by Matthew Ward
“Time!” shouted the certifier, looking up from his stopwatch. “Now, I’ll have to dock two schnitzels from your total for illegal use of utensils, but a score of thirty-five schnitzels in two minutes should still qualify you for the championships—probably third or fourth seed, if you’re lucky.”
Beatrice dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin and rose to her feet, her expression stoic and steely. She was not accustomed to being seeded any lower than first or second, and this came as a bit of a disappointment. Given Mr. Prim’s pedantic tendencies, however, she was happy to have qualified at all.
The certifier turned from the table to find Arthur waiting for him there, a box of matches in one hand and a bundle of thin-shafted torches in the other.
“Um, hello, Mr. Prim,” he said. “I’m ready for my fire-eating attempt.”
• • •
Five minutes and one half-singed eyebrow later, Arthur forcefully crossed out the words Most Torches Extinguished with Mouth in One Minute from his list of record possibilities.
Next, it was on to ostrich-egg juggling—which ended rather messily—and then perpendicular pole climbing, which proved much harder to execute when covered from head to heel in ostrich-egg yolk.
And so it went for several hours: Arthur failing at various record attempts, while his siblings succeeded in others—all of them under the strict supervision of Archibald Prim.
By the end of the day, Arthur had eliminated nearly three pages of possibilities from his notebook. Discouraged that none of the day’s attempts had been good enough to qualify him for a spot in the WRWC, yet comforted by the thought that the next day could only get better, he rounded out his evening by writing another 297 apology letters to Ruby, then fell fast asleep.
Unfortunately, the next day would prove no better than the first, with a total of seventy-three failures—eighteen of them being the direct result of Mr. Prim’s meticulous deductions.
By the afternoon of the third day, with only a handful of events left on his list, Arthur began to lose hope that he would qualify in anything.
After cleaning up the feathers from his pillow-diving attempt, he retrieved his magical domino from his pocket and rubbed it desperately for luck as he readied himself for his next event: knife-block speed stocking.
Originally created three years earlier by a group of enterprising chefs as a solution to the “too many cooks in the kitchen” problem, competitive speed stocking had only just begun to reach a wider audience and was set to make its WRWC debut.
Play is conducted as follows: a lone contender stands within the hollow center of a ring-shaped table with twelve kitchen-variety knife blocks facing inward around its inner ring. Each block—except for one—is preloaded with a standard twenty-piece knife set. At the start of play, the contender begins transferring knives into the empty block from the one beside it, taking care not to sever any fingers or important arteries in the process. When the empty block has been filled and the adjacent one emptied, the competitor pivots to the next full block and begins transferring its knives into the newly emptied one until it has also been filled—and so on. When the knives from all twelve blocks have been transferred, one revolution is complete; a regulation contest consists of seven revolutions.
Arthur had been involved in speed stocking ever since being introduced to the sport twelve months earlier by his family’s former chef. Sammy the Spatula was one of the sport’s originators and had—before his incarceration and subsequent disappearance—sacrificed much of his free time to coach Arthur on his technique. Arthur had recently worked his way to the top of his local speed stocking club thanks to Sammy’s instruction—though he had yet to achieve anything like the scores required for international competition.
But now, as Arthur stood at the center of the table reaching for the handle of the first knife, something inside him snapped. Years of bottled-up frustration surged through his veins and into his fingertips. His hands became a blur. The rat-tat-tat of blade against block reverberated through the air like machine gun fire.
“Two minutes, 21.674 seconds,” announced Mr. Prim as Arthur popped the last knife into place. “Well, well, well. It appears you may finally have a qualifying time here, Arthur Whipple. Nowhere near the top seed of course, but if no one records a better time before the championships begin, you may just scrape by in nineteenth or twentieth.”
Arthur panted heavily with exhaustion and relief. “Thank you, Mr. Prim,” he smiled.
