Anything Goes - Theatrical Capers

I knew I was missing something and I rooted through the menus looking for anything that might give me a clue. The admin menu was password protected - feeling ridiculous I tried the easiest default in the world ADMIN123 and it actually worked! How stupid was that but there was nothing there even remotely like what I was looking for.

I had a flash of inspiration, exited admin, removed the stick momentarily then reinstalled it before trying again using the long number I copied from the dongle casing - hey presto new sub-menus appeared on the LED display and one was entitled DR within which were 12 options. They could only refer to one thing and sure enough they did - each option was a dressing room, one to eight were the principals rooms and displayed two images from identical viewpoints as I'd seen that morning whilst nine to twelve were the larger group dressing rooms which displayed 4 images each. These were two waist height either side of the room and two high-view in opposing corners for much more comprehensive coverage of the spaces, a doubling of the cameras in the individuals rooms.

Brian could have and probably had been secretly spying on countless society members of all ages for years but would have had to have the cooperation of the technical crew in this very booth during rehearsal and performance time to view full dressing rooms and maximise his perving.

I could not believe that of Stan or that he would involve his daughter in such a scheme even having only known him such a short time, it didn't feel in character.

I went back to searching the control panel and there it was, an option within this high level Admin menu I had missed labelled "MODE" and within which was "Live Feed" and "Record".

Voices!! Rather one irate raised voice in a single sided phone conversation outside the auditorium doors.

I hastily shut down the comms system and pocketed the dongle for further investigation later before running up a single intelligent lighting head on stage and putting it in test mode so

when Brian burst in he saw the stage decked out in a myriad of spinning colours and shapes. He turned on his heel and stormed up the stairs into the booth demanding to know what I was doing. Not only had I had the foresight to set the board up but I banked on the fact he knew very little about it & spun him a line saying I'd found fault reports generated by the control software when I was at home indicating the lamp on test might have a problem and I didn't want it failing during a performance which would embarrass everyone and probably lead to him having to explain why theatre equipment wasn't being checked or maintained properly.

He fell for it - I then turned the tables and challenged his attitude and the argumentative call he'd been making. Brian was in need of venting so told me about the benefactor, the meeting and no-show with no answer to his calls all wasting his time on a stupid prank. Obviously there had been no response as the dodgy phone used to generate all this subterfuge was switched off in the bottom of my backpack but I messed with his head a bit more by pointing out no one would go to the effort & cost of booking a table at an expensive restaurant as a prank so maybe there had been an emergency that led to the cancellation. Now that got him thinking and more importantly distracted him so I shut down the desk, bagged my laptop and said I was going home to review the test files on the lantern before this evenings dress rehearsal, hastily leaving him standing there thinking.

* * * * * * * * *

Even though the sheets were soaked with perspiration, pussy juices and semen I didn't want to move ever again, I was barely aware of the slight weight of the woman laying atop me as we recovered from our exertions, instead I was taken up entirely by the smell of her hair, the softness and warmth of her skin, how quietly she breathed.

There had been countless girls and women in my life over the last two decades but I had never felt like this with any of them, never even close. Even the relationships that had lasted into months had always been based on nothing more than sex. There had been girls attracted to nerds and bad boys in my teens, attracted to the world travel and expense accounts in my twenties and then the money as I entered my thirties. Whilst the sex was frankly incredible she was none of these - she was just . . . . . . I couldn't even find a word to describe what she was, I just knew that whatever she was I just needed her to be mine.

She lifted her head to look me in the eye, "I might never use an alarm clock again if I got to wake up like that every morning but I have to go home, I have work in two hours time and I need to get myself looking vaguely human again."

The worst four-letter word in my dictionary - work - that terrible millstone that was about to tear us apart from this state of conjoined bliss. Hoping to maximise our time together I made a suggestion, "Why not use my en-suite for a shower or bath, I can make us both breakfast - all you have to do is pop home to change but at least you can face the day fully refreshed and ready to go."

