Max Arena

by Jamie Doyle

  Now Kris smiled a wide, beaming grin. Elsa squeezed her hand again and Kris looked up.

  ‘Okay,’ Kris said. ‘I’ll think really, really hard about it.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Elsa replied, turning to watch Millie and Jason start pulling a bunch of tinsel strings out of another box.

  ‘And what about you?’ Kris asked.

  Elsa turned back and said, ‘What about me?’

  ‘Now it’s my turn for a free shot. How are you holding up? You might be just about to lose your husband and then there’s Millie and Jason. How are you handling them?’

  ‘I don’t worry so much about Max and I know that sounds a bit cold, but the truth is, we’ve known for a long time that this was coming. It’s still hard to deal with, but Max has to do what Max has to do and I bought into that. What I do struggle with though is the kids. Not that they really know what’s coming. It’s more that when Max first told me all about his alien side and that Macktidas would one day come along and upend us, it was just us. Me and him. No kids to think about, but now we’ve got Millie and Jason and it’s different. Completely different. Now we have someone else in our lives to protect and its’ hard to come to grips with the fact that they might just be about to lose the greatest protector they could ever have in their father and then if that happens and Macktidas’ army comes in to kill us all, all they’ll have is me and I’ll be useless in helping them. I’m not a soldier, let alone anything like Max, so that’s what makes it hard. I just feel, you know, helpless when I think about it, so I shut it out, at least as much as I can.’

  Elsa stopped and looked at her children as they wrapped each other in strings of green, red and silver tinsel, giggling like mad. Now it was Kris’ turn to look softly at her friend.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ Kris said softly, dragging Elsa’s attention back to her. ‘I’m not a mother and I may never be one, but I’ve spent enough time with you and Max and the kids and what I know is that when Millie and Jason look up at you, it’s unconditional love. Their eyes brim with it and if Max is no longer around to protect all of you, they don’t need you to be just like Max. They need you to be just like you. Their mother and someone who unconditionally loves them in return. You may not be able to fight off alien hordes, but the way you protect your children is by wrapping them in love all the way to the end and that’s better than anything else. Love may not save your lives, but it will keep the fear at bay and it’s hard to ask for much more than that. Love is really all a child wants and you’ve got loads of love to give them.’

  Staring at Kris, Elsa’s eyes grew wide, her pupils deep and full as tears filmed across them. Leaning forward, Elsa gently embraced her friend and held her tight. Kris hugged her back and they stayed locked together in silence.

  Suddenly, the two women felt little hands pulling at them and they broke apart to find Millie and Jason tugging on their clothes.

  ‘Our turn! Our turn!’ they pleaded. Elsa and Kris laughed, genuine, heart-warming laughter in return.

  ‘Okay!’ Elsa called out and hefted Millie off her feet as she stood up, hugging her close and spinning.

  Kris followed suit, lifting Jason off the floor too, squeezing him into her chest as he giggled and giggled.

  Noon, 1st December (same time). Together We Win

  ‘Max?’ Sally asked. ‘You’re mysteriously quiet? Why so pensive?’

  Max looked up at his host and searched her eyes for even the most remote possibility that she would ask anything other than another question about how he was feeling and unfortunately, he failed. So, Max decided to take matters into his own hands and usurp the interview, regardless of the consequences.

  ‘Sally, I don’t want to talk about myself anymore,’ he said plainly. ‘In all honesty, I’m just a regular bloke. Sure, in a month’s time I’m going to step into the arena and defend the world’s safety against God knows what sort of aliens, but today, right now, I’m not the most important story on the planet.’

  Sally’s response as best Max could make out was mainly shock. At first she opened her eyes slightly wider and stiffened a little in her chair, but then slowly Max saw the wheels start to grind back into motion. Her eyes squinted marginally and then hardened around the edges as a slight tension gripped her jaw line.

  ‘So, Max,’ Sally said, probably a little more tersely than she would have liked, ‘if you are not the biggest story on the planet today, what on Earth is?’

