Eye on Juliet 2017

Gordon, Joe Cole, works for an American security company that monitors threats to their client’s oil facility in an unnamed North African country, operating dozens of hexapods capable of shooting and surveying a vast stretch of desert. He has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is resistant to his colleagues’ push to play the field. One day at work, he spots on his cameras a young woman named Ayusha, Lina El Arabi—who bears a striking resemblance to his ex. Ayusha is trapped in an arranged marriage and unable to be with her true love, Karim. As her family makes preparations for the wedding, Gordon becomes fascinated by the couple’s secret romance, particularly Ayusha, and begins taking pictures of them. He watches Ayusha undress in her room with a heat-seeking camera and overhears the couple discussing elopement, which would require Karim to join an illicit project to raise funds. Ignoring warnings from his supervisor, Peter, Brent Skagford, Gordon grows more involved, even drugging Peter to operate freely and sending money to help the couple emigrate.

Gordon subsequently observes Karim and his associate tampering with the pipeline. In the ensuing chaos, the oil catches fire, and Karim is killed. Gordon uses a hexapod to inform Ayusha and fabricates the final moments of Karim’s life to gain her trust, telling her about the money he sent and convincing her to collect it from the bank and escape her family. As the tension between duty and desire mounts, Peter confronts Gordon about his increasingly erratic behavior, while Gordon manages to persuade him to jeopardize his own job and give him time to facilitate Ayusha’s escape.

When Ayusha returns home, her family, suspicious of her strange behavior, locks her in her room. Gordon then dispatches a hexapod to break her out, and she follows it to the location where she can collect the funds. Using the hexapod’s microphone, Gordon tells her that she may have more than one soulmate and that witnessing someone capable of true love has made him happy. He also hints that she might find another man, and he arranges for them to meet in Paris at exactly the same time the following year.

The next year in Paris, the two finally meet, and the story leaves the impression that a new romance is about to unfold between them.