Ruler of the Mountain

“Anyone can reach the top!” A man shouted, from his starting point somewhere midway up the mountain. He grabbed giant outcroppings of rock that served as perfect handholds. Grunted as he hauled himself up the steep incline toward the distant summit. “We all have an equal chance!”

“What?” called another man, who’d found himself randomly at the bottom of the mountain, among dirt and stone shards. He faced a sheer cliff above him. “Did someone say something?”

“We all have a chance!” Grunted a woman a few kilometers above him. She was scaling the cliff, somehow, grabbing tiny cervices with the tips of her fingers, and leaving trails of blood between the cracks. “But you have to work ten times as hard as that guy way up there. Equal my ass!”

Not far away, a fortunate man was riding a lift past the daunting cliff face. He landed somewhere below the middleman, and immediately raced to catch up with him. “Wow, climbing is so much easier from here!” He launched up with the speed and agility of a mountain goat.

“Hey!” yelled the middleman. “That’s not fair. He got a free ride!” He picked up his pace, but was no match for his new competition.

The fortunate man outstripped him in no time, grabbed and yanked him off rocks, sending him tumbling down the mountain, screaming.

“Not enough room for all of us!” yelled the fortunate man. But he soon hit a dead overhang above him. So near the top, he could taste it. But, how, how did he get past this?

A woman hung by her fingers not far off, as she traversed the overhang hand-over hand. Would she make it? Or would she fall? Statistics were not in her favour.

Above her, past the overhang, people clambered for the very top, only big enough for one. “Anyone can make it,” they chorused as they climbed over each other. “If you can’t make it, you’re not working hard enough!” Some of them had come from the bottom. Some had been lifted partway, some had slogged the entire time. Others had always been here.

But no matter where they came from, one thing was certain. There wasn’t enough room for all of them. They threw each-other off the summit, to plummet and roll back down the mountain.

A woman grabbed the man standing at the tip, yanked him down and scrambled to take his place. “Yes!”

But a second later, someone grabbed her, and sent her rolling down the mountain, off the overhang, and into empty air. Her screams were drowned out by the chant from the crowd. “Anyone can make it. Equal opportunity. Equal chance.”

“We. Are. Equal!

The woman on the cliff-face far below, who’d stopped to help a boy who was struggling, called up to them.

“Equal my ass!”