This is a voyeur/nudity story.
It's not a quick read about quick sex. Instead it's about a guy who finds himself seeing unsuspecting nude people in a place he didn't expect.
*****
Martin works security at an high-end office building downtown.
He is paid well to watch a bank of high-definition screens. His job is to profile people. In two and half years absolutely nothing has happened.
Martin has an advanced degree, and does a job similar to those in national security.
The building is eleven stories tall with 8,000 square feet on each floor.
On a normal, utterly ordinary Monday morning Martin sits down at his desk and glances at a five by seven panel of forty-seven screens. He scans them all quickly and sees the same similar images he is used to. People walking in random hallways. People walking up and down in several stairwells. And a rarely busy lobby.
Next he hits three keys on a keyboard for the computer to scan all the images from the night before. The computer uses technology that identifies faces and sorts them from recognized and unrecognized. In twenty-one seconds his computer tells him everyone in the office building the night before is in their database.
Next he hits one key and the computer matches ID badges with faces from the night before. In three seconds his computer tells him all ID's are confirmed.
Next his hits two keys for the computer to archive all footage from the night before. This is a redundant process. A third redundancy, but the only human element insuring a back-up in case the system has a bug or worse.
On a screen to his far left all the data from the night before runs at an extremely fast-forward speed as it backs-up. As it does something catches his eye.
His reaction is what he is truly trained for. To catch what other people miss about human behavior. He feels a rush. Something he rarely ever feels at his utterly eventless job.
He hits a stop button. Then a succession of four keys to lock onto what caught his eye. He recognized the the fifth floor elevator lobby. Small, but the only one that is lined with marble. That's where he stops it.
He puts it up on the big, main screen in front of him. Two people walk out of elevator number three. They stop. He recognizes both of them. He recognizes everyone. One is a long-term employee of that floor. An attractive woman, like so many in the building, with medium length dark hair and thin build. The second is also a recognized employee of the same floor. A small man, maybe five, two. Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds.
He speeds up the tape to see what caught his eye before. In an instant he hits stop again. As the tape ran forward he sees both of their arms go up. That is the behavior that caught his eye.