  ‘Us,’ Max replied, holding his hands out to the sides, palms open and looking from Sally to the audience. ‘All of us.’

  ‘I don’t understand. All eyes are on you right now, Max, so why don’t we get back to you?’ Sally said, shifting in her seat and attempting to wrest control back of the interview.

  ‘Sally, I’m not a deep thinker,’ Max ploughed on, ‘and I’m absolutely not a philosopher or a visionary. I’m no good at any of that stuff, but what I am good at is observing things. I see, hear and feel things around me and then react on instinct. I don’t think deeply about how I react. I just do it and that seems to have got me this far in life. So I must be observing things okay, so let me tell you what my observation is that explains why I think all of us are the biggest story in the world right now?’

  If Sally had been allowed to stand up and rail at Max, she would have, but the queen of day time television does no such thing, so seeking guidance and support, she looked across at her stage producer, who immediately signalled back that she had to run with it. Sally’s return glare to the producer promised imminent discomfort, but she had to give in. Turning back to Max, she plucked up all her depths of professionalism and fashioned the most radiating, flawless and completely disingenuous smile. A weaker man would have flinched, but it bounced off Max like a bug off a windshield.

  ‘Please, go on, Max?’ she oozed. ‘What is this observation of your’s?’

  ‘Well,’ Max said, leaning back in his chair, ‘five months ago when all this first started and that big, ugly alien popped up on the screen and threatened everyone, fear took over. Everywhere. I could see it. I could hear it and I could absolutely feel it. It was rampant and you didn’t need to be a good observer to know that fear was king back then.’

  ‘And now?’ Sally expertly cut-in. ‘Five months on, what do you observe now?’

  ‘Hope.’

  Sally arched an eyebrow. ‘Hope? How can that be when we all know that big, ugly alien is still out there planning to kill us all?’

  ‘Sure, he’s still out there and yes, he’s still coming for us, but five months on, we’re not living in fear any more. Hope has taken over and my proof is in what I see, hear and feel.’

  ‘And what exactly do you see, hear and feel?’

  ‘I see wars on hold. I see people trying to live normal lives. I see crime rates lower than before all this started. I hear new songs of hope and joy on the radio. I hear people being interviewed all over the world, encouraging others to get out of hiding and celebrate life. I even hear studio audiences laughing at my bad jokes.’

  The audience cheered and clapped on cue.

  Sally forced out a small smile. ‘So what do you feel, Max? Do you feel hope around you?’

  ‘More than anything. Every time I lace up these orange shoes and run around in front of a crowd, it’s viral. The air is thick with it. If I had a butterfly net, I could catch it all day. I can even feel it right now. Right here. This audience is not sitting here in fear. They’re pumped. They’re up for whatever comes next. They’re not waiting for some big, dumb alien to come down and wipe us out, are you?’ Max said, turning to the audience. The crowd burst into action. Cheers, whoops and applause burst out.

  Max and Sally patiently waited for the crowd to settle down, even though it took some time. As the noise dissipated, Max took in Sally’s expression and noted it had softened. The crinkles at the corners of her eyes had gone and the firmness of her jaw had eased. She sat silently watching the audience beyond the cameras, her eyes taking it all
in. When the crowd finally fell quiet, Sally did not re-engage. Instead she sat looking beyond the bright lights and out into space. Max ventured gently in.

  ‘Sally, I know you can feel it too, can’t you?’ he asked.

  Sally broke from her reverie and looked directly at Max. The facade was gone. It had broken and melted away. Just like that. No longer did the queen of day time television sit across from Max. Sally was just another human on the planet, living in the same moment and the same world as everyone else.

  ‘I can feel it,’ she said quietly.

  ‘And now,’ Max added, ‘do you want me to share with you the rare deep thinking that I’ve done and tell you why I think hope has replaced fear?’

  Sally nodded.

  Max leaned forward and over a billion television screens filled with a close-up of Maximilian Augustus Dyson.

