Behind the Filter’s Veil
Rachel sat before the camera. She had already tinkered the visual that was the end result so many times, ensuring that despite an occasional movement, the filter won’t break. It had been painstaking effort to construct the face and also to make sure to wear clothes that covered the rest of self so that her body won’t be seen.
Rachel Armstrong was a 69 year old woman while Rachel Azure, the face on the screen was a woman less than half her age. Her face was a little on the plumper side with a thicker nose. Dark brown locks were cascading down her shoulder. The social media persona that she was about to take visible after playing as her in some chatrooms for the sake of fun.
It was something Rachel had decided to kill her time, living as a retired woman in town of Ashford. A humdrum place of few hundred people where literally nothing happened. She had been living alone for 3 decades at this point, her parents having passed away long time back.
The truth was, she was still feeling a little nervous. Okay, more than a little nervous. She had heard horror stories of people botching this and then being embarrassed to the extreme and ending up on Reddit or whatever it was that was the latest internet wall of shame. She did not want to end up on there.
“Alright, here it goes…” She murmured to herself, testing the voice modifier she had been using to alter the voice in recording. The recorder was turned on and she gave a little uncertain smile at the camera.
“Hey guys, this is Rachel Azure. I know you’ve been wanting to interact with me a little more. Send me questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them in my subsequent vlog. Five answers per video, I promise!”
With that, she blew a kiss at the camera and smiled, this time feeling more confident and stopped recording.
In short while, she had the video posted on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter & Instagram.
“Well, let’s see if we get any responses to that.” Rachel spoke to herself before opening Netflix given rest of her day looked like all of her days.
Endless monotony and loneliness.
The value of one’s life was often summed up with what a person possessed either materially or monetarily. The life of Jora Porte wasn’t much different. Being the co-owner of a very successful law firm that he helped build from the ground up he literally had the world at his fingertips. He was young, being in his early 30’s, to have such a fortune already at his disposal such as it was. And that kind of wealth attracted a lot of attention. A lot of the wrong kind of attention if he was honest with himself as he sat in his office going over paperwork, endless mountains of paperwork that were the mundane routine that filled his days now. When he had first started the law firm it was very exciting for him. Running from case to case, pushing as hard as he could, the thrill of victory and the rare sting of defeat. It had been a different time and he’d been very much a different person. He found himself missing it more often than not. Taking a moment for himself to help wake him up a bit more, Jora found himself browsing through Twitter to see what was going on in the world that might peak his interest. It was a bit of a passtime of his whenever he needed a distraction. That was another indicator that things needed to change, he never used to need a distraction from the work that he was so passionate about. But here he was scrolling through Twitter when he came across a video from a familiar name. He’d seen the name in a public chat room that he’d visited while trying to entertain himself a bit. He clicked on Rachel’s video and watched as she gave a brief explanation of what she was doing. Ask any question, huh? Well that was rather inviting and he smirked trying to think of something. He decided to ask her something that he often pondered himself with how things were going for him. He clicked a like on the video for her and then left a question in the comments for her. Nice to see you finally, Rachel! Anyways, what would be your idea of a perfect vacation?
He closed the Twitter app after that and then turned back to his desk as he started looking over paperwork again. Maybe it was a question he really did need to take seriously and start thinking about an actual vacation for himself. But it would have to wait until they finished some high profile cases that the firm was handling at the moment. Who knew when he’d actually be able to take that vacation.