I brought my laptop to the Donut Shop, ready to write at last. To my horror, I found a sign taped to the door saying it would close at the end of the month.

“Rent hike,” said the woman at the counter. “Five hundred percent. Someone said they’re rezoning the area.”

We introduced ourselves. For years we’d been all about the transaction, but that’s often how it is in the convulsions of gentrification—at the very last moment you get to know what you’re losing.

I bought a large coffee and coconut donut and opened my laptop. The document was titled 2001–2002 Annual Trial Report, Prepared for Inland Medical by Rubicon Technology.

The report gave onto a massive appendix of dense clinical data. Anything deemed proprietary, most notably the actual contents of the solution, was redacted. But everything else was there for my analysis.

Our extensive trial has produced sufficient data to warrant bold assertions, said the report, which I heard in the voice of Dr. Kriss. We have developed an artificial universal blood substitute. Its potential is perhaps unrivaled in the history of modern medicine.

As I read the report, I’d make sure the citations lined up with the medical data in the appendix, but the nature of the data itself was a mystery. If something simply existed at the other end of the citation, I couldn’t get any deeper. I needed help.

Back at the office, I knocked on Mort’s door. He was watching Fox News, and even after muting the TV, kept glancing at it.

“Do we have anyone who could help analyze medical data?”

“How about Nate?”

Nathan Zimmer was the Bystander’s staff science writer. It’s not that Nate wouldn’t be helpful—on the contrary. But the story still felt like something that could be wrested from me, especially by a writer with that degree of expertise.

Mort watched the screen while I explained to him that I was sure Nate had better things to do.

“Alright,” he said, “try one of the interns.”

Donald Rumsfeld was addressing the press corps. Mort turned the sound back on.

“Sorry,” he said, “I can’t miss this.”

The unpaid intern was sorting mail when I asked if he could help. He seemed pretty confident, or at least didn’t voice any doubts, but when I laid out the appendix in front of him, he looked like he’d studied for the wrong exam.

“Think you’re up for it?”

“Fake it till you make it, right?”

“You’re not supposed to tell me that.”

I began reviewing my own copy of the report, highlighting connections between the data and Dr. Kriss’s assertions. Every now and then I’d check on the intern. He never looked up from the page, sometimes tapping his pencil on the margin, nodding.

After an hour, he said, “Is this, like, some kind of code?”