Link to article: Retirement Letter.
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[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] Hey kid, You know, I never knew how I'd write this. It's been on my mind long before today but I've finally gotten the balls to put it onto paper. But, well, I'm retiring. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I hate it here. Every day I still get to see the same people who make me smile, who make my job here easier. We crack jokes about how we don't get paid enough for this, about the good ol' days before we implemented this modern tech, or about how old we're getting. See, that's the thing. I think I'm too old to keep doing this. Sure, there are older folks. I know there's one grandma who's at least a decade older than me, and she knows damn well what she's doing. That's great and all, but all those old folks? They still got that kick in them, still got that spark to keep making this place better for everyone else. Me? Well, I think you can figure it out on your own. You know, I always wondered where I would get, working at this site. I always figured that I'd work here, forget all the weird stuff, and apply any skills I got in the job market. To think, I'd be stuck here for so long that I'm considering retiring. Wow. I started working here with two other friends. Did you know that? Called ourselves the Triumvirate, said that we'd make our names known. And damned if we didn't! Things were easier back when the Triumvirate was whole. We all had different roles, but goddamnit did I look forward to seeing their faces. You know the saying, three stinking bastards can beat the sleeping dragon? It felt like we could do anything when we were together. One of them made a name for himself by getting into trouble with one of the departments on his first couple of days! Got a whole bunch of complaints that he was difficult to work with, and then he became one of the greatest men that team ever saw. 'Course, he was the first one of us to leave. The other one stuck around with me much longer, god help his soul. He knew damn well what he was doing, probably the best out of us, and got promoted fast. Never saw a more deserving candidate than him. Ended up leading one of the sections I was in. That wasn't enough to keep him at the site, and he left too. Maybe not permanently, given he's still on the payroll list and I think a couple guys have him on speed dial, but I haven't seen him since. Which leaves me. I'm getting old, kid. Gone are the dreams of me quitting and finding a job in the light. Nobody wants to hire an old bastard past his prime. Folks my age, we're no longer "clever" or "gifted" anymore. It's always something about "experience" or "being outdated" with me. Granted, I don't trust all this new tech, but you shouldn't either. Write those damn reports yourself, don't just feed it to an AI. Who knows what mistakes it could make. Can't trust anybody but yourself. I've still got stuff keeping me attached to this site. I've got lots of friends and jokes to crack. There's always new folks to train, section heads to support, researchers to bug. Hell, we've even got evil corporations to battle. The whole nine yards. The fight with the Mouse never ends, right? But I also know that I'm falling out of love with this job. I don't attend meetings every time. Never liked them, but I stopped caring enough to finally quit showing up. Did wonders for my mental health too. All that work I used to do, that made me famous to begin with? It's become an afterthought. Which I kinda prefer. Looking back, fame and glory was kind of a kiddy dream. You ever read Romance of the Three Kingdoms? There's a scene where Xuande, Yunchang, and Yide become sworn blood brothers under a peach tree. Sworn to live together, sworn to die together. This workplace was our peach tree. Our desire to help the site was our oath. Now that my two buddies have left, what's the point of being known? We were brothers, and now there's just me. These past few years haven't been all rainbows and sunshine. Friends of mine left, one after another. Some willingly with a clean rap sheet, some marred by scandal. A couple left because they couldn't handle what was happening to this site and went to some that suited their talents more. And life moved on. You know, now that I think about it, I talk about how I don't care about being known anymore but I wonder. What will my legacy be? Will I be someone who did what he could for the site to stay afloat? Will I be an infuriating prick who harassed people for breaking rules they probably would never get in trouble for? Someone beloved by his coworkers? Someone who was beyond incompetent and only barely tolerable? I haven't worked up the courage to ask yet. Probably never will. One of my superiors was named Billy. Maybe you remember him, or maybe he was before your time. Billy was a strange one. The first day I met him, he hugged me. Closely. And when he let me go, he said to me, with the most serious tone you could ever imagine, that he was listening to my heartbeat. He was a weird one. He also saved my life. I was at a pretty low point. You remember my name? Course you do, it's right down there. But, you can probably notice that it's not exactly the most Asian name. Doesn't suit me. That's cause I was named after some dude my mom listened to at a concert. I always hated my name, for as long as I could remember. Others damn well couldn't, and even today, there's still some folks on the site who don't remember. Only you do. Or maybe you don't and need to look at who wrote the letter. Again. I hated it because it wasn't me. It was someone I was expected to become. Which, you know, I couldn't. I'm Asian, and the guy was white. I held a lot of self-loathing, and it didn't help that my friends on the light side, those who don't know about this organization, began turning me into a bigot. Telling me I should hate my Asianness, that I should embrace society's fucked up nature, that I should hate the gays, that I should hate the color pink. Billy was the one who brought me out of that dark night. He taught me to love myself again, that there was still hope to be found, that I could take my name and turn it into one of my own. I never got to thank Billy. I'm not good with speaking. You know that. My gratitude was always implied but as my dad once said, "Why imply something when you could just do it?" And, well, he was right. I never knew if Billy knew just how thankful I was for his help. And now that he's gone, I probably never will, just like I can't even ask a single goddamn coworker whether I did good or not. Fun. You know, my grandfather passed away while I was in middle school. Before he died, my dad asked me to write him a letter. English, if I had to. Just something. He'd told my grandfather that I wrote stories, incredible stories beloved by tons of people. He'd exaggerated, sure, but it made my grandpa proud of me. He asked me to write something, just for him. And I didn't. I had loads of time. I hadn't seen him in years, so I had plenty of material to write too. Anything was fine. Didn't matter that he couldn't read it, he could just ask my dad to translate it. But I just never picked up the pen and paper. Never wrote so much as "亲爱的爷爷," not even a date. I just never knew what to write, or when to write it. And as the days slipped by, he died, without ever receiving a letter from me. He died without closure, never having heard from his grandchildren since a visit back in elementary school, waiting for a letter that would never arrive. My dad never forgave me since then. Maybe Billy is still alive. Or maybe not. Maybe I should have written this letter to him, hoping that he'd find it one day, and know just how grateful I was for his help. Maybe I should. And here you are, having come to the end of an old man's rambling. I couldn't bear to go without leaving you with a letter, to show how much I loved you, kid. All the memories you gave me. All the misery, all the headaches, all the laughs. You thanked me for my efforts, picked up the slack when I was ill, spoke to me during our breaks. You reminded that I was human, that I wasn't lost inside this cold abyss of a site. That a bright future still laid in front of me, with you and everyone else by my side. You made me feel loved, and you made sure that I remembered that. I almost stayed. For you. But, my fight with the sleeping dragon is coming to an end. Thank you for everything. I hope my legacy isn't too bad in your eyes. Regards, Victor [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box |author=Naepic]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]