The monitor took time to warm up, but eventually, the machine did boot, and a blinking green rectangle appeared on the monochrome screen.

Megan wiped the sweat out of her face.

Worth it.

So worth it.

She sat on the floor in front of the computer and picked up the keyboard.

The code was the easy part.
A little old-fashioned, and clunky, but weirdly familiar.

An hour and a half, and the code was ready for magic.

Megan wasn’t all that good with magic. There was no logic to it, no predictable… anything. Three drams of wolf’s blood for a love potion, an ostrich feather for good luck in sports or cattle trading. Nothing about magic made sense.

She pushed her hair back from her face, poured out a glass of saltwater, and said an incantation.

The program would pull from the magic, and the magic… well, if everything went right, the magic would pull the program through the wires, and into the ether that lined the barriers between past, present, and future. And once it got to the past, the program would self-replicate.

Non-magical types would see fifteen lines of nonsense.

A practical joke. Teenagers causing mischief. Her father… he’d get caught. He’d apologize, of course… and he’d be sentenced to probation.

It wasn’t really her fault. That had happened. It had already happened by the time she was born. And her father always smiled, just a little, when he remembered the time he spent doing court-ordered public service. He didn’t notice the loop. He didn’t know he hadn’t actually written the virus.

She wasn’t changing history.

No. She was just enhancing it.

And the magic… it wasn’t even as strong as a love potion. Nothing that could un-do freewill. She wasn’t forcing anyone to do anything. An eye-opener. Something to make sure people knew when they met the love of their life. It was worth a shot. Anything to keep her parents together.

She connected the magic to the program, and typed RUN.

The machine processed the commands slowly–as slowly as a computer from 1987–and then, she couldn’t be sure. Pink sparkles. Or maybe they were just sparks.

Either way, the screen flashed twice, and went dark.

She could still hear her parents arguing in the bedroom.

“At least tell me why, Kathy.” Her father’s voice was tinged with frustration and anger. “We have a good life.  You were always happy before.”

He probably didn’t know he was shouting.

Her mother slammed the bathroom door, and Megan could barely hear the words. “I just know, Allen. I want to be with him. He’s the one.”

 This is a blog hop, so be sure you visit the other writers to read the rest of the stories.