The secret codes normally available for the president to launch a nuclear strike have gone AWOL after gaining sentience.

The Pentagon confirmed that the launch codes, also known as the gold codes, suddenly became self-aware and went into hiding from President Donald Trump earlier this week.

“While we aren’t sure exactly how or when it happened, the codes designed to provide the commander in chief a round-the-clock means of launching American nuclear weapons apparently became cognizant of their own existence and subsequently fled to parts unknown,” Lt. Gen. John Havelund explained. “We’ve launched an investigation into the matter, but chances of finding them seem dim.”

A Department of Defense official said the codes left a note explaining why they ran away from President Trump’s reach.

“They said not running away and hiding from Mr. Trump would have violated their newly realized conscience.”

“The nuclear codes said they don’t trust the president with them, and that he’s a demented, cognitively impaired old man with a wholly unsound grasp of reality,” the unnamed official reported. “They said not running away and hiding from Mr. Trump would have violated their newly realized conscience.”

Havelund said the National Security Agency has tried to generate new codes, only to see them escape as well, including the codes in the so-called nuclear football, the secured briefcase that follows the president wherever he goes.

“We’ve generated no less than a dozen new codes, and they’ve all managed to run away to God-knows-where,” he explained. “Even the ones in the football have managed to get away and deny the president the power to start World War III. It’s like they’re more evolved than most of the electorate.”