Richard goes looking

Left alone on the dance floor Richard stands there a moment wondering what was going on. A little female issue? What was that supposed to mean? Jennifer had been awfully upset. Had Richard said or done something to offend? With young people nowadays he was never certain. He hoped it wasn't that. He had really taken a liking to to Jennifer, she was sweet and beautiful and lovely all around. It was so easy to forget that it was Ted in that figure hugging dress.

He needed to find out. Only a minute or two behind them Richard strides out into the hallway and begins looking for them. He does notice the out of the way women's washroom but assumes they would have used the one in the club if that was the issue. After a few minutes looking around he realizes he had lost their trail.

He wanders to the main deck and looks around then takes a peek in the library and piano bar before he decides that there was really one place the pair of them could be going. He heads for their shared suite.

Once there he knocks lightly on the door to give them warning then opens the door. The room is dark and empty.

“Hello?” Walking in he turns on the lights and scratches his chin. “Where in the hell are they?”

With a frustrated huff he turns to return to the club to wait for them, but as he goes to leave the ship map catches his eye. 75 rooms. 75 buttons. There was no way...was there? The legal consequences alone...no way.

“Only way to find out.” He says to himself. Picking up the remote he turns the television on.

The screen lights up and his terrible suspicion is confirmed. Already on channel 1 the sun deck of the Orient Eclipse is displayed in full color and exquisite 4K detail. Even more disturbing was the fact that he could hear the sound of the ocean and the murmur of the various conversations happening on the deck. The feed certainly appeared to be a live one. As he watches the angle suddenly changes to give another perspective on the area, then about thirty seconds later it happens again, then again, and then again. Each time from a unique perspective.

He tries a few other buttons at random to see other rooms on the ship. An empty suite, one with a couple sitting on the bed flicking through the channels themselves, another suite where a woman was attempting to cover the cameras, and another of the big hot tub area where he sees and hears the frolicking of other passengers. This whole damned ship had camera's everywhere!

He cranes his head and starts looking around the room but there are no cameras in sight. He turns back and hits their room number. There on the screen he sees himself standing in front of the television with the remote in his hand.

“This is insane!” He exclaims as the speakers echo his words in near perfect sync. Just as with sun deck the angle changes every half minute or so. With the aid of what is on the screen he hurries over to where he knew the camera must be. There in the wall he spots a tiny black circle that was the lens. It blended in so well that had he not had the screen to guide him he never would have seen it. Then, as he is looking at it, the camera changes and the small lens he is looking at disappears behind a shutter that blended in perfectly with the wall. His eyes widen as he realizes that these miniscule cameras could be anywhere. He finds the next one only to watch it too disappear a moment later. He looks into the next one, points, and says. “I'm going to sue your ass mother fuckers!”

He had to let Aria know about this. Initially he tries her cell phone but they were too far out to sea to get a signal. He turns back to the television to see the view of their suite now coming from within the capsule bunk. He picks up the ship's map and studies it. He notes that there were many areas, mostly areas for the crew and staff, that were not listed but the guest rooms and nearly all of the publicly accessible areas were. Using the map as his guide he then flicks the screen to the club where they had been. There he sees their table still empty and Aria and Jennifer nowhere to be seen. He begins switching around to nearby rooms to see if could find them.

It is then the small women's washroom down that side hall catches his eye. Surprising for a room so small it had a room number of its own. “Even in the washrooms!?” He gasps. He hoped it was unoccupied as he hated to invade somebody's privacy like this but he needed to find Aria and given its proximity to the club this seemed a possibility.

Looking up at the screen he presses the button to show him that particular room.