  ‘Five months ago when we were first threatened, fear set in because we all retreated from the threat. We hid. We pulled back into ourselves. We ran away from the danger and ultimately, we all wound up alone. Not literally, although in many cases yes, but figuratively. Families pulled in and hid away. Individuals with nowhere to go, isolated themselves. We stopped going outside. We stopped trusting each other. We didn’t even talk to each other and by all of us hiding away, we allowed fear to take control and rule our lives. Then that fear drove many people to strike out and hurt others and that ramped the fear up even higher. We self-escalated and every day, we notched the fear level up again and again. We were all, each of us alone and under the control of fear.’

  ‘And then you came out and gave us something to hope for,’ Sally not so much asked, but just said.

  ‘Well, sure I was part of the catalyst to change, but you know what,’ Max said, ‘I didn’t make hope. People don’t make hope. It’s an emotion, so it’s always there. Hope is always there inside people, it just has to have the courage to come out and while fear was ruling the roost, there was no way hope was coming out to play. So, sure, I gave hope a little bit of a leg up, but hope performs best when it has company, when it has friends. When one person hopes, it helps another person start to hope and then like any good virus, it becomes contagious and before you know it, hope is everywhere, fuelling itself and that’s what happened over the last few months. Our hope found its courage and it beat fear down. We found hope and we beat fear down. We did it, together and that’s why I say, the most important story in the world right now is all about us. All of us. We’ve stood up. We’ve said enough of this fear crap. We’re not going to hide in some hole and wait for whatever happens next. We’re going to get up and face it and live life while we can. This story is about the entire human race living in hope. That’s what this story is about and inside that story there’s a lesson to be learnt.’

  Sally tilted her head. ‘A lesson? What lesson?’

  ‘Alone, we will lose. Alone we are powerless. Alone we will destroy ourselves and each other and by the time the aliens turn up, we’ll have already killed ourselves, but together, we have real power. If we’re going to beat this alien thug and his armies, we can only do it together. Our real strength is in finding each other, standing next to each other and supporting each other. No one has to live in fear because if we all face this as one, we can do anything we want and that goes for me too. I’m no one on my own, but with my family and those that I care about by my side, together we’re a force to be reckoned with and then there’s the support all of you give me. The hope you instil in me is overwhelming. I may not be superman, but bloody hell, some days I sure feel like it. I have learned over the last few months I need all of you, just as much as you need me. The lesson in all this is, alone we lose, but together...together we win.’

  Max rammed the last word out through gritted teeth, his clenched fist pumping the air. Instantly, the crowd ripped the air apart. It was like all the herds of Africa had rumbled into the studio at once. Even if Max had wanted to talk, it was pointless. Every single person in the audience was up and jumping or stamping their feet or clapping their hands red raw. Pandemonium reigned and then the Team Max anthem sounded and the noise levels escalated even higher with the overhead clapping and foot stomping.

  Meanwhile, up on stage, Sally just stared at Max, all semblance of her television personality completely gone. Even her make-up looked dulled down. She was now just simply Sally and then she slowly got to her feet and took a step forward to stand in front of Max. He looked up at her and then she put her arms out wide. For a long moment, Max sat and looked up at her like a child beholding his mother and then, slowly, he too stood up and accepted Sally’s gentle, but firm embrace. Max hugged her in return like he would his own children. It was warm, genuine and honestly felt really good. Despite the rioting crowd and the fact he could not see Sally’s face, Max knew she was crying and that made him feel even better because he knew they were cleansing tears of joy. Max smiled probably one of the widest and happiest smiles he had ever felt and hugged Sally even harder.

  9pm, 1st December (later that night). The Pain of a Good Man

  The mansion’s formal living room ebbed and flowed with a tide of casual conversation and good natured cheer. As the crowd grew more and more comfortable, the volume of laughter steadily rose and the clink of glassware became more frequent. Christmas spirit gripped the island and for tonight at least, most thoughts turned away from the arena to find welcome respite in the festive season.

