Free Fifty/Fifty and Other Stories by Matthew W. McFarland Page A

me, a cigarette butt fell through the air and hit the middle of the street with a fizz, and lay there smouldering as a few remaining tendrils of smoke drifted into the ether.
     
    The penthouse was filled with people, all shouting to be heard over each other and the sound of a cheap stereo turned up much too loud. The speakers buzzed and popped along with the rhythm, adding to the din. I knew only a handful of the people there, and couldn’t help but feel out of place amongst the leather, chrome, and opaque modern art which hung on the pristine walls.
     
    For several hours I jostled for space against one of the walls whilst the party ebbed and flowed around me. The view over the city was spectacular when I was able to catch the odd glimpse through the throng. A few hundred metres away, and far below, a busload of tourists had just alighted, and were milling around outside some of the older pubs, snapping photos of the buildings and each other, and generally getting in the way of the regular drunks who huddled around their cigarettes. Further away the faded green domes of the City Hall marked the centre of town, and in the distance you could see the spire of the cathedral, with its silver needle reaching upwards. Away to the east the glass and blue lights of the new shopping centre shone hopefully.
     
    I don’t know why he took such offence to me, for I had made little impact on proceedings until that point. Two girls, tottering in their high heels had fallen against me as they moved to the music, and all three of us had ended up in a heap on the floor. The crunch of glass could just be heard over the noise, and one of them yelped in shock as a shard pierced her back, and wine surged over the polished wooden floorboards towards the expensive furniture. My head was fuzzy from the alcohol and the heat of so many bodies in such a confined space, and I think I may have knocked it against something blunt on the way down, for a dull ache began to spread from the base of my skull.
     
    It's funny sometimes, the things that go through your head. As I plunged through the flimsy French windows and over the railing of the balcony, out into the cold night air beyond, my mind was drawn back to something I'd once heard about the survival rate of cats falling from buildings in New York. Apparently, above a certain floor, the fifth floor if I recall, the survival rate of a falling cat increases in direct relation to the height of the building. I guess this is something to do with the surface area of the cat's body as it innately spreads its limbs like a skydiver or a flying fox to slow its descent. As terminal velocity is a constant, it doesn't matter if the cat (or stone, or television set, or whatever) is thrown off the tenth floor or the one hundredth floor, it will reach the same maximum speed as dictated by the Great Constant – Gravity. As the building gets higher the cat has more time to slow down, and thus hits the ground at a lesser speed, increasing the chance of survival.
     
    I don't know how this was discovered. Did some curious academic systematically climb the stairs of a New York brownstone, pausing at each landing to fling a cat out the window, whilst a research assistant (who was only looking for extra credit towards their degree), measured the magnitude of the splat in the alley below? Did they take into account the different breeds of cats and other important variables such as weight, thickness of fur, length of tail? No doubt they came up with a complex formula to predict how much of kitty would be left depending on what floor you let go. In any case, I would dearly love to see their application for funding.
     
    Below me a black taxi trundled along, cruising for the next fare. Its headlights painted the road in asymmetrical arcs, the driver’s side beam flickering in the dusk. I could hear only the wind rushing in my ears as I left the noise of the party far behind me. Then I was drawn back to an extremely vivid