A young maid walks in

With an almost completely silent creak the door swings gently open, and a short curvy woman of Indian descent befitted a sleek, stylish, and simple blue and white outfit that appears quite elegant, but still efficiently visually communicates that she is, in fact, a maid. Her long black hair is set up in ponytail, and her hazel eyes are very striking. She looks to be in the late twenties or early thirties.

"Ah, good evening sir, madam." she greets: "My name is Willow Ahuja Harris, and I will be your personal staff on this cruise."

Despite her obvious Indian roots, and her very professional and prim demeanor, to the couple's surprise, the maid bears a thick New Zealand accent.

"Personal staff?" Aria asks, shooting her eyebrows up in surprise.

"Yes, ma'am. On this trip, I will be doing all of your housekeeping duties, such as cleaning, changing beddings, and the like. I will also prepare your dinner every evening, and I will provide you with additional services and errands should such needs arise, given within what could be reasonably expected in the middle of the ocean, of course. Any other questions?"

"Do you know what the other bed is for?" Richard asks.

"Ah, that would be mine, sir." Willow answers matter-of-factly.

"That would be what?" Aria yells in disbelief.

"Well, as a way of minimizing the amount of people you come in contact with during the very unlikely event of a COVID-19 outbreak, the organizers of this trip found it best that every couple or individual ticket holder gets delegated their own personal staff that will be staying with them on the trip. I believe it is to reduce the amount of 500.000 dollar cash consolation gifts they would have to give away in case of an outbreak."

"But what if we need privacy?" Aria asks.

"Then you just tell me, and I will leave you to it. Also in your dresser drawer you will find a small pager. You can use that to call me. If the light is green I am available. If it is red I am fulfilling some other duty, like standing at the bar or lifeguarding the pool."

Aria goes to the dresser to fish out the pagers.

"What are all these channels for?" Richard asks while turning on the TV.

"Considering that there are no internet connection or no TV signal, which was intentionally implemented this way to help guests destress from the worries of everyday life, and considering that we want to discourage longform physically close contact in case of an outbreak, the organizers of the trip thought it would be interesting to let the guests entertain each other." Willow explains.

The TV comes on. In the corner is a "75" in green blocky text for a couple of seconds before it fades into the background image of what is Richard and Aria's cabin filmed at the corner of the room. Both beds are in full view and so is the three people standing in the middle of the room. The couple quickly looks into the corner the image is transmitted from, and sees a rather subtle camera looking straight back at them.

"It's filming us?" Richard asks shocked.

"Yes 24/7, and it is also recording the sound, and then live-broadcasting both to all other cabins. You in turn can always watch what happens in every other cabin."

"That's clearly violating our privacy!" Aria yells furiously.

"Apologies, ma'am, but I do believe that the functionality of the televisions and the nature of the security cameras were thoroughly explained to you in the legal contract you both have signed." she explains.

Richard and Aria are both mentally kicking themselves for not reading it as properly as they should have, but to be fair most of it was just really boring legal jargon about which kinds of accidents and acts of God the organizers wouldn't be responsible for.

"So what do you mean by 'entertaining' each other?" Aria asks a bit hesitantly.

"Well, talking to each other, or just channel surfing, seeing what other people are doing."

"And what if we want to... y'know... have sex?" Richard asks.

"I believe that was one of the prominent activities the organizers had in mind, sir." the maid solemnly explains.

This feels too weird. The couple doesn't really know what to do with all of this information let alone how to even process it.

"Why?" is the only question Aria can muster.

"The organizers know that they cannot **** the people of this cruise to refrain from having sexual intercourse with each other. There are no curfews or no rules set in place to disallow for any guests to see each other. However, due to circumstances of the COVID-19 virus these types of contact-free entertainment has been set into place to encourage socializing safely. I guess they think an easy access channel to people's bedrooms is a good deterrent to people actually trying to pick-up someone at the bar."

Willow airs out another long explanation. It seems she has more to say, but she has begun to nervously fidget with her fingers, and she is looking down into the floor with a flustered and anxious expression on her face.

"S-so if you are in the n-need to experience extramarital intimacy the organizers s-suggest to either make use of the livefeeds... or...." the cute Indian maid stops in her tracks and let the sentence dangle on a cliffhanger. She looks almost afraid of either Richard or Aria asking about the alternative.

"...Or?" Richard asks both nervous and curious.

Willow sighs deeply before ending the sentence: "O-or you u-use your designated staff."

The couple's jaws hit the floor.