She shifted slightly as she considered my offer which had the effect of making my only partially deflated prick involuntarily twitch again nestled as it was still deep inside her as a prelude to hardening once more. Sadly that was the signal to my partner to demonstrate her agility once more by tucking her toes into the mattress and pushing forward, sliding along my chest and rolling off me in a single movement.

"As much as I want to not leave for work I honestly can't but I will take the offer of a shower and food if that's really OK"

"Of course it is - anything you don't like to eat? You aren't on any sort of special diet are you to keep that incredible figure? Please tell me you are not a vegan!"

She laughed, "I am guessing we may have burnt off several thousand calories in the last 12 hours so no, I am ravenous and will eat anything especially if I am not making it."

I took a moment to savour the delightful sight of my companion slip off the bed and sashay across the bedroom to the bathroom door where she looked back over her shoulder and smiled at me before ducking inside. Such a perfect figure to go with everything else about her that was perfect.

A song popped into my head - The Girl from Ipanema - 'Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking...when she walks she's like a samba that swings so cool and sways so gentle..." Well maybe not tan but everything else - tall, young and lovely - however the next two lines 'But I watch her so sadly, How can I tell her "I love you"' hit me like a hammer and resonated deeply within me.

A quick rummage in a wardrobe turned up a bathrobe to wear whilst I cooked and I headed for the kitchen. It didn't take me long to mix up a batch of batter and by the time she came down fully dressed in her clothes from the previous evening with her hair wrapped in a towel there were two plates stacked high with hot pancakes alongside bowls of fresh strawberries, bananas & blueberries, syrup, cream and a vat of coffee.

The raised eyebrows indicated I had exceeded someone's preconceptions about my possible culinary ability.

"I didn't think you'd be up for bacon too - it's a bit of an acquired taste - so I went for semi-healthy and simple."

"You thought right, bacon with pancakes? Yuck", but a twinkle in her eyes showed this was said with humour rather than genuine distaste or horror. "So a chef as well as a computer guru and lighting saviour?"

"Just picked up a few odd things during the years - I love to eat so it made sense to find out how to actually make the stuff I enjoyed. The majority of hotel and restaurant chefs are really cool characters who love to demonstrate their skills to a keen punter when they aren't busy."

Any response was lost amidst the sounds of food being despatched at an almost Olympic rate causing me to smile as I watched.

I managed to stretch our time together by an all too brief half an hour and then she had to go so I accompanied her to the door. We paused momentarily without words and exchanged a simple kiss, not a passion fuelled kiss like those during our lovemaking but rather one of infinite softness and intimacy, one delivering so much more than words could impart.

I stood there until she disappeared from sight before becoming aware of my nakedness beneath my robe and my need to hit the shower too which I did immediately.

* * * * * * * *

I walked straight home still pondering any possible involvement by Stan in all of this and trying to convince myself with every step that there couldn't be any. Subconsciously I had even taken a different route home so as not to pass his house.

When I did arrive home I made myself a strong coffee that I took into my study and powered up my work PC, it was an open tower of incredibly hi spec processing power tied to 3 monitors on my desk that I had built myself to cope with the extreme demands I placed on it when developing my own software. I wanted to examine the dongle - I wasn't interested in the hardware or comms control software which was almost certainly embedded on a read-only chip but rather what else it might contain or have contained.

Once it booted up it displayed simply as a blank 32Gb memory stick but a little probing soon showed up the hidden system files. In addition there were ghost images of files that had been deleted over time and it was these I wanted to see. The application of an industry grade data recovery programme, the sort used to rebuild crashed servers and mainframes, would do the trick but with an indicated run time of an hour. Much more coffee was required for this wait.