“Don’t thank me, young man,” Mr. Prim said sharply. “I am merely a servant of the numbers. Despite what you may be accustomed to, you’ll get no special treatment from this certifier.”
“I’m sorry, sir—I didn’t mean . . .”
“Your next attempt begins in four minutes thirty seconds. I’d have thought you’d want to put in a little preparation beforehand, considering your less-than-stellar success rate.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll go fetch the bucket of fiddler crabs and the first aid kit.”
• • •
Despite his efforts, Arthur did not qualify in any of his remaining events. He took solace, however, in having not been completely barred from the championships. At least he would have a chance to contribute this year, even if it was only in one event. He would just have to make it count.
And so, for the next two weeks, Arthur endeavored to do exactly that. When he wasn’t in his room writing apology letters to Ruby, he was out about the estate honing his knife-block stocking skills.
On the last day before the start of the WRWC, Arthur made a significant and unexpected development. He realized that if he simply worked counterclockwise instead of clockwise—as was the traditional direction of play—he could shave nearly fifteen seconds off his best time. It was enough to put him well in range of the current world record.
What Arthur failed to notice, unfortunately, were the two sets of eyes watching him from a nearby tree as he stood panting with surprise and joy at his newfound breakthrough.
The World Record World Championships
On the evening of the following day, the Sixty-Seventh World Record World Championships began.
The opening ceremonies kicked off with a legion of acrobats grouping themselves into death-defying formations to reenact five millennia of world-record breaking history.
Arthur gazed awestruck beside his family from the contender staging deck as one record-breaking triumph after another materialized at the center of the stadium—from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Empire State Building—each of them composed solely of human figures. As the mass of bodies reconstituted itself into the Sputnik 1 rocket launch, rising in unison toward the top of the stadium, the floodlights abruptly went dark and the human fireworks began.
Five hundred cannons fired at once with a deafening blast, rattling the stands and launching a battery of living rounds into the air. One of the projectiles zipped past Arthur’s face, and he could just make out the dark, crash-suited form of a man, his blurred body fused with metal frameworks and assorted colorful protrusions. A moment later, when the speeding figures had reached the optimum altitude, showers of sparks burst from each of them, causing the black oval of sky at the center of the stadium to explode with light and color.
Parachutes sprouted from the flaming figures as gravity began to pull them back to earth—but by this time, another round of pyrotechnic performers was already lighting up the sky above them.
The cannonade continued for a quarter of an hour, culminating in the Largest Simultaneous Human Cannonball / Human Firework Launch in History, when one thousand cannons in and around the stadium fired at the same moment.
The force of the blast and the resulting roar of the crowd shook the entire structure.
Then, as the finale fireworks began to fizzle, two parallel streams of light—one silver and one gold—shot straight up through the smoke at the center of the stadium,
climbing higher than any other before them.
“There goes your father, children,” Mrs. Whipple pointed out. “Shame he has to share the honor of Host-City High-Flyer with that scoundrel Rex Goldwin. Let’s just hope your father flies highest.”
Arthur and his family watched as the two soaring figures continued to climb. The next moment, a flurry of silver and gold sparks filled the surrounding sky, drifting down onto a sea of oohs and ahhs.
As the glittering faded, however, the crowd’s response shifted from wonderment to dread. While one of the figures was now floating on the breeze under a billowed parachute, the other was plummeting toward the earth.
“Daddy!” cried Lenora.
The Whipples watched in horror as Arthur’s father grabbed desperately at his pack.
“Come on—pull the cord, Dad!” shouted Henry.
But still, no parachute emerged.
Arthur tried to turn away, to shield his eyes from the gruesome sight to come, but he could not bring himself to abandon his father at such a critical moment.
With the ground only fifty feet away, the flailing figure continued its blistering descent, the Whipples’ hopes for their father fading with every foot.
And then, a parachute.
