Rock Bottom

(contained, doable in a studio or domestic mock-up - darkened cellar, garage, car - with extreme CUs, light and sound and NO water involved)

A male and a female operative are in close proximity in a small non-autonomous submersible that’s suffered catastrophic system failure at the bottom of the sea. In dark lit only by a lighter and a smartphone’s torch, the budding eco-activist and the by-the-numbers blue-collar technician (whose job it is to lay communication cables), who are ex lovers, find their suspicions as to the causes of the defects centring on company culpability, in sending them down in an aging sub. As they exhaust the remains of the auxiliary oxygen supply, the woman is sure she can use the OS handbook to suss an override fix that’ll allow them to get the vessel up manually. But the man sees no hope and wants to go out having sex – while they’re still in a fit state to do so. As he moves in on her, she thwacks him with the OS manual, concussing him. A patch by the mothership has topside communicating that they've fixed the problem and can winch them up now (by the umbilical cabling). As the man comes round, not sure where he is, what happened, the woman asks if he's doing anything different when they go out.