CHECKMATE VERSUS CHEQUERED FLAGS
Checkmate is something I rarely achieve in my life. It always appears as a distant possibility, never a tangible reality.
I was playing chess with Max in the lobby of Infinity Gateway. Normally, I wouldn’t do this because Olaf is always on the prowl looking for reasons to take me to task for anything that might cross his mind. But with Max everything is different. When you’re with him, there never seems to be a problem. Olaf lives in awe of Max. He’s convinced that Max has connections in high places.
Max had stopped by for a chat and we were watching the state news broadcasts while we played the game. I was feeling quietly confident that I had Max on the ropes because I had already taken one of his bishops and a rook. Max seemed rattled. I’d not seen him like this before. I had never beaten Max at chess. `Checkmate’ was Max’s middle name.
Tonight seemed different though. I thought that maybe he had taken his eye off the ball and was distracted by what he was watching on the TV screen – the wall to wall coverage of mass street demonstrations that had taken place in Estrellaxia over the past week. It was dramatic enough to capture everyone’s attention – an undulating mass of black and white chequered flags being waved by thousands of angry people. 
The Estrellaxians had been demanding their independence from the Anticlockwise Empire. The protest had started peacefully enough during the day but once night had fallen the more radical elements of the crowd had taken matters into their own hands. They had set fire to half a dozen cars, began smashing shop windows and looting everything they could lay their hands on. When the local police had tried to stop the crowds from plundering the merchandise in the shops, violence had erupted between the protestors and the forces of order. The night air was quickly filled with the smell of tear gas and the sounds of wailing police sirens and ambulances. Gun shots were heard as the police retaliated against the protesters who had showered them with bricks, stones, metal bars and blocks of wood that they had discovered on a local building site. Estrellaxia seemed to be on the verge of revolution.
I wasn’t really paying too much attention though. Estrellaxia was a very long way from Globopolis – a distant land in the outer reaches of the Anticlockwise Empire. I knew that events there wouldn’t have much of an impact on my paltry existence. I concentrated on my chess moves, convinced that Max’s interest in the news broadcast would give me an edge in the game. He wouldn’t be as sharp if his mind was elsewhere. My chances of getting him into checkmate seemed far greater than normal.
It was Max’s turn to make a move. He hadn’t looked at the board for several minutes. Without averting his eyes from the TV screen, he began speaking to me in a conspiratorial tone: `Life’s a lottery,’ he whispered. `You can never predict how things are going to turn out. You might think you know, but the fact of the matter is that you don’t. Everything depends on timing and the state of affairs at any given moment. You need to be smart to win. The difference between winning and losing is very slight, so marginal on occasions that the very notion of winning can ultimately be called into question by what the outcome appears to be.’
I looked up from the chess board and stared directly into Max’s eyes. Was he trying to tell me something? No, I concluded, this was just another one of Max’s enigmatic statements about politics in Anticlockwise.
The Estrellaxians had always considered themselves a race apart. They had their own language, customs and ways of doing things that went back over 5000 years. The fact that for the past 100 years they had been incorporated initially into Safronika, subsequently into the Anticlockwise Empire was simply a minor detail of history in their eyes to which they did not pay attention. The seeds of this conflict had consequently been sown long before the rebellious Estrellaxians had called on the population to begin demonstrating in the streets in order to free themselves from Anticlock rule. 
They had wasted no time in proclaiming on posters and banners emblazoned in Estrellax, their native language, that they were free. But they weren’t. They were living in a dream world.
The Anticlocks of course didn’t see it that way. Estrellaxia was in their eyes now an integral part of the Anticlockwise Empire. Nothing was going to convince them otherwise. Yet, the curious thing is that the Anticlock authorities had fundamentally misread the situation. They did not expect the Estrellaxians to have the temerity to take to the streets and demand their independence. They thought that they could simply wave a big stick and threaten them into submission. They were as ill-advised as the Estrellaxians themselves.
As for the Estrellaxians, they had been too willing to believe their own rhetoric. It was obvious to all of them that Estrellaxia should be free and independent, wasn’t it? Well, not to a significant minority of the population who saw things differently but whose voices were drowned out in the hubbub on the streets. As soon as this powerful minority saw the violence, looting and general vandalism that accompanied the street protests, they in their turn organised themselves, began to resist and most importantly started cooperating with the Anticlock authorities to quell the rebellion.
Once the Anticlocks realised the error of their ways, they sent in the army, declared Martial Law and imprisoned all the dissident Estrallaxian political leaders. Anticlock tanks soon crushed their illusory aspirations of liberty. The Anticlock media went into overdrive. In a frenzy of hysteria they castigated the illegal street protests as a blatantly criminal anti-state process. They condemned the Estrellaxians for fomenting sedition in their most perfect of all possible worlds.
This inevitable exercise in realpolitik was not, according to Max, the real lesson to be learned from the whole dispiriting affair, however. The reality was that the Anticlocks were always going to win. They had more guns and were prepared to use them.
No, the lesson in Max’s eyes was a moral one. He had reached the conclusion that a nation’s sanity can only be assured when the vast majority of its citizens are in favour of a given course of action. Any independence movement that cannot command at least 80% of its population, he maintained, simply spawns different manifestations of civil war. An organised street militia may be enough to win a battle. To win a war of independence, the vast majority of the citizens need to sign up to the process.
This for Max was the fundamental miscalculation of the Estrellaxians. Their mistake was not to underestimate Anticlock military power which was self-evident. On the contrary, their error was to overestimate the strength of their own cause among the citizens of Estrellaxia.
`Put simply,’ Max concluded, `revolutions cannot be achieved with illusions. Unless an overwhelming majority of the people on the ground are with you, you will never get the better of a powerful state like Anticlockwise.’
Max finally looked down at the board after this lengthy digression. He moved his queen diagonally ten squares across the chequered surface, smiled and said quite softly: `Checkmate Zeb. Your king is dead.’
I stared in amazement at the board. How was this possible? I had thought that I was on the brink of winning the game, but I’d obviously been deluding myself. Max had seen six moves ahead of me and I had suspected nothing. I had lost the game and the Estrellaxians had failed in their quest for independence.
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