How on earth did you miss the byline? Or the all-pervading Egan style? :) Great story, anyway. Thanks for the heads-up.

Since the Stevelets can download individual human brains, why don't humans negotiate a treaty with them and start uploading? The Stevelets would get even better access to human minds and consciousness, and humans would get immortality.

I'm hopeful that this story will lead to something more, as Egan stories often do -- "Dust" to Permutation City, "Wang's Carpets" to Diaspora. Or the Old Testament and the New Testament, as my friend John Braley likes to call them.

Thanks for the Google search string. I'll set up a Google alert right now.