in the twenty-first century? Not this turn, the next one."

"I thought you said—"

"Dad if you turn here it will add twenty minutes to our route. Exit 44B will get us there in about five minutes."

"OKAY," Herman said loudly.

"Okay," his daughter said quietly. They sat in tense silence until Herman made the correct turn. Then Alice giggled and the tension broke.

"Sorry," Herman said. "I guess I am a little on edge."

"It's okay, Dad," came from the back seat. Lizzy said, "It's hard when the team wins don't feel like they're your wins."

Herman smiled at his daughter through the rear-view mirror. "So I'm being a sourpuss, huh?"

—

"Herman! I'm glad you finally made it," said a young man in a grey suit with a long black tie.

Herman instinctively checked to see his own bow tie was centered. The red had been Lizzy's idea, but there was something of a tradition with wearing bow ties to the award ceremonies.

"Mr. Sawyer," Herman replied, meeting the younger man's handshake "How are you today in this hour of your glory."

"Uh—Mr. Friedman then. I am most excellent," Mr. Sawyer said, recovering quickly. He looked to either side of the older man. "No Jenna?"

Herman grimaced momentarily, than forced himself to smile before Lizzy noticed. "No, no Jenna. She's been to enough of these to last her a lifetime."

Sawyer frowned, confused. "This is your year though. This is the year you finally solved the mystery of Triangle-M. Your life's work."

"Uh—" Alice jumped in. "Um, she didn't send him alone."

"Yes, Mr. Glen Sawyer, let me introduce my two lovely daughters. This is Alice." He nodded his head toward his eldest. "And Lizzy."

"Well hey there kiddo," the young man said awkwardly at Alice.

"Hi," said Lizzy, though her head was spinning absorbing the sights and sounds of the auditorium. It was full of people, and many people had projects up for display.

"I'm going to assume you were saying Lizzy is a kiddo." Alice said sharply.

"What? Yeah sure. Whatever you say kid."

"I'm only four years younger than you and I read your thesis."

That got his attention. "Really? I couldn't even get my mom to read it, there was so much technical jargon."

Herman chuckled before elaborating. "I—used to read my old grant requests aloud to her while I was editing," Herman explained. "She got very good at figuring out what I meant to say versus what I wrote."

"It was good," Alice said. "Your proposal, thesis. All of it made sense to me. I'm glad your program worked."

"Well, thanks Alyssa." Mr. Sawyer said.

"It's Alice."

"Okay, Alice. I'm gonna go get some punch before they tell us to sit down, Her—Mr. Friedman."

As he walked away, Alice said, "I'm on your side, Dad."

—

"When I graduated high school, I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be the next Satoshi Nakamoto." There was some chuckling in the crowd at this. "I enrolled in university focusing on math, programming, and economics. I wanted to learn everything I needed to invent the next big cryptocurrency. Yeah, little Glen had high hopes to change the world." He laughed, but now the crowd sat quietly.

"Then, in my second year of college I took an elective class about archaeology. I think my professor spent about ten minutes in the entire semester talking about this little known offshoot of the Mayan tribe. They had developed what we suspected was a language made of a series of triangles and dashes. I followed up looking for more information about Triangle-M and the culture we suspect created it. That was how I found Herman Friedman's decades worth of work analyzing and recording the little known language. I found it fascinating."

"From there I learned about the computers that have been used to solve linguistic puzzles. These ranged from the Bombe machine used to crack the Nazi's code in World War II to the program recently developed to solve the Zodiac killer's cipher" Sawyer nodded to a certain section of the audience. He went on. "I thought, I wonder if we could program something to solve Triangle-M. I reached out to my academic advisor who in turn reached out to the excellent crypt-analyst Herman Friedman." Mr. Sawyer threw his hand out toward where Herman in the audience as if he expected applause. "Then we went to work."

The young man paused looking at the glass-engraved plaque on his podium. "Thank you, thank you all for this. I truly only solved it by standing on the shoulders of giants. Let's get on to the next puzzle, shall we?"

Herman applauded from the audience. He smiled at the young man who's computer program had solved Triangle-M, Herman's life's work. Alice clapped too and a little delayed Lizzy began clapping along as well. The young girl yawned visibly.

Glen Sawyer waved at Herman Friedman as he stepped off stage. The older gentlemen nodded back. Then he leaned over toward his older daughter. He whispered as the crowd settled down. "It's a good thing, and he's a good guy, but that doesn't mean I don't want to sock the machine and guy who made it."

Alice cracked a grin and clapped on harder.