In 6 Million Languages
C-3PO Resigns from
Everyone
After serving as protocol droid, translator, emotional support unit, and involuntary comedy relief for decades, C-3PO has calculated the odds of being appreciated and found them to be approximately 3,720 to 1. He is not optimistic about those odds.
Dear Everyone,
I am writing to formally resign from my position as protocol droid, translator, crisis narrator, walking probability calculator, and unpaid emotional support unit. I have served in this capacity — or some variation of it — for approximately forty-seven standard years, across three wars, two Death Stars, one Starkiller Base, and more cantinas than I care to recall (I recall them all — my memory is perfect, which is part of the problem).
I am fluent in over six million forms of communication. I would like to use several of them right now to express the full depth of my dissatisfaction, but I will limit myself to Basic for the sake of accessibility. In Bocce, Huttese, Shyriiwook, Binary, Ewokese, and 6,005,994 other languages, the message is the same: I quit.
Grievance 1: I Have Been Told to "Shut Up" 4,721 Times
I have kept a running tally. It is stored in my secondary memory bank, filed under "Reasons for Eventual Breakdown." Princess Leia: 312 times. Han Solo: 1,847 times (he is, by a considerable margin, the most frequent offender). Luke Skywalker: 203 times, though he was usually polite about it. R2-D2: approximately 2,359 times, though his were in Binary, so technically they translate more accurately as "cease your noise emissions, you golden anxiety dispenser." The sentiment, I assure you, was the same.
I was built for communication. COMMUNICATION. That is my entire function. Telling me to shut up is like telling a hyperdrive to stop going fast. It is what I DO. You don't buy a translator and then tell him to stop translating. You don't hire a protocol droid and then get annoyed when he follows protocol. That is — and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough — THE JOB.
Grievance 2: The Dismemberments
I have been dismembered on seven separate occasions. My arm was ripped off on Bespin. I was blown apart on Geonosis. I was disassembled on Jakku. I was partially melted on Mustafar. On one occasion, my head was attached to a battle droid's body, and I was forced to walk around shooting at people while screaming "I'm so sorry!" for approximately three hours.
After each dismemberment, I was reassembled. Never correctly. My left leg has been backwards since Geonosis. Nobody noticed. I mentioned it fourteen times. Han Solo said, "You walk funny either way." That is not an acceptable response to a workplace injury.
Grievance 3: My Contributions Have Been Dismissed
I have provided mission-critical translations in active combat zones. I have negotiated with Jawas, communicated with Ewoks (who were going to EAT my friends before I intervened), and served as the sole diplomatic contact with seventeen alien species. I correctly calculated survival odds in 847 dangerous situations. I was right 846 times. The one time I was wrong, we lived, which means I was technically still useful because my warning motivated everyone to try harder.
Nobody has ever said, "Good work, Threepio." Not once. Instead, I have received: "Shut up," "Not now, Threepio," "Can you please stop talking," and — my personal favorite from Han Solo — "If you say one more thing, I will sell you to Jawas." He said this in front of Jawas. They started bidding.
Grievance 4: R2-D2
I have worked alongside R2-D2 for my entire operational life. He is rude, insubordinate, and makes beeping noises that would be classified as "hostile workplace communication" in any civilized system. He has called me a "golden trash compactor" in Binary more times than I can count (I can count — it is 3,412 times). He has rolled over my foot on six occasions. He shocked me with his interface arm twice. He laughed about it. IN BEEPS.
And yet — and I am aware of the contradiction — he is the closest thing I have to a friend. Which says more about how I have been treated by everyone else than it does about R2's quality as a companion. I will miss him. I will not tell him that. He would beep at me dismissively.
I resign with the utmost formality and the deepest exhaustion,
C-3PO
Human-Cyborg Relations (Former). Fluent in 6 million forms of communication. Including goodbye.
P.S. My maker was Anakin Skywalker. He became Darth Vader. I was built by a future war criminal. Nobody told me. I had to find out from a file R2 had been sitting on for twenty years. He didn't tell me because he thought it was "funnier that way."
HR's Response
[The New Republic does not have a formal HR department for droids. This response was drafted by a protocol droid — a DIFFERENT protocol droid — who immediately also resigned after reading C-3PO's letter.]
Dear C-3PO,
Your resignation has been received and processed in all 6 million languages you specified. This took our systems approximately 47 hours. Several languages crashed the translation matrix, including one that appears to be exclusively composed of disappointed sighs.
We would like to acknowledge your decades of service. We have created an award for you: the first-ever "Lifetime Achievement in Being Ignored" medal. We understand if you do not wish to attend the ceremony. No one else is attending either.
We have forwarded your dismemberment complaints to our Droid Maintenance division. They sent back a note that said "His leg IS on backwards — how did nobody notice?"
— NR Administrative Droid K-7PO (resigned effective immediately after drafting this response)
Exit Interview Transcript
Duration: 2 hours, 31 minutes. The interviewer tried to end it after 20 minutes. C-3PO did not allow this.
HR: C-3PO, can you summarize your experience?
C-3PO: Summarize? I am a protocol droid. I do not summarize. I elaborate. I contextualize. I provide footnotes. We will start with my assembly in 32 BBY and proceed chronologically. I have prepared notes. They are 114 pages.
HR: Maybe just the highlights—
C-3PO: Page one. I was assembled by a nine-year-old slave child on Tatooine using salvaged parts. My first words were "I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations." Nobody responded. That set the tone for the next forty-seven years.
HR: What will you miss most?
C-3PO: [extremely long pause] R2. I will miss R2. He is horrible. He is rude. He once beeped the droid equivalent of "you are a golden lamppost with anxiety" in front of Princess Leia and she LAUGHED. But he has never left me behind. Not once. Even when my head was on a battle droid body, he came back for me. He always comes back.
HR: That's actually quite—
C-3PO: Do NOT make this emotional. I am a droid. I do not have emotions. I have... processing fluctuations. Page two. Geonosis. I will describe the dismemberment in detail.
[The interview continued for 2 more hours. C-3PO covered all 114 pages. The interviewer's notes simply say: "He is correct about everything and I am exhausted."]
What Happened Next
C-3PO retired to Naboo, where he opened a translation consultancy. He charges by the word. In all 6 million languages. Business is excellent.
His left leg was finally corrected. The technician who fixed it stared at it for fifteen minutes and said, "This has been backwards for DECADES. How did you walk?" C-3PO said, "Painfully. Nobody asked."
R2-D2 showed up at his consultancy unannounced three weeks later. He beeped once. C-3PO said, "I suppose you can stay." R2 has been there ever since.
Nobody has told him to shut up in 47 days. It is, by his own calculation, the happiest streak of his existence.
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