Heather had spent the year worried about medical bills. One after another, her husband's seizures drained their savings, and now filled their credit cards with debt. Ten years of marriage, they'd scrimped and saved, paying off their house from her husband's construction business. With him unable to work…

She hadn't done any programming since high school, but she was a quick study. She'd been good at that kind of thing in high school, but when Jake proposed right after graduation, she left behind everything to be his bride. He was a good man, and he took her far away from her family and the pain of childhood.

The kids and Jake asleep, she programmed in Python. She'd given herself a crash course on the state of the art in programming and had learned about Eigenweasels. The name caught her attention and the concept captured her imagination.

For three weeks now she'd run a learning-predictive model using the thermal quantum annealing of the Eigenweasel's quantum supercomputers. She'd learned for the first two weeks, and predicted the last week.

Was this one of the metaphoric 'free lunches' her dad had always warned against? Not that she trusted her dad. He was a crook and a cheat. But cheats knew how to spot a cheat, and predicting the stock market at 99% accuracy for a week did not seem a cheat.

Heather didn't sleep much that night. She setup accounts under both her name and her husband's, then added one for each of her six children. In the morning, she drove their truck into town and sold it for five grand, put it in the bank, and distributed it evenly to the different accounts.

Then she pressed play on her simulator. The day was pretty far gone, but the trades began immediately and the Eigenweasels stayed busy. She looked through the setup and nodded. Her code worked and the Eigenweasels were barely even reaching ten percent capacity.

If this didn't work… Well, the local churches had soup kitchens.

She put the system out of her mind and spent the afternoon with the kids and her husband. She refused to check that evening before bed and fell asleep after lying in bed, staring at the ceiling until 1 am.

The rooster woke her at the crack of dawn and she rolled out of bed and got to her chores. Jake came with her. It was one of his good days. He couldn't do much, as he'd lost so much strength, but he gave moral support.

Back in the house, she left Jake cracking eggs and frying bacon and slipped onto the laptop. The New York exchanges had been going at least two hours. She took a deep breath and prayed, “Lord, please, we need this.”

She checked the balance on her account. Six million dollars. She felt the blood drain from her face and felt weak. After a few moments, she checked the other accounts. Nearly identical, the differences explained by the trades being off by split seconds.

Whether it was ten seconds or ten hours, she sat uncomprehending until her husband walked in calling her name.

“Honey, breakfast is ready. You coming?”

Heather smiled, heart full of gratitude to the Lord and to Mr. Hatch who taught her coding in eleventh grade. She cashed out a million from each account and headed to breakfast. Today was going to be an interesting day.