THE INTELLIGENCE AGENTS

Excerpt from Encyclopedia Galactica, 2078

Archives from the planet Sol-3 indicate that in the evolution of the Human Line thirteen new Dom-Species emerged in the 2-1/2 billion years after seeding.  Only six times in the 10,000 years preceding the birth of Jack Leary did a paedomorphic rejection of Terminal Adulthood by the juveniles of the species occur.

This means that 13 times in 2-1/2 billion years one generation was called upon to assume the most difficult responsibility assigned to any individual nervous system.  Active resistance to the monolithic pressure of adult domestication.  A dramatic break with hive culture.  Escape from the very gene-pool which gives continuity and safety to individuals.  The role of genetic traitor.

Neoteny requires inconceivable strength.  The species, at the peak of its strength and specialized survival skill, and crazed by the sense that it has peaked -- throws all of its resources against the youthful traitors.  A genetic intelligence test results.

The species makes it extremely difficult to mutate and hurls its moral sanctions, its scorn, its police forces, its wily, canny old tricks at the mutating juveniles.  It must make an attempt to check, test and challenge the upstart renegades.

If the paedomorph rebels have appeared too soon, or in the wrong place (i.e., not on the Western frontier) then they are easily crushed.  The ideas are not going to make any headway east of la Brea -- too bad if they appear in Madrid or Athens or Jerusalem or Moscow.  Only when the genetic hour has struck and only on the changeable Western rim can neoteny (rejection of Terminal Adulthood) succeed.

In the decade 1964-1974 a small handful, less than 100,000, juveniles performed the extraordinary genetic feat.  Using the available electronic communication technology they formed a global network and sent out the signal.  Drop Out.

The adult fury unleashed upon this small band of Evolutionary Agents was savage and brutal.  The pressures were incalculable.  The visible leaders were singled out for particular attack by the Adult Authority and the casualty rate was tragically high.  Janis.  Jimmy Hendrix.  Jim Morrison.  James Dean.  Elvis Presley.  Probably no juvenile agent was harassed more rigorously than young Jack Leary.

External pressure from the hive establishment was easier to deal with than the confusion caused by his own gene-pool connections.  The young Evolutionary Agents, however brutal the treatment they received from the Hive Authorities, were linked together in an unspoken peer-network.  They were all together in rejecting Adult Authority.  In spite of the scorn heaped on "hippies" they all shared a moral superiority to their parents.

Jack Leary's parent-hive was one of the central headquarters in the Genetic War Against Terminal Adulthood.  How can you reject a gene-pool which is committed to change and doesn't offer the solidity of the traditional parent-hive?  In recognition and honor of these feats of Relativistic Neurology, the Solar System Council, in the year 2049, instituted the Jack Leary Prize for Genetic Heroism.

Evolutionary Agent Jack Leary became a Genetic Warrior Hero because of the unique time and place of his birth.  He entered the warrior caste of his Temporal Development (Stage 10, Adolescence) exactly at the outbreak of the Great Generation War (1964-74).  He was brought up in the Headquarters of the Evolutionary Expedition to Planet Earth and was thus, like the young Marcus Aurelius, weaned on smoke and shot -- exposed at this formative period to the rigors of genetic conflict.  His role as Elite Evolutionary Warrior was thus crystallized in space and in time.

By the age of 11 he participated in the Battle of Cambridge where he served as aide-de-camp to Aldous Huxley.  At age 12 he served as front-line messenger to General William Burroughs in the First Battle of Newton Center.  He flew several Cessna Turn-On Missions with the Harvard Air Force.

At age 13 Jack Leary was assigned to a re-enforcement squad which traveled by Land Rover to Mexico and was busted on suspicion by Adult Federales in Acapulco.  He later escaped with his companions to Zihuatanejo in 1962.

At age 14 he was expelled with the Harvard Expedition from Mexico.  During the Valley forge summer of 1963 he also participated in the retreats and expulsions from the islands of Dominica and Antigua.  In all these engagements Jack Leary's courage and unfailing high spirits were much commended.

In the same year he was a member of the first party to explore, and then colonize, the Planetary Base at Millbrook, New York (Sept. 1963).  He subsequently participated in all 64 of the B-Movie Realities produced there.

At age 15 Jack Leary was seized for ransom for the second time by the Counter-Intelligence forces in Laredo, Texas (Dec. 1965).

During the years 1966-67, when the Police State Troopers of G. Gordon Liddy held the Millbrook Castle under seige, Jack was on continual scout duty.  His heroic deeds, his arrogant princely bearing, his long jet-black hair became the symbols of the young juveniles.  The Forces of Terminal Adulthood made him a special target for their anguished fury.  Sheriff Quinlan captured young Jack during one raid and personally supervised the shearing of his ebony hair.  Quinlan ambushed and captured Jack for ransom eleven times during this period.  (In 1978 Sheriff Quinlan was himself indicted and arrested for selling and stealing guns.  G. Gordon Liddy later served over four years in Federal prisons for a series of burglaries and contempt of court.)

By 1968 the realization was dawning that the Generation War was actually mutational in scope.  By this time the Harvard-Millbrook Evolutionary Task Force had openly raised the Spectre of paedomorphia.

