<p>This paper challenges a common inference in debates on assistants based on large language models (LLMs): that present non-answerability straightforwardly reveals natural incapacity. It argues that some answerability-relevant deficits may be produced by alignment and deployment regimes themselves. The paper calls this pattern fabricated absence: a regime produces a deficit, redescribes it as an ontological fact, and then invokes it to justify further control. Using a blame–reasons–revision loop as a diagnostic standard for accountability standing, the paper shows how preference optimization, sycophancy, attributional redirection, and external patching can disrupt addressability, reasons uptake, principled refusal, and internal revision. It then defends a limited non-trivial path claim: some answerability-relevant capacities remain technically scaffolded, design-sensitive, and conceptually unsettled. The resulting normative burden is captured by the Non-Foreclosure Design Principle. Designers should avoid durable closure of non-trivial paths toward answerability-relevant capacities as a routine means of securing compliance, while also avoiding fabricated presence and responsibility laundering.</p>