Almost exactly 60 minutes later a twinkly arpeggio alerted me to the recovery programme having finished. I now had a folder containing over 300 files of varying sizes to work through so I started with the largest. I wasn't surprised to find it was footage of Genevieve from that morning but right from the time they entered the room. I took a couple of minutes with the benefit of sound now to confirm Genevieve had indeed been the instigator. An excited conversation of exchanged greetings, of a regular pre-work tryst, a coin toss to decide what man went where (how civilised), a shedding of clothes and that's where I had seen the action from live. Having been the most recent file to be recorded and deleted it was easier for the software to recover the bulk of it.

Smaller files were mere clips of older video streams, time stamps showed them during both the day and evenings - I began to conclude the dongle stored everything when it was plugged in & activated, in both "live" and "record" modes, but mode selection was for monitor control. The smallest files were single images or clusters of 2-4, some dating back up to 2 years, all of a wide variety of quality - some pretty much perfect but many others pixelated to beyond recognition. The bulk contained people I didn't recognise but there were two I did, one surprised me the other shocked me. The shock was a 3 second clip of one of the dancers dressing rooms dated two years before around 6pm and there in the very centre were Fleur and another girl naked apart from panties looking directly at a mirror applying makeup. Brian had even recorded his own daughter!

The surprise was a pair of still frames I almost missed whilst feeling an increasingly burning anger towards the theatre manager but it was the one I needed to see most. Dated a year previously and around 10am there was Stan smiling - seated in a padded chair in a dressing room with an ecstatic looking Genevieve over his knees thoroughly enjoying a serious spanking, visible in the second frame with a degree of zoom were the tops of her ass cheeks glowing like cherries. No wonder he had told me she listened to him when he said he'd have a word to put me off limits - from what I'd seen so far I don't think I could have kept up with her anyway, I had been out of the relationship game for a long while.

Those images were not of someone playing to a hidden camera for gratification afterwards because although they were quite explicit the angles were all wrong since the mirror camera would have been obscured by several designer bags placed on the table for a start. These were shots of two uninhibited adults enjoying themselves oblivious to the fact they were being secretly recorded. It meant there was someone I could confide in but I would still have to tread carefully for fear of setting off a chain of events I couldn't then control or stop if necessary.

Later in the day with a plan, or a framework for a plan, in my head I walked to the theatre once more planning to arrive about 4 pm, the society had agreed to meet up for curtain up on their dress rehearsal at 6:30pm. Anticipation must have given me extra pace as I arrived 10 minute sooner than planned but the car park was empty so I hoped the building was too.

Once inside I locked the door behind me as a safety buffer if I had really mucked up my timings then settled into the control booth. Laptop connected and desk powered up providing an alibi in case of emergencies before inserting the dongle, flipping it flat out of sight and powering up the comms system to check all the feeds to ensure no one was tucked up in mid liaison or awaiting someone. All clear, the theatre was all mine and I was free to thoroughly familiarise myself with what the high level menu permitted before I needed to exit as admin.

I did have less time than planned but still more than enough as I was alerted to movement outside the main doors on one of the foyer feeds. It was Brian opening up at 4:45 ready for the evening session but the fact he locked the door behind him indicated he had another plan. Expecting something like this I buzzed the ticket desk intercom as he drew level with it and gave him the scare of his life. When he answered it I cheerfully greeted him saying I was already in the booth. I could see his face fall at this news but it gave me the satisfaction he wouldn't be looking for the dongle anytime soon. He backtracked and unlocked the door prior to coming up to the booth.

He sounded crestfallen and didn't bother to ask why I was there having seen the desk powered up which suited me fine especially as the theatre was filling up surprisingly quickly judging by the stage door & foyer cameras. Brian excused himself really abruptly and awkwardly as soon as Stan walked through the door accompanied by a stunning Raven-haired young woman dressed in an all black jumpsuit who he introduced as Marika, the resident theatre stage manager. He felt we should meet face to face given how much time we would be spending talking to each other over the coming days. She was absolutely gorgeous, as tall as me with a figure you only usually see inside a Victoria's Secret catalogue but quite reserved in her demeanour and she spoke with a gentle lightly accented voice so I attempted to ease any shyness or awkwardness by saying how glad I was to meet her and excited to be working with her and the rest of the group - this seemed to go well and she headed down to the stage.

