Armada: Chapter 26
Hopefully you’re ready for the end of Armada, because it just stops.
That was all it took.
In that one moment, it appeared that I had negotiated a cease-fire. […] All around the world, the alien drones and ships had just suddenly deactivated, allowing themselves to be easily destroyed.
No, seriously. If you thought I was joking, nuh uh. The ending of Armada is basically as close as a book can get to just printing: “And then the story ended”.
I saw the surface of Europa crack open beneath me, breaking apart like an eggshell as a giant chrome orb rose out of the hidden ocean below
Spoiler: Europa shows up again, completely in tact, later in this chapter. Again, if you thought I was joking about how rushed this ending is, nope. Ernest Cline is done with writing, thank you.
The giant metal orb introduces itself to Zack.
“I am the Emissary,” it said. “I am an intelligent machine created by a galactic community of peaceful civilizations known as the Sodality.”
The Emissary quickly explained to me that there were never actually any extraterrestrial beings living on Europa at all.
WAIT. WAIT. WAIT. ARMADA. DO YOU MEAN. TO SAY. THAT THE INVASION. WASN’T REAL?
“Then who built the armada that just attacked Earth?” I asked. I felt like a character in someone else’s dream. “Who have we been fighting this entire time?”
“I built the Armada,” it said. “And this entire time you were fighting against yourselves.”
Nnnnnnnnno? N-no? Because… those words in that order do not describe the events of the book we just read? It doesn’t even work as a metaphor. They fought against actual, literal aggressive robots made by aliens.
“So you’re saying that if I hadn’t destroyed the Icebreaker, you would have exterminated the entire human race?”
“Correct,” the machine replied. “But thankfully you made the correct choice, and knowingly disengaged from the cycle of warlike escalation with your imaginary enemy.”
How did no one writing or editing Armada know what the word “imaginary” means?
The Emissary explains that the Sodality is a society of twelve sentient intelligent species, and they’ve been monitoring earth since the invention of nuclear weapons in 1945. When humanity reached the moon in 1969, the Sodality took note of a potential threat to its peaceful existence, and sent the Emissary to test humanity with a hostile first-contact “to gauge whether or not your species is capable of existing peacefully” and for potential membership in the Sodality. In my first draft of this post, I wrote “Sodality” as “Solidarity” every single time because fuck books that introduce new concepts in the last chapter.
Well. It’s nice to know that after 350 pages of “IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. WHAT IS THE TRUTH?”, Armada is finally giving us a nice, straightforward explanation that we don’t have to listen to Zack constantly explain how it doesn’t ring true.
The machine’s declaration didn’t ring true to my ears
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, ZACK. JUST LET THIS BOOK BE OVER.
“Your ‘test’ killed millions of innocent people,” I said through clenched teeth. “Including several of my friends. And my father.”
“We are sorry for the losses you have suffered,” the Emissary said. “But know that many other species have passed the Test with no conflict or loss of life.”
How would that help?
I was nearly sobbing now. “What did you want us to do? What were we supposed to do?”
“There is no right or wrong way of taking the Test,” the Emissary told me. […] “You should not feel too remorseful about how the Test played out,” the machine said. “Your species’ primitive warlike nature made a certain amount of conflict inevitable, as it often does. Regardless, your species should be pleased with the outcome. You passed the Test.”
The Emissary explains that once the Test is passed, the individual most directly responsible (i.e. Zack) is extended the invitation to join the Sodality on behalf of their species. In other words, “You passed the test that says you’re a civilization worthy of our respect! Our first order of business is to ignore your established systems of government!”
I didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking it over. I just went ahead and said yes.
“Congratulations.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. That is it.”
I bet this exact conversation happened between Ernest Cline and his editor when they got to this part of the book.
Zack disengages his link from his drone ship, leaving it “in orbit around Europa […] possibly forever” (despite that Europa apparently just cracked open after the Emissary emerged from it). He learns that the aliens were broadcasting the exchange all over the world and everyone knows what just happened. Then Ernest Cline really decides, yeah, I’m done with writing now.
When the third wave of the alien armada arrived a few hours later, the drones didn’t attack. Instead, they landed and began to help humanity rebuild its civilization, as well as its planet’s fragile environment. The alien drones also began to dispense miraculous life-giving medicine and technology, along with an endless supply of clean, abundant energy.
Armada: Epilogue
In the months following the end of the invasion, Zack and his friends receive Medals of Honor and Zack and Lex start dating. A year later, a commemorative statue of Zack’s dad goes up in his hometown, and a very regretful Admiral Vance gives a speech praising him and expressing his gratitude that “my father had prevented him from making the worst mistake of his career”.
Zack also runs into Knotcher. If you don’t remember who the fuck Knotcher is and wonder why this is so important that their reconciliation needed to be reserved for the epilogue… yeah, I don’t blame you. We’re just gonna skip this nonsense.
Zack decides he’s still suspicious of the aliens and wants nothing to do with them.
I wasn’t interested in helping either the asshole aliens who’d devised such a horrible “test” and murdered my father— or the human powers-that-be who had lied to all of humanity for decades and nearly brought us to extinction.
And then about two pages later decides he does.
I had decided to become one of Earth’s ambassadors to the Sodality after all. In time, I hoped my new job would eventually put me in a position to learn the truth about our new alien benefactors’ true motives.
And that’s basically the epilogue. And Armada, the book whose entire plot was so insanely “there’s a plot twist at the end” that the last chapter was just “and then the plot twist happened and everything ended”. The movie rights for this book sold for seven figures.