“Without WinStar, I’m just a woman with a shaky telescope and a lot of opinions,” she muttered to her cat, Copérnico.

“That’s the tension line,” she said. “The place where fights begin.”

A red line—Mars conjunct Saturn—ran directly from her broken laptop to the window facing the old Roman wall.

“Javier,” she said softly, “take your daughter to the Hospital de la Paz. Ask for the pediatric oncology trial that starts tomorrow. Don’t ask how I know.”

She downloaded the 112 MB file—a miracle on her slow connection—and installed it. The interface was blocky, the colors reminiscent of a Windows XP screensaver, but it was WinStar . And it was in perfect, crisp Spanish.

Isabel never opened the free program again. She buried the hard drive under a potted jasmine plant. But sometimes, late at night, she hears a faint whirring from the closet—the ghost of an old software, whispering horoscopes in Spanish, waiting for someone foolish enough to ask for a gratis miracle.

She laughed. 2003? That was the year she’d bought her first ephemeris. But free is free.