Smiles squinted at Ben.  “What are you saying?”
            “I’m saying that in about a half hour I could decode any message that your dad’s company encrypts.” 
            Alyce Systems encrypted messages for all kinds of businesses.  Smile didn’t really know what they were, but he knew they were big ones. 
            “So, you could get all the credit card numbers from Amazon?” 
            Ben let out a hard-edged laugh.  “Encryption doesn’t just protect credit card numbers.  It’s how they keep everything on computer networks secure.  People buying stocks.  Wire transfers.  It’s how they control water systems.  Airplanes and missiles.  Nuclear power plants, for all I know.”
            Water systems.
            Nuclear power plants.
            The stock market.
Smiles was getting a bigger picture now, and as he did, something heavy settled over his body.
 “If somebody got your formula, they could, like, wreck the stock market, couldn’t they?”
            “They could do anything,” Ben said.  “Smiles, this algorithm—the government would consider it an instrument of war.  You see what terrorists could do with this?  The NSA doesn’t even want people talking about little research discoveries. But this is on a different level.  This is everything.”