Armada

by Ernest Cline

The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games. —Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender

I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.

If there was a bright center to the universe, I was on the planet it was farthest from. Please pass the blue milk, Aunt Beru.

This was my own fault, I realized. I could’ve taken precautions. But instead, I’d done the opposite. Like my old man, I’d spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality. And now, like my father before me, I was paying the price for my lack of vision. I was going off the rails on a crazy train.

Mr. S was finally retiring this year, which was a good thing, because he appeared to have run out of shits to give sometime in the previous century.

Being forced to sit between my mortal enemy and my ex-girlfriend every afternoon made seventh-period math feel like my own private Kobayashi Maru, a brutal no-win scenario designed to test my emotional fortitude.

I knew there was probably life elsewhere. But given the vast size and age of the universe, I also knew how astronomically unlikely it was we would ever make contact with it, much less within the narrow window of my own lifetime. We were all probably stuck here for the duration, on the third rock from our sun. Boldly going extinct.

“I know the future is scary at times, sweetheart. But there’s just no escaping it.”

“That’s how you know you’ve mastered a videogame—when a bunch of butt-hurt crybabies start to accuse you of cheating in an effort to cope with the beatdown they’ve just suffered at your hands.”