« 091: The Manuscript That Kills | Main | 093: When In Doubt, Insert Explosion » July 13, 2004

092: The Failure of Family Trees

I need a diagram for my family tree. I'm getting fathers and grandfathers confused. Usually the characters grow to populate a good deal of the active part of your head when you're working on a book, but I've been addled enough and distracted enough that they only occupy a tiny corner of my brain. In that corner, family trees are getting muddled. A key element of Grandpa's notebook hinges on a date that just doesn't work because Jack's Mom is Grandpa's daughter and not his wife. This isn't the Appalachian backwoods so there isn't any convoluted inter-marriage of families going on here. This is straight forward middle class breeding.

Even if Grandpa loves his daughter very much, he wouldn't base his crypto key on the day they met. And, if he does base it on the day he and his wife met, then it is possible he never told his daughter. Shit. It was all so simple yesterday.

I need a better key. I also need to consider if I'm making this too complicated. Grandpa's security on his notebook has to be simple enough that he can parse it in his head (it helps that he's a whiz at these sorts of things), but complicated enough that, without the key, it's difficult and pointless to try. Sort of a homemade version of a one time pad. The notebook is the MANUSCRIPT and it holds the key to deciphering the mysterious transmissions which have gotten everyone in an uproar. But it isn't just a written document; it has to be coded so that only the proper chaps can get to it. The bad guys took Grandpa away a long time ago. They never got the notebook.

So does it have to be coded? If it was hidden, isn't that enough?

Would Grandpa think it was enough?

Posted by Teppo at July 13, 2004 08:08 AM

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