Barely an instant before impact, the canopy fully inflated. Mr. Whipple’s body collided with the ground, concealed from the crowd by the now-tangled mass of white cloth.
The stadium went silent. It was difficult to tell what sort of medical equipment the situation would require: a stretcher—or a body bag.
A distant baby’s cry echoed in Arthur’s ears as the boy and his family scoured the scene for signs of life. The deflated parachute flapped lazily in the breeze, anchored to the earth by the motionless heap beneath it.
A team of paramedics rushed onto the floor.
They approached the site of the crash, then reached out to remove the parachute and inspect the damage.
But just before they could grasp hold of it, the cloth was cast aside—and the man beneath it leapt to his feet. The medics stumbled backward as Mr. Whipple raised an arm to the stadium in salute.
The World’s Largest Collective Sigh of Relief rose up from the crowd. No one, it seemed, would be dying a horrific death before their eyes. At least not tonight.
• • •
When Mr. Whipple had rejoined his relieved family, the Whipples proceeded down to the stadium gate to join the Parade of Contenders as it snaked its way through the streets of the city.
By the time they’d exited the stadium and reached the grand entranceway, the parade had already begun pouring through the gate and onto the stadium floor. The Whipples, being from the host city, would be walking in the final group, so they promptly began the trek to the rear of the parade, while the stream of participants gushed past in the opposite direction.
For Arthur, it was like walking through a dream. All of his favorite record breakers from every corner of the globe were there, floating by and swirling around him.
Arthur struggled to retain as many details as possible— from the well-pummeled nose of Stavros “Hydra-Hands” Alamanos, the World’s Longest Reigning Boxing Champion and Highest-Paid Athlete, to the World’s Tallest Turban, bobbing along on the head of the legendary Sheik Alhid Aziz Wabul, to the bulging, overworked tires on the wheeled platform that carried Roberto and Bibiana Babosa, the World’s Heaviest Husband and Wife.
It struck Arthur to keep an eye out for Messrs. Overkill and Undercut amongst the record-breaking faces, just in case the World’s Tallest and Shortest Humans couldn’t resist taking part in the championships. But unsurprisingly, he never glimpsed so much as a frizzy clown wig. It was hard not to be a bit relieved by this, but he hoped for Sammy’s sake that he might catch up to the dwarf and the giant soon.
Further down the line, Arthur spotted the scarlet uniforms and beaming smiles of the Nakamoto family, bouncing vibrantly down the center of the street. The Whipples had always considered the Nakamotos their fiercest rivals, but after the recent run-ins they’d had with a certain other record-breaking family, it was difficult to think of the Nakamotos as anything less than old and dear friends. The two families bowed to one another as they crossed paths.
Arthur then noticed the red and gold colors of the Soviet flag, as well as the gray-bearded man walking alongside it with the Russian champions.
“Uncle Mervyn!” he shouted.
The man spun his head toward the sound. “Arthur!” he cried. He turned and began working his way through the crowd. “How are you, lad?” said Uncle Mervyn, smiling as he reached the side of the parade.
“I qualified in knife-block speed stocking.”
“Ah yes. I heard about that. Excellent news. I see you and Mr. Prim are getting on just fine.”
“Well—” Arthur began, but he was promptly cut off by his father as the other Whipples joined the reunion.
“Mervyn!” cried Mr. Whipple, clapping the certifier on the back. “Are you a sight for sore eyes. How’s Moscow treating you?”
At this there came a gruff Russian voice from behind Arthur’s uncle.
“Comrade McCleary,” said a stocky man in a fur hat. “Your presence is to be required in parade with Champions of Motherland.”
Uncle Mervyn nodded to the man, then turned back to Mr. Whipple. “Can’t complain,” he said with a wry smile. “Not if I don’t want to be sent to Siberia, that is,” he added, chuckling under his breath. He began walking backward to catch up with the parade. “Actually, Moscow’s a wonderful place for record breaking. Just wish you and your family were there with me. Can’t wait to see you mop the floor with the Goldwins before I go back.” He glanced behind him, then looked again to Arthur and called, “Remember the domino, Arthur. We all have our part to play.” Then, with a parting wink, he was swept up in the crowd and disappeared into the parade.
