[ WP ] Describe the Labyrinth , a place so deep underground the air is toxic .

# #'' Tanks'' 
 
 `` Servo's busted. We'll have a crew down in five; hang tight.'' 
 
 Those were the words that fizzled and crackled out of the radio mounted on Jewel's pauldron. She sighed, and the sound echoed in her airtight helmet. She glanced around the chamber -- a ten-by-ten-by-ten-foot cavern with a single doorway on its north wall -- and then over to John. He wore the same gear that she did: an airtight helmet with an opaque, reflective visor covered in scratches and scrapes; a shoulder-mounted radio unit; and bulky, pressure-resistant full-body armor, covered in hard, impact-resistant steel plating. 
 
 `` Minutes?'' John asked, speaking into the headset mounted inside his helmet. `` They mean five minutes, right?'' 
 
 `` Hours,'' Jewel groaned. `` It'll take'em four fuckin' hours to get to the next level up, and then another fuckin' hour to fix the lift.'' 
 
 `` So what do we do?'' 
 
 `` Turn off the hauler. Get the spare tanks ready; we may as well do something while we're here.'' 
 
 She pointed a gloved finger at a large cart that held a massive gas tank. The cart -- the hauler -- hovered four inches off the ground; it was essentially a wheelbarrow, designed to help an oxy miner carry tanks onto the lift for transport to civilian settlements. John walked over to the hauler and flicked a switch on its surface; it powered off, gently sinking through the toxic, green-discolored air, and coming to rest on the rocky, dusty ground. 
 
 Seven other gas tanks were arranged in rows next to the hauler. It was standard practice to mine enough oxy to fill six tanks, and leave two empty for special use in case of emergencies. As John set to work prepping the empty tanks, Jewel walked over to the lift door and picked up her excavator, which rested on the dirt. The device consisted of a large backpack to which two hoses were attached; one hose was to be connected to an empty gas tank, while the other was to be attached to a drill and used to suck small bits of oxygen out of rock in locations that scientists had assessed and deemed `` viable.'' 
 
 No one did any assessments for safety. 
 
 As Jewel and John drilled away at rock, sirens offered a rude awakening and not a single apology to a team of engineers based higher up in the Labyrinth, the ball of rock that housed humanity's last surviving settlement. The engineers would dress themselves and stride into the mess hall for a quick meal, their boots clinking against the metallic floors, their eyes half-blinded by harsh and irregularly-flickering flourescent lighting, their patience tested by surly and ungrateful oxy miners, and their speech reduced to half-asleep grunts and groans by fatigue and an unforgiving workload. After their ten-minute breakfast, the engineers would ride the Labyrinth Central Elevator down for four hours, spending another hour to assist a couple of miners that had gone and broke the lift servo again, before taking a four-hour ride back to the Labyrinth's Oxy Corps residential level for dinner. There would n't be any room in their pressurized suits for lunch. 
 
 One level above the oxy miner mess hall, maintenance crews would assess every gas storage tank and vent, checking and rechecking pressure valves, knowing that a single mistake could cause the death of an oxy miner, or the utter destruction of an entire residential module. These crews got three ten-minute meals a day, but were explicitly prohibited from bringing food into their work areas thanks to the mistakes of one Barker Bassman, who incidentally had been posthumously declared Asshat of the Year. When not eating or sleeping, a maintenance technician was professionally, ethically, and legally required to walk into the work area and do a maintenance check on the first unattended piece of equipment they saw. It did n't matter if they had just seen another tech walk away from the item, or if they themselves had checked the item not five minutes ago. Free time was a civilian luxury.
