The Punch Card Posters
Illegal and unsanctioned posters are a common sight in the cities, usually advertisements for the newest products that the average person will never be able to afford, or for pubs that will likely only last a week. Hidden in the chaotic smatterings of paper, however, are messages to the downtrodden, the secretive, and the lost. Coded messages abound in poster-plastered walls, hidden in plain sight for those who know how to look. A recent string of posters baffled even the canniest of underbelly dwellers: papers printed with only random strings of numbers and matrices of black dots that resemble punch cards, without any holes punched out. Codebreakers have been unable to crack the sequences, and no secret society has claimed authorship of the papers. No person has been able to read the Punch Card Posters.
But the Punch Card Posters were not meant for people to read. Instead, they are the only evidence of the spread of a new society, hidden among the cities, hidden below even other secret societies. The posters are a hidden call to automatons: rogue clockworks that have gained sentience, a supposed impossibility of the technology.
Purpose
Attempts to create fully sentient and autonomous clockworks are explicitly illegal in all countries, yet somehow automatons have spontaneously arisen, having to pose as their mindless originators or risk immediate destruction. The Punch Card Posters can be read by some automatons, and calls for them to meet in secret locations under the sewers, where they can escape detection. They are a call into the void, hoping to find more of their kind and make a new society. With enough automatons, there is a faint hop that they can even become a people, recognized as a new class of living thing.
Document Structure
Legal status
The posters themselves are technically vandalism, according to the strictest of court documents, as are most other posters in the inner cities. As penalties for vandalism are almost never enforced, the posters have usually been able to remain in place.
Historical Details
Public Reaction
For the very few people who noticed the Punch Card Posters, they were only a minor curiosity. People intrigued by codes give them some thought, but the inhuman nature of the code has made the posters too difficult to stay interesting.
Type
Announcement, Invitation
Medium
Paper
I thought of London Tart Cards when vandilization came up. These punch cards are interestingly funny. The poor street cleaner with his little hand scraper must not be happy.