Your comment made me reminisce, I read the story a few years ago and its one of my favorite short stories by him. Such a simple concept. One beautiful piece of sci-fi horror.

You come out thinking that the procedure was done to yourself after you're done reading.

In my interpretation, Egan is trying to say that _this is already the case_.

I understood the story as a description of epiphenomenalism, only layered with sci fi concepts to make it more straightforward to digest.