Dear @cstross

Yesterday, in a dusty, half-open market in Madrid, I found a small bookshop. After browsing for a couple of minutes I asked the owner if he had any books in English. He pointed me to a narrow bookcase at the back, with a couple of dozen titles. Among them, I found “The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14” edited by Gardner Dozois, copyright 2001. In it, was your story “Antibodies”, first published in Interzone, July 2000. I read it while traveling by high-speed train back to our home base in Santiago de Compostela. As an aside, trains are made for reading, and SF is the perfect genre to read while the landscape flashes past at 300Kph.
It felt weird to read your story at a time that, some claim, are the last pre-Singularity days. I thought your take on the topic was very interesting, but somewhat naïve. The word GREED did not appear even once.
I also found it interesting and enjoyable because the story seemed to presage so much of your later work. I heard whispers of the Eschaton among the pages, and most importantly, it established the link between computational mathematics/magic/godhood that would become the basis for The Laundry Files. And even the main character was named … BOB!
I know it is across a gulf of many years since you wrote it, but I would still like to thank you for your work.

#cstross