Well, this was less than ideal.

Mr Bass blinked the tears from his eyes and tried to focus on the ground below him. It was rushing up to meet him at a somewhat insistent pace. The wind roared in his ears as he finally began to make out individual cars and even people on the streets outside his office building.

The building that he had just fallen off.

By mistake.

In his left hand, Mr Bass, held an empty coffee cup (ascribed with the legend ALL ABOUT THAT BASS) - the coffee itself was also falling to Earth, but at a slightly different rate. It drifted away above him in a rich brown miasma, like a caffeinated smoke trail.

It was a crying shame, reflected Mr Bass, that had been a jolly nice coffee (dark roast, Colombian, ground fresh this morning).

Gripped firmly in his right hand, Mr Bass, still carried his trusty briefcase (Italian, calf leather). It pivoted back and forth on the handle, slapping against his knuckles painfully. But still he didn’t let go. Mr Bass was like that. Steady. Reliable.

Falling off a building was really the last thing anyone would expect him to do.

It had been an uneventful morning really. As efficient and productive as every morning for Mr Bass. He had arisen early with the sunrise and immediately performed a series of full body exercises in his undergarments (beating his weighted squat PB by some margin). After this he had showered (2 minutes, cold water), shaved (aloe complex to reduce razor burn), run through his skin care routine (cleanser, toner, moisturiser, high-intensity plumper for the under-eye regions) and attended to his other bodily ablutions (a poo).

Once in the kitchen, he packed up his breakfast (green shake vitamin supplement, apple slices, almond butter, grain-free granola) and lunch (handmade sushi) in two stackable vacuum sealed containers. He put them in the briefcase next to his case files, stationary (fountain pen, mechanical pencil, vinyl annotation stickers) and a neat ripstop nylon med roll (expanding dressing, suture kit, sterilising gel). You could never be too careful, thought Mr Bass happily.

Smoothing down his suit, he had put on his coat (high tech, fast wicking, technical fabric) and cycled to work on his electric bike - battery full and motor purring.

He had breezed through reception, accessing his private lift with the ID card he kept on a retractable line clipped to his belt. When he arrived at his office, he nodded to his secretary (young, brunet, perhaps a little unsure of himself) and grabbed a coffee from the imposing chrome machine next to his desk. Savouring the intense flavour of the bitter liquid, he had stepped out onto his balcony overlooking the docklands far below.

Except that morning he didn’t have a balcony. All superfluous external structures had been removed the night before as part of a rebadging initiative spearheaded by Mr Bass himself (new logos, electric canopies, refreshed corporate colour palette). He remembered signing the relevant documentation the previous Friday.

Too late now, of course.

Mr Bass’ brain switched into problem-solving mode.

A quick look below him ascertained he had very few environmental assets (external plate glass windows, lots of fresh air, a pigeon) but one thing did catch his eye. About ten floors up from the ground, hanging by two reinforced cables, was a cart used by the window cleaners (and presumably the builders who had removed his balcony last night). It was about six foot long, made of weathered steel, with guard rails up the side. At his current speed and heading, he would fall right past it on his way to the pavement. It was slightly too far to his left to reach out and grab it, but it was something.

Mr Bass let go of his mug regretfully (it was an excellent pun) and struggled to manoeuvre his briefcase so he could wedge his hand inside. As he opened the lid he lost all his files almost immediately. They were incredibly sensitive documents (now airborne and freely available to the general public) but at that moment Mr Bass couldn’t bring himself to care very much. He’d deal with that unfolding situation once he’d dealt with this current bother (plummeting to his death). After a few moments fumbling inside the case, his hand closed around what he was looking for and he pulled out one of the vacuum-sealed food containers. He really hoped it wasn’t the sushi one - those had taken an appreciable amount of time to make last night. Clamping the container under one of his armpits he took a few more items he’d need from the case, stuffing them into the zip-pockets of his outer coat. Finally he let the brief case go (fly, my loyal companion, be free at last) and returned his concentration to the stainless steel container of food.

With practiced hands, he thumbed the gasket that released the vacuum seal on the lid. The container opened and the air was suddenly filled with cascading sashimi (dammit). Pushing his disappointment to the back of his mind, Mr Bass shoved his ID card into the container and clamped the lid back down on top of it. Reversing the gasket mechanism, he  pumped air out of the container to form an unbreakable seal. He now had a heavy metal weight on the end of a kevlar-reinforced spooling line clipped to his belt (always buy over-engineered products, especially ones you use every day).

Quickly, he pulled out the entire length of line from the spool on his belt and used a length of medical tape from the suture kit to keep it from retracting. Grimly, Mr Bass looked at the fast approaching cleaning cart on his left. He was only going to get one shot at this. He took a moment to wrap the expanding bandage around his left hand (to protect his beautifully moisturised skin) and then clamped the resulting padded-mitt to the spool on his belt to anchor it.

As Mr Bass fell past the cart, he flung the metal lunch box through the railings, tugging the line to flip the container from horizontal to vertical so it caught between the rungs. He was immediately pulled sideways, describing an arc underneath the hanging cart that terminated with him banging his head on its other side. Like a pendulum he swung back and forth, his stomach lurching uncomfortably, before finally settling into a sad, twirling motion beneath the cart.