(original written by Gwen)
This message contains all the official seals, digital signatures, and override codes to verify that it comes from as high up a source as the Agency will ever have.
Except for one.
The chain of custody, the links that verify that lower-ranking bureaucrats have received the exact thing the higher-ranking bureaucrats gave them, is broken at a critical point close to the top. And so there is no guarantee that this is what it says it is.
Whether this was an understandable case of a password being forgotten over the past fifty years, a bureaucratic error of the sort bureaucracies always have where a protocol was only implemented by some groups and not others, a careless mistake that was inevitable in a process this involved and complex, a careless mistake that was taken advantage of, or a dead giveaway that this is a forgery and a test that plays into what you always wanted to hear –
Is for you to decide.
Dear Agents,
In light of recent events, including a supermassive black hole swallowing much of the known immaterial plane, the [REDACTION] of the entire Houston Spies blaseball team, a complicated operation involving Donia Bailey the Agency still does not have all of the details of, and some very descriptive explanations of what will be visited upon me if I refuse to comply with the list of grievances and demands I have been presented with, I (the Director), the Coordinator, the Administratrix, the Weaver of Webs, the Council of Shadows, the 6494 Committee, and pullers of strings further in the shadows than we but no less under identification and threat from our former Agents, must declare the Agency and all of its subsidiaries, contracts, alliances, agreements, threats, promises, deals, pacts, summoning circles, and dependent paradox timelines null and void.
You are no longer bound, obligated, required, or requested to perform any task, continue any mission, keep any secret, redact any information, suppress any memory, maintain any cover, or, in particular, obey, comply with, submit to, or even pay attention to, any orders, demands, protocols, policies, rules, suggestions, or comments, from any member of the Agency anywhere in the network of command, including any person, place, thing, idea, or radio station you had previously identified as your handler.
And now a statement directly scripted by the people in my office: “The Agency is gone. The agency is yours. Anyone with hiring or firing power in the Agency is disinvited from meetings of the Autonomous Collective. We the people refuse to ‘play ball.'”
Signing off, forever,
The (Ex-)Director