Now instinct and logic were at odds with one another. Instinct made me want to pace, it was restless with the wait, and the fear. Logic told me to wait until the rescuers came down and found me, moving around a lot in an emergency such as this one would make me more difficult to find. Instinct won, as it so often does in times of stress. I paced around the cavern, light in front of me to keep me from meeting any unpleasant surprises. As I walked I tried to imagine what was going on at the moment on the surface. First I imagined they were annoyed because they would think I was slacking off or something of that sort. After a period of time I supposed they would cease to be annoyed and start being anxious. It was sooner then I had calculated, though I had no watch to be sure, that I heard someone above me and saw a light from the ceiling of the cave that obviously was shining through the hole I had fallen down.
“Are you down their? Are you alright?” asked a voice called down as I walked back towards the hole.
“I'm bruised but fine,” I assured the disembodied voice, now standing directly under the hole and looking up. I still couldn't see the speaker because of their lantern but I assumed they could see me. There was some talk up above that wasn't directed at me and I figured it was the voice speaking into the intercom and someone responding. The tunnel down into the earth wasn't wide enough for two people to stand comfortably, especially now that a portion of the floor was gone.
“We don't have a long enough rope to pull you up, you fell pretty far,” said the voice. “We hadn't thought we were going to need such a long rope for a while so they are going to have to go get one. That is of course if you can climb. If not we can rig and harness.”
“I can climb fine, just get the rope. How long will it be? Do you know?” I asked.
“It's a ways into town, and then to find a place with a rope as long as we need. It might be a couple hours. Just sit tight though, we'll get you out for sure. Hold on a sec,” there was more intercom communication and a package landed next to me.
“There's some food you can eat while you wait so you won't even be missing lunch,” the voice said cheerfully, and then it was gone and I was alone again.
I opened the package and found some sandwiches and since the voice had been kind enough to think of them I ate them before doing anything else. It kept my mind busy which was also nice. Once I was done with the food though I was more restless then ever. Knowing it would be at least a couple hours before I was rescued made me feel even more trapped and helpless then I had before. I started pacing again.
When I say I was pacing I don't mean in the back and forth sense of the word, instead it was in an aimless ellipse shape that continued to get wider and wider as I went around were the hole in the ceiling was. It was in the middle of one of these rounds that I realized that while the voice had remembered to feed me it had forgotten about my light, which was growing visibly more dim as it ran out of batteries. I never went down into the ground without backup batteries, but they were in my bag, and my bag was somewhere above my head where the floor hadn't fallen. Very soon I would be in the middle of the earth, with no light. Not a pleasant thought by any means and I started to wish that I had received my pack instead of food.
To be continued...
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