Arthur had barely begun to reflect on the encounter with his uncle when he noticed the self-satisfied smirk of Inspector Smudge amongst the sea of faces to his right. Having no desire to receive another lecture, he ducked behind another passerby before Smudge had the chance to detect him.
When he looked up a few moments later to make sure the man had gone, a flicker of something familiar caught his eye on the other side of the crowd.
Arthur promptly reached the end of the parade and scanned the surrounding swarm for a further glimpse but he found nothing. He sighed and turned to his rear. There, hardly ten feet in front of him, stood Ruby Goldwin.
Arthur’s heart beat faster. This was the most he had seen of her in weeks. He didn’t know what to say to her, but he knew he had to say something.
He took a step forward—only to have his path blocked by another familiar figure.
“Charlie!” called Rex Goldwin over Arthur’s head. “Glad to see you weren’t severely maimed back there.”
Mr. Whipple nodded warily. “Thank you, Mr. Goldwin.”
Ruby broke her brief gaze with Arthur and retreated amongst her siblings.
Arthur couldn’t help but be reminded of the first time he’d seen the girl standing with her family, a complete and utter stranger. Now, after all they had been through together since the night of the Birthday Extravaganza, Ruby seemed more a stranger than ever. It was almost as if they had never met—only worse.
Ruby’s father pushed past Arthur and approached Mr. Whipple as the rest of the Goldwins filed in around them. “That was a bit close, though—wasn’t it, Charlie?” Rex said with a grin. “Hate to see our competition prematurely expire before we’ve had a crack at them. Next time, you might try pulling the rip cord before you hit the ground. I can’t always be there to catch you when you fall, you know.”
Arthur’s father fixed his jaw. “Mr. Goldwin, as much as I appreciate your invaluable advice on the subtleties of parachuting, I’ll have you know I am not an imbecile. Upon pulling the ri
p cord, you see, it simply came off in my hand. The only way I survived the fall was by tearing open my pack and releasing the chute manually. Of course, I’m sure I needn’t tell this to you. I don’t know how you did it—I personally checked my pack half a dozen times before launch—but this clearly has your slippery stench all over it.”
“Well, Grand Coulee Dam, Charlie! You’re not seriously accusing me of being responsible for your own incompetence again? Really, Charlie, this is getting to be a very bad habit for you.”
Mr. Whipple glared from under his brow. “Satisfaction,” he grumbled.
“What was that, Charlie?”
“Satisfaction, sir!” Mr. Whipple repeated, his voice swelling to a snarl. “I demand satisfaction! You, Mr. Goldwin, have insulted my honor once too often, and thus—in accordance with our lawful rivalry contract—I hereby challenge thee to a duel!”
With that, Mr. Whipple tore the ceremonial victor’s sash from his shoulder and threw it to the ground.
“Ah, Charlie,” Rex Goldwin cooed in a sly, mocking tone, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Reaching down and retrieving the strip of cloth, Rex promptly employed it in slapping Mr. Whipple across the face, then politely offered it back to him. “I believe you dropped this.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Whipple, regaining his composure as he accepted the sash. “I shall see you for Dueling Day on the final morning of competition.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Rex. “After murdering you in competition all week, I reckon it won’t be much of a stretch to simply, ahem, murder you. I must say it’ll break my heart to have to do away with such an old and dear friend—but then again, I’d hate to deny you your honor. And after all, it was your idea.”
“Please, Mr. Goldwin, I doubt this is the first time you’ve considered doing me in—or indeed the first time you’ve attempted to do so. And furthermore, I would not be so certain it will be you who does the murdering; I am no stranger to deadly contest, as you will soon discover.”