His face is doing something. He can feel it, but can't parse exactly what it is—just some prickle across the top of his scalp and a hum in the ears that threatens to overpower the scratch of the reset needle and the opening notes of the next piece of music.

(What it looks like is the face of a corpse with a slit throat, bloodless and staring.)

He folds the papers over along opposite as the ones they'd originally been packed in. It's not real. He is certain. Even if the researchers think otherwise. Even if they're sending papers to East Germany on their behalf. It must be. Otherwise—

"I wouldn't be here if it were."

Only maybe he would. After all, what does anyone know about the work Michael Ralston once did when he was still a magician? Fine work, maybe, but clearly nothing important enough to escape censure. It has been secret before< and likely had remained so after. For what use would there have been in explaining the particulars to anyone after? It would have been like explaining having been a champion runner and having both feet cut off in the present tense. Pointless.