I²: The Parable of the Informer
by Jim McPherson

James McPherson has enlivened trillions of nervous systems in this galaxy as the mythic image of chivalrous idealism and rakish gallantry.

Jim McPherson's Evolutionary Agentry was geared for rescue.  On planet-after-planet he set up base camps -- from which he would sally forth whenever a Time-Traveler was trapped in local hive webs.  McPherson's protean ability and master hive-bureaucratic skills and his ability to use the local taboos to free Out-Castes made him a galactic TV hero.  He is also famous for his textbook Intel-Legal Tips, the classic field guide for Evolutionary Agents throughout the galaxy.

James McPherson, it should be noted, won the Solar-system award for Best Husband three times -- 1983, 1998, and 2042.

In July 1974 an Intelligence Agent posing as a cashiered psychologist, was brought in handcuffs to Terminal Island, a Federal prison, and placed in the "hole."  The hole was the name of the punishment cell-block.

When he protested he was told that he was being kept off the main-line because his sentence (ten years for the possession of a half ounce of marijuana) was too lengthy for a medium-security prison.

He was then visited by a notorious hardass Federal agent, who made the following statement:  "If you double-cross me I'll have you put on the main-line of a Federal Prison with the jacket of a snitch.  Do you know what that means?"

I2 indicated that he understood the threat.

He was actually in prison for acting as an "informer."  An informer is one who communicates facts which someone else (usually a bureaucrat) does not want communicated.  He had publicized information about human intelligence which certain espionage agencies and information bureaus wanted to keep secret.

Stuart Bland was one of the most effective evolutionary agents of the 20th century.  He was first activated to mutant status by ingesting LSD with the Merry Pranksters in 1964 -- during which Vulnerability he was exposed to the first picture of Planet Earth taken from high Orbit.

Bland's role became most complex.  In order to facilitate Space Migration and Galactic Pranksterism, Bland agreed to become a deep-cover agent.  For ten years he posed as a puritanical, drab, ultra-respective stoic, anti-hedonic spokesman for the Ecological Fascists -- growing moss on his own back, publishing dozens of Luddite, anti-technology periodicals, derogating the profit-motive, promoting games in which people hit each other with foam-rubber bats, editing essays about Voluntary Poverty, Limitation of Growth, the Satisfactions of Renunciation, Doomsday Meditations, Postponement of Pleasure.

The cover worked!  By 1976 this I2 agent had infiltrated the inner councils of the Terminal Adult Establishment (liberal division), cunningly demonstrating that the only way to return to the Puritan-Home-Owner Past was to build Space Colonies.

Nothing frightens hive-establishments more than the prospect of non-limits.  Bland, accordingly, soothed the Ecologists by resurrecting the classic Stoic Motto -- "Oh yes, it will happen, but not in our lifetime!"

In 1996 Bland arranged his own kidnapping by an Intelligent Task Force, comprised of beautiful women.  He was shanghaied into a Space Shuttle, dosed with a longevity-pill and transported to the Pleasure Plan-It of his own secret Prankster design.

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