The Vortex Oracle
There is a pyramid, and it is paying attention.
Come close and its eye warms from blue to amber — it has found you, and it is reading. Raise a hand to its face and hold it there. A ring closes around the iris. The screen goes white for a moment and tells you your destiny has been written, and across the table a sphinx that has been sitting very still all afternoon makes a small mechanical sound and hands you a ticket out of its mouth.
Tear it off on the teeth. It is yours. Eighty-two fortunes ride in the Sphinx’s memory, and it will not repeat one until it has given away all the others — so the person beside you gets a different one, which is the point.
It made its debut at Burque ByteFest, where it sat beside the signage and pulled a room of strangers over one at a time. It goes where the Vortex goes. If you have seen it, you have a ticket; if you have a ticket, you were seen.
The Oracle was built in the workshop out of a 3D-printed pyramid, a millimetre-wave radar, two small radios that speak only to each other, and a thermal label printer old enough to have opinions. It needs no internet. It has never needed one.
Commissions considered. The Vortex builds objects that notice you.