The Geometry of Falling

The wall was a liar. It presented a face of cool, engineered certainty, each hold bolted tight, each surface textured for optimal grip. But up here, with the lactic acid beginning its familiar sizzle in his forearms, Franklin knew better. Gravity was the only truth, a patient, persistent whisper that promised to resolve every problem downwards. He hung from the second-to-last hold, a crimson jug that felt greasy under his chalked fingers. Not just sweaty-greasy. Something else. Something slick and intentional.

Below, the world was a diorama. Mr. Sampson, arms crossed, his white polo shirt a beacon of clinical disapproval. Archie, stretching his calves, a predatory smirk already ghosting his lips. Martha, pretending to fiddle with her harness but actually watching him, her brow furrowed with a familiar, sisterly concern. The timer on the wall was a single, malevolent red eye, daring him to fail.

He inhaled, the processed air scraping his throat raw. The final hold, a garish yellow sloper, was a body-length away. A simple dyno. A leap of faith he’d practised a thousand times. But the grease on the red hold changed the physics. It introduced a new variable, an ugly, slick question mark at the apex of the equation. His brain screamed at him, a frantic slideshow of twisted ankles and snapped tendons. Performance anxiety, Sampson would call it. Just a phantom.

But it felt real. It felt like sabotage.

He jumped. For a fraction of a second, he was flying. His fingers slapped against the yellow sloper, the texture wrong, the purchase insecure. His other hand scrambled for its partner hold. His feet kicked for the wall, trying to find purchase on the vertical plane. The world tilted. The red eye of the timer blinked: 6.02 seconds. Then 6.03. His grip, already compromised, gave way. He didn't fall so much as peel off the wall, a controlled, graceless descent cushioned by the auto-belay system. He landed softly on the padded mats, the rope sighing as it took his weight. The scent of hot rubber and his own failure filled his nostrils.

Archie was already chalking up, not even looking at him. “Tough break, mate,” he said, the sympathy in his voice as artificial as the rock holds. “Guess the pressure’s getting to you.”

“The hold was slick,” Franklin muttered, stripping the velcro on his wrist guards. The words sounded weak even to him. An excuse.

Mr. Sampson glided over, his pristine trainers making no sound on the floor. He carried a tablet, the stylus tapping a rhythm of disappointment against the screen. “Six-oh-three, Franklin. That’s not even in the same postal code as your P.B. Archie is consistently hitting five-eighties in practice. The sponsors from ‘Volt-Edge Hydration’ are watching the metrics. They want a winner.”

“The crimson jug,” Franklin insisted, pointing up. “It’s been wiped with something. It’s slick.”

Sampson didn’t even look up. He just zoomed in on a graph on his tablet. “Adrenaline can affect tactile perception, Franklin. Your heart rate spiked by twenty percent on the upper quadrant. Your breathing was shallow. You psyched yourself out. The mind is a powerful thing. It can create its own reality.”

It was the company line. The mantra of the Zenith Performance Centre. Every failure was a mental lapse. Every doubt a weakness to be optimised away. “I’m telling you, it was different,” Franklin said, his voice rising. “Go up and feel it.”

“And compromise the integrity of Archie’s timed run?” Sampson raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “We have a schedule. Focus. Visualise success. Recalibrate.” He clapped Franklin on the shoulder, a gesture that felt less like encouragement and more like a warning. “Don’t let him live in your head rent-free.”

He gestured to Archie, who stepped up to the wall, slapped the timer plate, and started his climb. It wasn’t a climb; it was an ascension. A blur of limbs and controlled explosions of power. He moved with a liquid, arrogant grace that made Franklin’s teeth ache. He hit the top plate with a triumphant smack. The timer froze: 5.78 seconds. A new facility record.

Sampson’s smile was blinding. “Now that’s what Volt-Edge is looking for.”

Martha found him in the locker room, kicking rhythmically at a dented locker that had long since surrendered. He was peeling athletic tape from his fingers, revealing the raw, red skin beneath.

“So,” she began, leaning against the opposite row of lockers. “Are we in a brooding phase or a plotting-revenge phase? I need to know so I can select the appropriate supportive-friend cliché.”

“I’m not brooding,” Franklin grumbled. “I’m… assessing.”

“It looks a lot like brooding. You’ve got the furrowed brow, the thousand-yard stare at a scuff mark on the floor. It’s classic stuff.” She tossed him a bottle of water. “He beat you. It happens.”

“He cheated.” The words burst out of him, louder than he intended.

Martha’s lighthearted expression tightened. “Franklin, don’t. Don’t go down that rabbit hole again. Remember the regional qualifiers? You convinced yourself someone was messing with the tension on your auto-belay.”

“And I was right! The technician found it was off by five kilograms.”

“The technician also said it was within the standard margin for error after a full day of competition,” she countered. “You hear hoofbeats, you think zebras.”

“This was a whole stampede of zebras, Chlo. That hold was greased. I know what chalk feels like, I know what sweaty plastic feels like, and I know what that was. It was like… silicone lubricant. Or wax.” He threw the balled-up tape at the bin and missed. “And Sampson just blew me off. ‘Tactile perception.’ What a load of—”

“He’s a walking corporate pamphlet,” she agreed. “His blood type is probably Gatorade. But that doesn’t mean Archie is a cheater. He’s arrogant, sure. He has the personality of a damp sock. But he’s a phenomenal climber.”

