It was an article from 1994, printed off the Internet. Certain names were circled in red, certain lines were underscored.

I snatched the page and looked around. Mort was in his office, massaging his temples. Gordon Stone was reading the Times Literary Supplement. It seemed impossible that no one, in this room of professional observers, had noticed the page, but nobody was paying attention. I folded it up and walked over to Gordon’s desk.

“Is Lane back from vacation?”

“I haven’t seen him,” Gordon said, folding the TLS. “Why, are you finally coming around on your furry little admirer?”

“Just a fact-check thing,” I muttered, and turned away.

“I was only kidding, Whitney.”

I tried settling down to work, but every time the elevator stopped at our floor, my eyes shot to the doors.

I stayed at the Bystander until some of my colleagues started going home, then headed straight for my local. The first beer vanished in replenishing gulps. Now, in the darkness and coolness of the bar, I unfolded the article, smoothed it on the table, and read.

As soon as it premiered, my editor at the P-I started pushing everyone to watch The X-Files. Along with grunge and the local comics scene, the show’s filming up in Vancouver confirmed his vision of the Pacific Northwest as the epicenter of ’90s weird. The editor himself was square, not part of that world at all, but like many members of Seattle’s professional class, he liked the idea of being surrounded by eccentrics. They were an ambience, a feature of his lifestyle, accessible through CDs and network programming. He pinned up one of those I WANT TO BELIEVE posters in his office.

When he heard that a group of amateur ufologists met regularly in Yakima, he sent me down to cover a meeting. In particular, he said, he hoped I’d find someone who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. But the story he had in mind wouldn’t be sarcastic, he stressed. He wasn’t interested in another lampoon of tinfoil cranks who’d seen a meteor shower and claimed they’d traveled to Zeta Reticuli. No, he told me, peering at his poster, take it seriously, write it straight, write it like you almost believe it.