I remember the first time I walked into that little Chinese restaurant on the corner of my street, the one with the red lanterns and the faint, comforting smell of ginger and garlic always lingering by the door. It was a rainy Tuesday, the kind of day where the world feels muted and slow. I was just looking for some hot and sour soup to shake off the chill, but what I found, tucked behind the cash register, was a small, ornate statue of a cat with one paw raised. Next to it, a simple red envelope with the gold characters for ‘Fortune’ and, more prominently, the number 888. The owner, Mr. Li, caught me looking and gave a slow, knowing smile. “Lucky number,” he said, tapping the glass countertop. “Very powerful for business. For life.” That was my first real, tangible introduction to an idea that has fascinated me ever since: the profound belief that certain symbols, like the sequence 888, can act as a key. A key to unlock your fortune.
It got me thinking about how we, as humans, grapple with forces beyond our control. We look for patterns, for meaning, for a little bit of luck to tilt the scales. We create narratives to make sense of chaos. This isn’t just ancient numerology; it’s a very modern impulse. I was starkly reminded of this recently while playing a video game called “The Medium” by Bloober Team. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. The game is set in an alternate-history Poland, thick with the gloom of the Soviet era, but it’s also crawling with these psychic horrors and mutated creatures. Early on, you start finding notes—loose scraps of paper and diary entries—that talk about social distancing, lockdowns, and wild conspiracy theories about vaccines. The atmosphere is so palpably one of pandemic panic that I actually paused the game. It felt eerily familiar, like a dark echo of our own recent past.
The developers, Bloober Team, swore to me several times across multiple interviews that the game isn’t at all inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, which really strains credulity early on when so many of the loose notes you'll find refer to things like social distancing, lockdowns, and crackpot conspiracies around vaccines. The studio told me at Summer Game Fest that any allusions to the real-life pandemic were subconscious at best. I don't see how, but nonetheless, taking my own experience with the pandemic into this game heightened the intrigue. Our timeline didn't lead to mutated monsters, but I found it interesting to witness the Polish team grapple with a pandemic depicted as something like what I lived through—at least early on—set to the backdrop of its nation's Soviet era, exploring how communism would've led to different outcomes, even before you throw in the creatures made of multiple heads and many tentacles. That experience, of seeing a collective trauma reflected and distorted in art, stuck with me. It was a search for meaning in a senseless event, much like seeking a lucky number after a string of bad luck.
And that brings me back to 888. In Chinese culture, the number eight is lucky because it sounds like the word for ‘prosperity’ or ‘wealth.’ Triple that, and you’ve got a powerhouse of auspicious energy. It’s not just superstition; it’s a psychological tool. When you believe something is lucky, you carry yourself differently. You’re more open to opportunities, you project more confidence. I decided to test this, in a small way. I changed my online banking PIN to include 888. I made a point of noticing the number whenever it appeared—on license plates, receipts, the time on the clock. It became a little mental game. But a funny thing happened. By consciously looking for this symbol of abundance, I became more attuned to opportunities I might have otherwise missed. A chance conversation here, an overlooked email there. It felt less like magic and more like tuning my brain to a different frequency, one attuned to possibility. It was a conscious decision to invite a certain narrative into my life, to try and unlock your fortune, so to speak, by aligning my attention with a symbol of it.
Contrast this with the world of “The Medium.” There, the characters are trapped in a narrative of trauma and fear, their reality shaped by a horrific pandemic and political oppression. Their ‘symbols’ are of decay and psychic rupture. They aren’t looking to unlock fortune; they’re just trying to survive the nightmare. Playing that game, with its heavy, oppressive atmosphere, made my little experiment with 888 feel all the more purposeful. It was a choice to focus on a narrative of growth instead of one of despair. Of course, no number is going to magically deposit a million dollars into your account. But the mindset it can foster? That’s real. Studies have shown—and I’m paraphrasing here, but the sentiment is backed by data—that people who consider themselves lucky often are, simply because they are more observant and resilient. They create their own luck. Maybe it’s 888 for me, or a rabbit’s foot for someone else. The object itself is just the key. The real work is in turning it, in being willing to walk through the door it opens.
So, the next time you see the number 888 on a receipt, or a price tag, or flashing on the odometer of your car, maybe give it a thought. It’s a tiny, global whisper of abundance. In a world that can sometimes feel as randomly cruel and confusing as a horror game’s plot—whether inspired by a real pandemic or not—holding onto a small, positive symbol isn’t naive. It’s a strategy. It’s a way of writing your own story, of choosing the narrative you want to live in. From the cluttered counter of a family restaurant to the haunted landscapes of a video game, we are all in the business of finding meaning. And sometimes, meaning starts with a simple, powerful idea: that you have the ability to unlock your fortune. You just have to believe in the key.