“Nobody’s that phenomenal.” Franklin slumped onto the bench, the anger draining out of him, leaving a cold, anxious sludge. “What if I am just imagining it? What if Sampson is right and I’m just… cracking?”

Martha was quiet for a moment. She came over and sat next to him, her trainers tapping a soft, irregular beat on the tiles. “Did you see Archie’s hands before he climbed?”

Franklin shook his head. “No, I was too busy having my soul crushed by a tablet screen.”

“He was using a different chalk. A liquid one. Looked new.”

“So?”

“So, nothing, maybe. But he never uses liquid chalk. Says it ‘dulls his connection to the wall’ or some other nonsense he read in a book about zen archery.” She shrugged. “And he was wearing gloves when he came in from the parking lot. It’s thirty-five degrees out, Franklin. Who wears gloves in a heatwave?”

Franklin’s head snapped up. The details were small, insignificant on their own. But strung together, they formed a pattern. A nagging, ugly shape in the corner of his eye. Gloves could hide residue on your hands. A new type of chalk could be a cover, something to mask the feel of a substance you don't want to admit you’re using. Or maybe he was just seeing zebras again.

“It’s not enough,” he said. “It’s just… weird.”

“Welcome to the Archie experience,” Martha said, standing up. “Look, forget about it for now. We’ve got the endurance circuits next. Let’s go see who can vomit first.”

She was trying to help, to pull him back to the solid ground of their routine. But his mind was still fifteen metres up in the air, his fingers slipping on a truth no one else could feel.

The Unblinking Archive

He couldn’t let it go. Through the entire endurance circuit, a monotonous nightmare of campus boards and pull-up reps, the greasy feel of the crimson hold haunted him. He saw it in the sheen of sweat on his arms, tasted it in the metallic tang of the Volt-Edge he was forced to chug.

Sampson’s words echoed in his head. *The mind can create its own reality.* Was that what this was? Had the pressure finally forged a crack in his sanity? The line between competitor and paranoiac felt terrifyingly thin.

He needed proof. Something objective. Something the unblinking eye of a camera had seen.

The entire facility was wired. Every climb, every training session, was recorded from half a dozen angles. Ostensibly for ‘performance analysis.’ In reality, it was for the sponsors. Footage for sizzle reels and social media content. It was all stored on a central server in the archive room, a place Sampson called the ‘Digital Panopticon.’

Franklin waited until the evening session was winding down, until the gym was mostly empty, save for a few dedicated masochists on the treadmills. Martha gave him a look as he peeled off from the group, a silent question he answered with a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head. *Don’t ask. Don’t follow.*

The archive room was at the end of a long, white corridor, the door marked with a stark, minimalist logo. It was usually locked. But Franklin had watched Sampson access it a dozen times, tapping a code into the keypad. He always used the founding date of the company. 2-0-1-8. It was the kind of lazy, arrogant security that screamed ‘we don't believe anyone would dare.’

He typed in the numbers. The lock chirped and clicked open.

The room was cold, the air humming with the sound of cooling fans from the server racks that lined one wall. A single workstation sat in the centre, its monitor glowing with the Zenith logo. He sat down, the chair cold against his skin. The system was blessedly simple. A timeline interface, a calendar, and a grid of camera views. He navigated to today’s date, selecting the ‘Main Wall’ preset. The screen split into four panes, showing his climb from different angles.

He scrubbed back, past his disastrous attempt, past Archie’s smug victory. He went back an hour, to when the route setters had been on the wall, preparing for the time trials. The footage was sped up, the setters moving like jerky marionettes as they bolted the coloured holds into place. Everything looked normal.

Frustrated, he was about to give up. Then he remembered Camera 7. It was a high-angle security cam, not part of the main performance-capture system. Its only job was to watch the whole floor for insurance purposes. He pulled up its feed.

The wider view showed the setters finishing their work and descending. The wall stood empty for several minutes. Then, a figure walked into the frame from the side, partially obscured by a support pillar. They were wearing a dark hoodie, the hood pulled up. They clipped into the auto-belay line—not the one for his lane, but the one for the lane beside it. They ascended quickly, expertly, to the top of the wall. Then they did something odd. They swung sideways, like a pendulum, right into his route.

Franklin’s heart hammered against his ribs. He leaned closer, squinting. The figure hung there for a moment, right by the crimson jug. They reached into a pocket, and though the resolution was grainy, he could see them rub something onto the hold. A few seconds later, they swung back, descended, and disappeared out of frame.

It wasn't a phantom. It wasn't his mind playing tricks. It was real. Cold, hard, digital proof.

He scrubbed the footage back and forth, trying to get a look at the person’s face, but the hood and the angle kept them in shadow. It had to be Archie. Who else could it be? Who else had the motive? Who else could climb the wall with that kind of ease?

He felt a surge of vindication so powerful it almost made him dizzy. He had him. He finally had him.

He reached for his phone to take a picture of the screen when he heard it.

A soft click from behind him. The sound of the archive room door swinging shut and the electronic lock engaging.