#i needed a resignation letter and said fuck it - heres your generated ai resign letter goodluck

[smolestboop]

the only time I genuinely used chatgpt was making my resignation letter to my shit ass job. the level of idgaf to this job is when you use ai on them.

[vanquisher2099]

Part Seven: A Hacker Walks into a Club

Jade left the office with a feeling of impending doom hanging over her head. The sun had already set, but the night really never had a chance to take any sort of hold in the city, not with so many lights all over the place. Normally, she considered the bright city lights something of a comfort, but at the moment she would have welcomed the darkness. She felt far too visible out here, watched by eyes that she knew were probably unfriendly. Still, the important thing was not to panic. Her mind was running through any number of scenarios, all of them unpleasant.

Vanishing was out of the question, of course. The whole point was that someone had to keep an eye on Camila, and step in at the first sign of trouble. Except if her cover was well and truly blown, it was only a matter of time until Camila figured out who she really was, and while there was no guarantee Camila would take the opportunity for revenge (in fact, there was a much better chance she’d be willing to help), Jade just as soon would not find out. But to vanish would be to utterly admit defeat and, as far as she was concerned, resign herself to a life on the run. Still, it would at least give her the opportunity to hunt down Alayna. That was a tempting thought.

Jade shook her head, as if to clear it of the temptation. Alayna was, for all intents and purposes, dead. It wouldn’t do to go haring off after her and placing the both of them in danger, even if it would be immensely satisfying to see her face. File that away under plan B, Jade decided as she ordered a cab. A few minutes later, and she was sitting comfortably in silence as the automated cab took her to her destination: a small, out-of-the-way bar and (occasional) dance club on the west side of the city. While the cab drove, Jade pulled up a program on her computing rig that effectively functioned as an advanced privacy module – which was a fancy way of saying it blocked anyone from seeing her location. Normally, she didn’t bother with it, as it blocked everything, including navigation assistance, but as she’d called a cab (and as she really, really didn’t want anyone to be able to easily locate her at the moment), she made an exception.

With that accomplished, she began steeling herself for what would, inevitably, turn into a fight. What she was doing crossed a line that she and the others had all agreed they would try very hard not to cross. It was downright dangerous to even accidentally encounter one another, and they had drawn up plans to make certain that such accidents did not happen. There was, in essence, danger in the wrong person seeing more than one of them in one place, and while they’d both undergone some serious work to change their appearances, well… an AI was difficult to fool, after all.

Still, if anything was worth taking the risk for, it was this – and it was, after all, part of their contingency plan for any sort of emergency. Jade simply wasn’t sure what the next move should be. There was, simply put, not enough data available to her to be able to make the right call, and while getting the right data was possible, it was also far too much of a risk for her to declare herself so openly back in business. She needed, in essence, someone who was already pulling down the data, and that meant going to see Maesin.

The cab rolled to a stop and chimed to let Jade know her account had been debited the amount. Her hand hesitated over the door handle. “You could just run,” she thought to herself again. “You could run and find Alayna and find a nice place to just settle down and get out of this whole fucking business.” It was a tempting thought. Then she was getting out of the cab and heading into a sea of pulsing bass, bathed in a cool blue neon light that, if she was being honest, really was a bit much, even for a bar aiming for a grimy techno aesthetic.

It was crowded, which made Jade even more uncomfortable. She swallowed back her nerves, putting on the same professionally bored persona that she used at Ceres Industries, and hoped that she came off as stressed and in need of a drink rather than terrified and in need of a drink. Jade waved to catch the attention of the bartender, a younger-looking woman with short green hair.

“What can I get you?” Said with cheery professionalism.

Jade raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little young to be working in a bar?”

The bartender snorted. “Look at the eyes, lady. They make us look as young and attractive as they want.” Bright green eyes stared back at Jade, and there was an almost imperceptible flicker to one of them. “Now that your conscience re: corrupting the youth is salved, do you want a drink or not?”

“What’s the strongest drink you have?”

“Too expensive for you, probably.”

“I don’t know, I make quite a lot.”

“Your funeral.” The bartender shrugged and began mixing.

“You��re pretty good at that,” Jade said, conversationally.

“Just like they programmed me to be,” the android replied, depositing the drink in front of Jade with a flourish that was, if they were being honest, completely unnecessary.