Stations WDNA and KRNA were broadcasting the message:  DROP OUT!  Juveniles throughout the planet were being instructed to avoid adulthood, to "do your own thing," to create your own reality.

Long-hair and blue-jeans, dope and rock-and-roll became the crude symbols of this mutation.  Adult establishment throughout the world immediately understood the significance of these new species manifestations.  A global repression came down on adolescents who exhibited these clear signs of neoteny, i.e., species treachery.

The position of Jack Leary was infinitely complicated by the paradoxical fact that his father became the spokesperson for the paedomorphia which swept the globe.  Dr. Timothy Leary, during these years, was comparing the youth revolt to:

• Calcium ingestion by young amoeba who rejected the unicellular state and developed into mobile-boney forms
• Oxygen sniffing by larval fish who moved to the amphibian state
• Mao ingestion by young amphibians who became fast-moving animals
• Tree climbing by young lemurs who were rejecting the four-footed mammalian state
• Weight rejection by juvenile dinosaurs who moved into the high-flying avian life.

In these broadcasts Leary reassured the Adult Authorities that rejection of Terminal Adulthood by the juveniles of a mutating species was a positive, loving step -- that the escaping children were charged by DNA with the task of carrying the best of the old species into the future.  Wise and charitable adults would experience the greatest satisfaction in evolutionary history if they consciously participated in the evolutionary process.  He reminded them that the function of juveniles migrating into the future was to send back to the Old Ones the perspectives and advantages (technological and neurological) of the new level of evolutionary intelligence.

The message crackled out from Millbrook -- Turn On with Your Parents.  Share the unfolding future with them.

Meanwhile Jack Leary had become the arch-symbol of the paedomorphic escape.  Every Counter-Intelligence Agent in the country was focused on the neurological objective:  Crush Jack Leary.  Between the ages of 16 and 19 Jack Leary was arrested nineteen times.  In only one of these ambushes was he found in possession of neurogenetic chemicals.  On eighteen occasions he was kidnapped and held in dungeons simply for being a visible juvenile, i.e., an unrepentant mutant.

When the Great Migration to California occurred in 1968 Jack again served as scout and advance guard.  After the Christmas Ambush of Laguna Beach (Dec. 1968) Jack was hauled before an Inquisition Tribunal in Orange County, California (President-elect Nixon's home duchy).  During his trial he refused to speak and was consistently reprimanded by the Judge for his unrepentant attitude.  His standard answer to most questions was "Not really."

The election of 1976 which was won by the Anti-Adult-Out-Caste Alliance brought an end to the active genetic warfare.  The forces of paedomorphia were allowed to live in a state of uneasy truce with the Old Hive.  Marijuana was decriminalized, the draft ended.  Hedonic, self-indulgent, self-actualized life-styles were not only tolerated, but indeed, co-opted by the commercial establishment.  The juvenile species was congratulated for giving up active protest.

Only the most perceptive Hive-Moralists (Tom Wolfe, George Will, William Buckley, Meg Greenfield) recognized that the apparent quiescence of the young actually represented a sophisticated individualism even more ominous to the Terminal Adult Establishment than the visible protests of the preceding decade.  The noisy turmoil of the 1960's did, after all, imply some connection on the part of the young to the Old Hive ways.

The Me-ism of the 1970's, however, reflected a cynical, contemptuous, detached recognition on the part of the intelligent young, that the Adult Establishment was a Mafia Power that must be offered token respect, paid-off and adapted to.  The general formula was "40 hours a week to indulge the Man -- the rest to indulge myself, my loved ones and my friends."  It was well recognized by all concerned that such trade-offs were temporary, that the Adult Authority was crumbling and could not last to the turn of the century.

But beneath the calm of inter-generational truce the mutational struggle continued unabated.  Counter-Intelligence Agents (Nixon appointed narcs) roamed the land stirring up trouble, seeking to provoke a return to open warfare.  Evolutionary Agents who had become public symbols of neoteny continued to be harassed.  When Margaret Trudeau embarrassed the supreme Adult Authority of Canada by running off with the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards was immediately busted and threatened with long incarceration by Pierre, the outraged husband.  Dr. Peter Bourne, symbol of the youthful presence around Jimmy Carter, was set-up and disgraced.  Professional athletes (usually Black) who led an extremely visible rejection of the flagrant paternal system (owners of sports teams) were repeatedly persecuted.  And Jack Leary continued to be the symbol of Neotenous Youth and the target of Adult rage.

It was not until 1984 when High Orbital Forces took over the government of the California Republic that Jack Leary was pardoned and awarded the Highest Medal of Valor.

At age 35, his princely stature thus recognized, Jack was able to move into the next stage of his temporal caste development.  He used the enormous wealth he had inherited to design and build dozens of H.O.M.E.S. from which he launched his historic explorations of the Moons of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  His mining concessions and homesteading operations on these satellite-mineral deposits made him one of the richest people in the solar system.

In the year 2049, with eleven of his children, Jack Leary left the system of the home star as Commander of the first Major Interstellar Expedition.  The rest is Galactic History.