Writing Prompt: Hacker Magic

Do you know who always knew magic was just unexplained science?

You.

The knights and their flurry of magical backup are brandishing swords at your triple-encrypted barrier and you feel like kind of an asshole for laughing.

But in your defense you’re ‘the greatest wizard of all time’ and ‘a scourge upon the people’ and ‘a magical curse upon the elite’.

That last one might be right.

Your apprentice, who can code a wordpress site magically so far, looks thoughtfully at your door.

“They’re going to get through eventually,” she says, “if they brute force the password enough-”

“Did you make the inner lock a rotating encryption?” You pat her head approvingly when she nods. “Then by the time they get in I’ll be done with the EMP spell and that’ll be it.”

“EMP meaning?” She’s only eight, it’s reasonable to ask questions at eight.

“Electromagnetic pulse. Electro- like what makes your nerves feel things, Magnetic- like that spell that makes all metal objects stick together, and Pulse, which is self explanatory.”

“You could have just said it’ll make them all bang into each other.” Your apprentice has gotten used to all the words that come out of your mouth from your life ‘before’. You tried to explain interdimensional rifts to her, but she just said ‘you’re from a magic world, I get it’ and you decided to leave that conversation until she’s older.

“It should cause a bang,” you agree, ‘but without actual electricity I’m not entirely sure if it’ll like, kill them or just make them implode or something?”

“Are we going to have to move again?” Your apprentice is already turning toward her stuffed animals, opening her Bag Of Terabytes, which you affectionately call “the Bag of Holding” and shoving Mr.Ampersand and Ms.Bigglesworth inside as you finish changing the magical glyph into a bracket so you can end the coding segment you’re working on.

“I worked for people like that before,” you reassure her, “no matter where you go they’re all the same. We’ll hack The Marquis’s magical flow and steal all his gold and then ransom it back to him and the rest of them will back off.”

“When are you going to teach me to code anything cool?!” Your Apprentice successfully moves a block in Magical WordPress and looks mournfully at you.

Outside, one of the mages has fallen to your worm, the magical malware working its way into his magical core and siphoning the power back to the shield.

“I can teach you to bypass paywalls? You’ll never have to pay a magical toll again.” You grin at her, and she gives you a dry look. 

Neither of you have paid for anything in years.