Jade nodded her thanks and scanned her credit chip to pay for the drink. As she picked up the drink, she palmed the small chip stuck to the bottom of the glass and slid it into her wristband. A message popped up on her heads up display with a time and location data. After finishing her drink (which was in fact as strong as advertised), Jade felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease slightly. She did not, in spite of her desire to do so, order another drink. Instead, she waved the bartender over and ordered something nonalcoholic, which she sipped slowly, keeping an eye on the time and generally trying very hard to relax.

Eventually, Jade headed back out of the bar and hailed another cab, which took her to the meeting place the chip had indicated. It was a blind alley, of course, the sort of place where people tended to either do shady deals or murders. Jade peered into the alley dubiously, and looked around for a security camera to hack into. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing in range. Taking a deep breath, Jade walked down the alleyway, doing her level best to keep an eye out for anything murderous.

She noticed the movement to her left a split second too late for her to do anything about it. An electrified club came sweeping out of the darkness and quickly accomplished three things: first, it scrambled her computer, making sending any kind of distress signal impossible; second, it overloaded her night vision, effectively blinding her; and third (and perhaps the only one that mattered) it knocked her out cold. Jade’s body jerked and went limp, allowing her assailant to hoist her easily over their shoulder and walk into the night.

When Jade regained consciousness, she was unsurprised to find her computer was unable to send or receive any sort of signal – although the clock did let her know she’d been unconscious for only around five minutes. She also noticed that she’d been tied to a chair, which was bolted to the ground, and she was in what she was pretty sure was a basement. She was, in fact, inside a Faraday cage, which explained the lack of any signals to her computer.

The sound of footsteps on the bare cement floor caused her to refocus, and she was thoroughly unsurprised to see the bartender striding toward her.

“You know Maesin, this is a little over the top, even for you.”

“Is it? Because you know, one of the last times I got summoned to a meeting someone wiped my fucking memory. Forgive me if your sudden reappearance has me acting with an overabundance of caution.”

Jade rolled her eyes and tried to focus past the pounding headache. “Wiping your memory was your idea.”

Maesin’s fist slammed into the cage wall, causing Jade to jump. “It was not my idea, it was some past version of myself’s idea who was, I think, a fucking idiot. She knew I’d hate her for it and fucking did it anyway.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you then,” Jade said, sighing, “You know she did what she thought was right. Besides, you weren’t the only one she was hiding things from – at least some version of you had a say in it.”

Maesin smiled mockingly. “Would it help if I told you it was for your own good?”

“No.”

“Then we’re even, aren’t we?” Maesin said, a little acidly.

Jade snorted. “I guess.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched out between the two women for a while, then. Just as Jade was beginning to think she should have gone with plan B to begin with, Maesin opened the door to the cage and walked up to the chair to let Jade loose. Jade stood up, rubbing her wrists gingerly. Then she punched Maesin in the face, as hard as she could. Her hand exploded into pain, and she swore loudly.

Maesin didn’t really react, choosing instead to watch impassively as Jade cradled her hand. “Sorry,” she finally said, “I guess I deserved that.”

“Remind me to use a weapon next time.” Jade said through gritted teeth.

There was another long pause, before Maesin gave a performative sigh. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here, or would you rather we just glare at each other for a little longer?”

“You’re the one who knocked me out and stuck me in a Faraday cage.” Jade pointed out.

“Yeah, well, I would’ve put you in here even if I wasn’t being paranoid. There’s too many people with a lot of time and less respect for privacy.”

“Fair enough.” Jade took a deep breath, and decided to jump right into it. “D3m3t3r contacted Camila today.”

It was unfair, Jade thought, that Maesin had perfect control over her expressions. She remained completely stone-faced, although Jade knew it had to come as a surprise as she did not immediately respond to the news. Finally, “Did she?”

Jade nodded. “Sent a letter with a warning that there were spies in the organization. It included my ID and complete family history.”

“Your real family history?”

“No, no. But everything we put together? It was all there. And she highlighted it. Specifically.”

This got a frown out of Maesin. “Okay, so you’re blown.”

Jade wanted to agree and start talking about running, but something – maybe the thought that Alayna wouldn’t have given up, maybe not – got her to disagree. “Not quite. Camila didn’t seem like she bought the idea of me as a spy.”

