Agent Missing?

[Jason]

It is permanent, It last the lifetime of the host, in effect a copy of Bland is now alive and kicking in a real body and cut off from the wafer sync, which is why those chapters are presented from an alternative narrator.

From Bland's perspective it is still temporary.

 

[mike wightman]

From Bland's perspective it is still temporary.

Bland never reintegrates the memories of that host - he is a completely separate individual that has the memories and personality of the Bland wafer that was uploaded - hence the need for a different mechanism to relate those chapters.

 

[Jason]

Bland doesn't seem to have reintegrated the memories of the Bland that arranged things for Stikky's barony either, 90 years later, yet those events are told in first person.
It might be that the specific version of the Bland wafer on the scout ship hadn't been updated for some time, but that both later were.