My name is shared with a National Award-winning documentary narrator, whose voice you may have heard before. Certain labs of La Voliera occupy a small building downtown, improbably tucked within others. The only visible passage is a narrow alleyway that leads to a solitary door.

This door—finished in a thick ceramic coating and mounted on tungsten hardware—looks like any typical commercial backdoor. You can ring the bell, but no one will ever open it for you. It’s not meant for your ingress—your invitation would include proper directions.

The USPS required that we have a physical mailbox, so we installed a narrow slot at the bottom of this door. Please don’t drop anything important into this slot. Instead, when you ring the bell, you’ll hear Shobha’s voice crackling through the intercom.