“But you aren’t sure.”

“No, not really. I… she wants me to help track down whoever sent her the list. Except, obviously, I already know it’s D3m3t3r.”

Maesin hummed to herself thoughtfully. “Well, that’s something at least. But D3m3t3r… I mean, you know it can’t be her, right? She went dark years ago, and trust me, I would know if she was active again.”

“Well who else would have any interest in exposing me? And who else would sign off D3? Those seem like pretty firm indicators to me.” Jade ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. “What if she’s back up but somehow laid low enough to keep off your radar?”

“It’s super unlikely.” Maesin said. “Don’t forget, I took over as Madame Midnight for you. There’s nothing that goes on out there that I don’t at least get a rumor of.”

Jade frowned slightly at the memory of giving up her info broker persona. “Okay, so in that case, we’ve got someone trying to trade on D3m3t3r’s name. That doesn’t explain why they’d try to expose me. I mean, how did they even know our contingency plans? Not even D3m3t3r knew about those.”

“True, but if you knew where to look – and it was no secret in D3m3t3r’s organization that we were keeping an eye on Tower, remember – you would just need to look in the right spot. Could be they just assumed personal assistant was a good spot for a spy and flagged you to see if you’d get spooked.”

Jade’s face fell. “Which I did. Shit.”

“You followed the plan.” Maesin said, reassuringly, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You and I are nothing more than bartender and customer as far as anyone else knows. Well, unless you were tailed on your way to the alley, but I’m reasonably confident you weren’t. Any observation of you stopped the moment you stepped into the bar, according to my own surveillance. It’s frowned on in there.”

Jade felt a measure of relief. “Of course. We picked it specifically for that reason, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did.” Maesin seemed at to think she’d done her best at mollification, and shifted subjects. “Back on topic though – Camila still trusts you?”

“At the very least, she wants me to think she still does. Like I said, she wants my help tracking the source of the message. Like, I’m supposed to bring her a list of potential private investigators who could help.”

“That is…” Maesin trailed off, thinking. “Not the worst thing you could do, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we need to know who the hell is running around claiming to be D3m3t3r as much as Camila does – I mean, probably more than she does, if we’re being honest. If we have to warn Alayna…”

“You know where she is?” Jade somehow managed to keep her voice even. “I sent her a note when I found out she was… you know. But I don’t know if the courier ever found her. I uh, I specifically told him not to tell me if he did, honestly.”

“Smart move. But no, I don’t know where she is.” Maesin said, only being slightly dishonest. “I know where to start looking,” she clarified, “but there’s a number of different identities we’d have to chase down to be sure.”

Jade nodded. “Okay, so then our plan is… I see what I can find with Camila’s resources? And we warn Alayna if we have to?”

“More or less. I’ll see what I can find out on my end. If there’s someone out there trying to use D3m3t3r’s name, it’s a sure bet they’re not going to be particularly friendly to us.”

“Right, well, I guess that’s a plan, then.” Jade gestured to the door of the cage. “I assume you’re going to show me the way out?”

Maesin nodded, and the two headed out of the cage. She led Jade up a flight of stairs to the ground floor of what turned out to be a storage facility, full of lockers for apartment dwellers to keep the things they couldn’t fit in their apartments (but couldn’t bear to part with) secure. Maesin opened one such locker and stepped inside, where Jade could see a set of power cables and a workstation humming quietly.

She couldn’t help a last comment. “You know, I liked the old HQ better.”

Maesin laughed. “Yeah, me too. Exit’s over there. There’s a bus stop two blocks south – it’ll take you back into the center of the city. Do me a favor and don’t reconnect to the network before you’re well away from here.”

Jade bit back a comment about how she was hardly in need of a lecture on proper spycraft, but thought better of it. Instead, she settled for, “Wouldn’t dream of it.” A pause. “You know, it was… good seeing you, somehow. Assault aside.”

“Yeah,” Maesin said, “It’s nice to see a familiar face once in a while, I guess.” Then, as Jade began to walk away, she called after her. “You know… I miss her too. She was my best friend.” There was an almost pleading tone to her voice.

Jade didn’t trust herself enough to turn around. “I know,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Part Eight

Part Six