  Prominently placed in front of one of the expansive windows overlooking the north lawn where Max and Kris trained, stood the Christmas tree, the angel crowning its peak looking down on the gathering, its glitter encrusted halo flecking the ceiling with blinking starlight.

  Silver trays of Christmas cake, candy canes and rum balls adorned the sideboards and side tables, while the coffee table had become the serve yourself bar with various forms of spirits lined up next to a broad bank of glass tumblers. Beside the tumblers stood a metal ice tub, accommodating glistening bottles of genuine French champagne, while nestled in amongst it all was a large, glass bowl of punch, the sweet, orange-coloured cocktail brimming with large chunks of fresh citrus fruit.

  Dinner had come and gone and many of the residents and workers in the household had now convened to toast the beginning of the Christmas season. Most people clustered inside the living room where the air conditioning held the sultry evening heat at bay, while out on the balcony there stood a single person.

  Prime Minister Joseph Tollsen leaned silently against the railing, looking back into the room over the open threshold, his hands in his pockets and his wooden pipe stuck between his lips. It was hard to tell from a distance, but up close, a gentle curling of the corners of his mouth could be seen, the unconscious smile matching the warmth he felt in his heart.

  Inside, Joe could see Millie and Jason playing at the feet of the Christmas tree, scouring the presents for any with their names on them. Helping them were a handful of other children also staying on the estate as sons and daughters of some of the support staff. Max and Elsa were talking to Millie and Jason’s teacher, while over the back, Kris was sharing a drink with several of the kitchen staff.

  The entire household had never been called together like this before and Joe was a little surprised to see just how many people were needed to make this operation work. Again, another reminder that teamwork is the key. None of them could do this on their own. A memory flashed through Joe’s mind as he recalled Max on the Sally Sainsbury show earlier in the day and his soliloquy, ‘Alone we lose, but together we win.’ Joe’s smile widened a little more and he nodded to himself.

  Joe then noticed the crowd part as another figure entered the fray. It could only be one person and as the parting of the crowd lined up with his perspective, Joe found Abdullah gliding towards him.

  ‘As salam alaykum, Joseph,’ Abdullah said stopping in front of him and bowing slightly, ‘and season’s greetings to you also.’

  Joe removed the pipe from his mouth and extended his hand, which Abdullah
accepted with both of his.

  ‘And the best of the season to you also, Your Highness,’ Joe replied. ‘I would wish you many things right now, but I shall restrain myself to just one wish in this instance. May we all have peace?’

  Abdullah straightened and nodded. ‘Yes. May we all find peace, my dear friend?’

  ‘Can I seek you out a beverage?’ Joe asked.

  ‘No thank you. However, I may attempt some of your Christmas cake a little later.’

  ‘My advice is first check with the kitchen staff, which tray has the alcohol free recipe. The piece I just had would absolutely not have been to your liking.’

  ‘I shall. Thank you,’ Abdullah replied, stepping forward and next to the Prime Minister to rest both hands on the railing as he looked over the distant palms to the star-rich sky. ‘I notice your pipe has become a more frequent companion in recent months. Does it still provide as much solace as always?’

  Joe looked down at his pipe in his hand and turned it over, the rich grain of the wood shining in the hazy light.

  ‘Yes it does’ Joe said. ‘This pipe is as much a part of my life as any person and even though I have refrained from lighting a fire in it for four years now, I do still enjoy the feel and smell of it at close quarters. As you know, I went through my darkest days with the support of this old piece of wood and it has never let me down. Even now as I continue to starve it of sustenance, it fills me with comfort. Even now as we stare down the end of the world.’

  Abdullah turned and looked at Joseph, enjoying the sight of his close friend lost in the sight and detail of his most prized possession.

  ‘It gladdens me to see you happy at this time, Joseph,’ Abdullah said. ‘You have worked tirelessly to corral and coordinate our political colleagues over these last few months and I must say, we have all been rewarded with wonderful success. In particular, your efforts at the United Nations Council this last month has been nothing short of magnificent. Our European counterparts are certainly struggling to remain united, but you have convinced them that hope lies in unity rather than isolation.’