Stan was mildly impressed I was so keen and had settled in as quickly as I had even to the point of prepping comms and I gave him a twee "Boy Scout - be prepared" reply as I began to watch a group of black clad figures setting the stage for the opening scene in a fast but very organised manner that spoke volumes of time spent working as a team under Marika.

Whilst it was still just the two of us I gently steered the conversation around to the building and equipment, playing dumb about what Brian had told me previously, and got the same story regarding Genevieve's second husband but with the addition that he'd created a significant fund for continued development after his death & this was paying for current tech upgrades. I then slipped the comms into the conversation and Stan's tone suddenly sharpened.

"Don't mention the comms lad, they stupidly let Brian organise that and I reckon we must have paid three times over the odds for what we got. Didn't need all these screens in here for a start but he managed to get it installed between productions when no one was really paying too much attention about two years ago and it was too late to stop once it was installed. Instead of going out to tender he slipped the contract to one of his cronies and we paid through the nose - there was talk of a backhander or bribe but nothing could be proved. He's never been let loose with any project since then without massive oversight and that probably hurts his delicate feelings."

The old man was genuinely annoyed and upset by this and that convinced me totally he was unaware of Brian's activities - all the "extras" would have driven the cost way past what people could actually see operating.

Before I could say anything else the lock on the booth door clicked and it swung open and Stan said, "at last, the sound engineer deigns to grace us with their presence".

There she stood, Stan's daughter and the woman who had stopped me in my tracks the previous evening when I had seen her for the very first time painting the ship - Poppy - still in deck shoes & skinny denim dungarees but this time over a Thundercats t-shirt and without the bandana that had protected her hair from paint but now revealing an eye popping bubblegum pink bob!

I slowly turned in my seat, following her as she moved to her own position behind the sound desk to my right unaware I was staring until I got a firm dig in the back from Stan along with, "most people from around here normally just say hello."

Feeling stupid at my own behaviour I mumbled a greeting and leant across to shake hands, Poppy was laughing at me along with her dad but returned the handshake and said it was probably the hair that had thrown me before settling down to concentrate on what she had to do.

With Poppy there my chance to speak to Stan further was over but there was no immediate rush. Our follow spot team of Katherine and Jake arrived simultaneously some 5 minutes later hand in hand, the lad still looking like he feared Brian would pounce at any moment, and headed up above us laden with drinks and snacks - something I suddenly realised I was missing but rationalised that eating & drinking next to a computer & lighting console was probably a recipe for disaster.

With 30 minutes to go Poppy initiated a full comms check and I listened in wonder to the myriad voices sounding off in regimented order confirming all was well. I focussed on those voices to distract myself from gawping foolishly at the woman sat beside me, it was bad enough that she looked divine but the fact that she smelled of spring flowers and had a voice smoother than cream running over a spoon into coffee was doing nothing to help me out.

As curtain up approached the chatter diminished markedly and the calm Eastern European tones of Marika began to call the shots. The stage manager had ultimate responsibility and control so everyone took their cues from her during the entire show.

5 minutes to go and with the orchestra & MD in place the call came up to dim the house lights which I did, the stage was already set and in darkness so a Stygian gloom and silence ensued punctuated only by the tiny glow worm lights on the orchestra stands in the pit and the green emergency exit signs, the muffled cacophony of tuning up having been completed shortly before.

My heart rate was up, my breathing rate down as I waited with finger poised over the 'return' key ready to launch the first lighting set. Glancing at the MD and Marika on our automatically dimmed monitors I could see the concentration in their faces too in the moments before the 3,2,1 countdown for the overture to start.