The glass of wine, half-full, struck the carpet. Unfortunately the pile was so thick and luxurious that it refused to shatter, and so Josh Wellick had to finish the job himself with his heel.
It was nothing, just another of the trifling little inconveniences he had to deal with, being so insanely wealthy and accomplished. Like his chief concern right now.
“I’m BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORed,” he enunciated clearly and distinctly. “Hey! Shill! What haven’t I done yet?”
“Shillings, sir,” said his butler, a ground-down and generally eroded little human being.
“I will call you what I please, Shill. What haven’t I done yet?”
Shillings consulted the giant and unwieldy tablet his master had shackled to his chest. “Uh…. You haven’t climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza riding a bear…”
“That’s because I did it last year riding a hippo, you incompetent.”
“Err…you haven’t climbed the CN Tower backwards….”
“Why would I bother climbing it at all? Hasn’t been that tall for decades now.”
“Uuuuuhhhhh….. you haven’t climbed out of a construction site’s foundations….”
“Disgusting. Suggest that one more time and I’ll have your knees hobbled.”
“You haven’t gone to the deepest point in the Antarctic Ocean.”
“I told you, not until they let me kill and eat whatever I find there.”
“…..You haven’t climbed any waterfalls.”
Josh stopped mid-berating. “Haven’t I? Hm. Hmm. Hmmmmmmm.”
“Sir?”
“Shill, what’s the tallest waterfall in the world? We need to start this off impressive.”
“Angel Falls, in Venezuela.”
“Didn’t even need to look that up?”
“My granddaughter likes world records, sir.”
“Well tell her to put all the old ones out of her empty little head, because we’re going to make some very spectacular stunts today. Now clean up this mess. No hands, mind you. They’re a crutch.”
“You took away my crutch yesterday, sir. You said it was a weakness.”
“And I was right! No more backtalk, and a lot more tonguework. This glass won’t lick itself up.”
***
Obtaining permission for these sorts of things was always haphazard. In the end Josh simply had Shilling stand in the center of the capitol and bribe everyone walking by for twenty-four hours. It had worked when he needed to climb the Washington Monument naked, and in the meantime he had important things to do, like airlifting in six hundred thousand tons of cutting-edge machinery plundered from private ski resorts and hockey rinks.
“I want it all installed in the next six hours,” he told the man seated next to him. “And for every hour longer than that it takes, your paychecks are all cut ten percent.”
“I’m not the head of the project, sir,” said the man. “I’m a laborer.”
“Gross! Someone throw him out of the plane or none of you get paid.”
Josh sighed and leaned back in his chair, wiping his brow. “Gosh that was close. Almost got some poor on me. Now, what was all this you said about this taking way too long?”
“There’s going to need to be safety tethers-” began the actual project head.
“Boring,” said Josh, tossing his phone to the ground and grinding it underfoot. “Safety is our third priority. Number one is making me look good, number two is nothing at all. Remember that, you goober.”
“Attempting this unsecured will cause dozens if not hundreds of deaths.”
“They’re still throwing out the last guy, you know. I’ve got room for more.”
The project head’s shoulders slumped and she sighed.
“That’s the kind of attitude I like,” said Josh. “Now clean this mess up without using your hands.”
***
In the end it took over six thousand deaths to install the machinery before sunset, but install it they did. For the first time in history Angel Falls was frozen solid, and at the base of the mammoth icicle stood that incomparable daredevil, explorer, maverick capitalist, entrepreneur of science, Josh Wellick, accompanied by a mere hundred assistants flunkies piton-affixers and dogsbodies.
“To the top!” he said heroically, pointing skywards.
They cheered.
“I wanted awed silence,” he told them. “You’re all fired. If you don’t get us up there by morning, you don’t get severance pay and I’ll buy wherever your families work and fire them too.”
And so began their ascent.
***
The first successful climb of Angel Falls took almost ten days to complete, but they were doing boring things like climbing up the cliff face instead of the waterfall itself and also being safe. Josh Wellick demanded more, and what Josh Wellick demanded, he always got, because that’s the kind of guy he was.
Which is why when he ascended the last step to the rim of the falls, treading on the numbed knuckles of his one hundredth (and final remaining) guide to get there, he was greeted by Shilling and a breakfast buffet.
“One more recorded shattered for all time by the very best of humanity,” he declared, then sniffed the air. “Did you put any blueberries in those pancakes?”
“As you requested, sir.”
“I changed my mind. Throw it all out and start over. Throw the cooks off the falls too.” He threw his ice axe to the ground and stomped on it in exaltation. “By GOD I never feel more alive than at a moment like thi-” and then a small frog, released from its icy tomb by the impact of his foot, erupted from the ground and startled him a very important six inches backwards.
***
Angel Falls is very tall. He had almost fifteen seconds to think of a lot of swears on the way down.