Example: An old taxi driver swore the ticket hummed when held near a compass. Soon after, the label surfaced in other places: a graffiti tag on a bridge pillar, a reservation carved into a cafe table, a scratched notation on the inner panel of a subway car. Each instance seemed to point to a pattern—an unseen lattice binding the city to something else. People began to overlay maps with spiderwebs of sightings; some tried to decode it as coordinates, others as calendar entries. The pattern made believers of the skeptical and conspirators of the bored.