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The Well

The cold white walls made some form of work more antiseptic at times. Not that there was any reason to worry about catching a cold in the well. In the bottom of a round, white room barely ten feet across and sealed like a zip-lock bag there was little room to worry about germs.
Marcus gazed out through the large section of glass in front of him, holding a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. He sat on an uncomfortable metal stool, or rather scooted around on it looking for a sweet spot that would make the cold comfort a little closer to actual comfort. He put his feet on the lower rung and leaned forward, elbows propped up on his knees, the steaming white mug just under his nose. He took in that smell and sighed contentedly.

In the presence of the warm darkness within that cup he could almost feel comfortable. He squirmed in his seat and pulled his collar loose. The brown one piece uniform was not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it kept him warm under the icy breath of the constantly humming vents in the floor.
He craned his head slightly over the half-moon shaped control panel in front of him to take in the full view beyond the glass. The room beyond was grey and blank, vanishing in shadows as it extended backward. He shrugged, disappointed but not surprised. A watched pot never boils' he repeated over in his mind.
A hint of red flashed out from the control panel, casting the color across the side of his face. Looking down, he saw a screen with a cheesy picture of a phone flashing red across he screen, the words control deck' written out to the side in fancy embossed lettering.
He reached down and tapped the picture and a window slid across the screen from the side, a pleasant female face smiled at him in the window, "Good morning, Marcus." She wore her uniform zipped to nearly her chin, and she held her head high. Her auburn hair had been pulled back into a tight bun behind her head, the poster child for hardworking officials.
"Good morning Nance," he smiled from behind the cup of coffee.
"How's the weather down there?"
"Funny," he sipped his coffee. "Just be careful, Nance. One day you might be stuck down here."
"How's your timer looking, Marcus?"
He turned his head across the panels, yellow and green monitors swimming by, and came to rest on a white monitor with two lines of numbers, both counting down. One, in blue, read: 00:17:36. The other, in red: 00:07:36.
"Got seven minutes left until I'm due to report in," he said.
"Good," she

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