?Interrobang! · Track 59 · middle

The Man Who Couldn't Read His Own Fortune

OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): a set of 'future self' letters meant to be opened years later. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Misfortune Max — fortune-cookie writer from America; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: Lake Vostok, sealed under four kilometres of ice. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Max slips strangers their tiny prophecies though his name is Misfortune; froze his own 'future self' letters into the million-year ice. Why can't we predict our own next year?

Lyrics

[Intro]
I found them where the Russians drilled in 2012.
Four kilometers down.
Sealed.

[Verse 1]
A bundle of letters, bound in twine, encased in wax.
To Misfortune Max, from Misfortune Max.
One says, "Open in 2025."
Another, "Open in 2030."
The last one just says, "Open when you finally know."
Your handwriting is a careful, looping script.
Nothing like the tiny block font on the slips you printed by the million.
"A thrilling time is in your immediate future."
"Your heart is a place to draw true happiness."
For everyone else.

[Chorus]
But you took your own future and you gave it to the ice.
Left it in the minus-three-degree dark of Lake Vostok.
Where nothing has seen the sun for fifteen million years.
You write the prophecies for a dollar a dozen, Max.
So why can't you predict your own next year?
Why can't you read your own fortune?

[Verse 2]
They called you Misfortune, and you leaned into the joke.
I can almost smell the bakery, the air thick with vanilla and warm paper.
Folding the futures in while they were still soft.
"You will travel to many exotic places."
"A new romance is on the horizon."
Did you believe a single one?
Or did you just know the shape of the words
that people needed to hear?

[Chorus]
You took your own future and you gave it to the ice.
Left it in the minus-three-degree dark of Lake Vostok.
Where nothing has seen the sun for fifteen million years.
You write the prophecies for a dollar a dozen, Max.
So why can't you predict your own next year?
Why can't you read your own fortune?

[Bridge]
Under all that pressure, the water never freezes.
They say there's life down there.
Things that metabolize the dark.
Surviving on minerals and time.
Is that what you hoped for these letters?
That some impossible version of you
would be waiting in the deep?
Someone who could finally break the seal?

[Outro]
They're still frozen solid in my hands.
I can't open them for you, Max.
I can't tell you what you wrote to yourself.
What did you need to hear?
What were you waiting to become?