The Fantabulous Del Roar, Fortune Exchanger

Born of reclaimed electronics and Del Ray Artisans' call for a Carnival of Curiosities,
Del Roar literally trades in futures.

Approach the cabinet, pick up the handset and turn the dial. Del Roar conducts a ritual: tell him something you dream of and something you dread. He'll bestow upon you a new future drawn from the destiny of another patron.

• What I hope it leaves you with: curiosity about the stranger your future came from, and a recognition that their hopes and dreads are shaped like your own.
• The carnival act is meant to disarm, so the intimacy slips past your guard.
• The real puzzle was linguistic, not technical. The prompts are half-finished sentences, shaped so that whatever you offer can be remolded to fit another destiny, with no machine reading what you said. It's Mad Libs played with real desires and dreads.
• Almost everything is reclaimed: a television, a Linux computer, a thermal printer and a server rack, with 3D-printed parts and simple woodworking filling the gaps. It's the biggest thing I've built. It took 30 days of nights and weekends, with help from generative AI tools, and it barely fit in the shed where I built it.