The Marriage Act(114)
As he exited the stage, Jada clenched her fists and looked to the sky. This is for you, babe, she said to herself, There’s no going back from here.
Kennington Park fell silent as the screens faded to black before a stationary image appeared.
It was of Jem Jones.
It wasn’t the woman that fans had grown used to watching in the last few months of her life. This wasn’t the browbeaten Jem, the desperate Jem, the Jem drained of fight and fury. This was the fresh-faced Jem of old, the girl the public had fallen in love with long before she’d nailed her colours to the mast of the Marriage Act.
‘Good afternoon, Kennington Park. My name is Jem Jones,’ she beamed. ‘I bet you weren’t expecting to see me.’ She hesitated, as ripples of confusion spread through the crowd. ‘What the hell?’ asked a woman in front of Jada. ‘When was this recorded?’ Others began to chant ‘Lock her up’ and ‘Stay in hell’.
‘I have no doubt that most of you recognize me,’ Jem continued. ‘Some of you have followed me from the start of my Vlogs while others might only have heard of me after my death. But whether you loved me or loathed me, you all have one thing in common. None of you ever really knew me.
‘Today it’s time I set the record straight. The first thing you need to know is that Jem Jones isn’t a real person, I’ve been playing a character. I’m the result of a Government initiative to create someone the British public could fall in love with, and more importantly, trust. Research into what you liked and didn’t like about celebrities and Influencers began long before we ever met. Hundreds of existing Vloggers and Influencers were studied to decide what made you accept and listen to them. Their every intricate detail was recorded to decipher how often I should smile, the sound of my voice, the colour of my eyes and even how much they should sparkle. Teams were put together to decide how my make-up and hair styles should alternate over the years, along with my wardrobe, the locations where I recorded my videos, the pitch of my laugh and, of course, the subjects I should Vlog about. All of this was done to get you, the public, to trust Jem Jones, the product.’
Small sections of the crowd began to boo and jeer but the majority were now maintaining a fascinated hush.
‘The second thing you need to know is that I am not dead,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t put a gun to my head and I didn’t pull the trigger.’
The camera Jem was staring into moved closer to her face. ‘None of that happened. I didn’t end my life because I don’t exist. I have never existed.’
She paused as the lens drew so close that only her eyes were in view. ‘I am a Deepfake and I’m designed by this man.’
Jem shut her eyes and, as they reopened, her irises were no longer blue, but green. Jada’s stomach somersaulted as the camera slowly panned out and Anthony’s face filled the screen.
More breathing space followed to allow a disbelieving crowd to make sense of what they were witnessing.
‘My name is Anthony Alexander and I created Jem Jones,’ he began. ‘As Jem said, she is a Deepfake. Over the last decade or so, much of the world has banned the creation of these videos for malicious intent or as weapons of fraud and political propaganda. This hasn’t stopped our own Government’s intelligence from using them to fool enemies into believing they are talking to real people. However, Jem was the first time a Deepfake has been used to hoodwink its own people.
‘I’m a designer and programmer and the basis of Jem’s face and body belongs to a handful of actresses hired in the early stages of her creation. Days’ worth of footage was recorded of their every movement and facial expression, from the expansion of her irises in bright lights to how her hair shifts when she moves suddenly. Then, based on research into the kind of faces people trust – even elements of my wife’s appearance, mannerisms and personality – I designed how Jem should appear. And we used actresses to scan these motions for every post and appearance Jem made. She became the closest thing to reality a computer has ever created. Yet everything about her was false. The interior of her home, her friends, her pets, her relationships . . . it’s why she was never interviewed live, or seen out in public, why her family and friends – who you also never met – didn’t reveal the country in which she died or where she was buried. Because there was no family or friends, no death to register, no body to transport home and no daughter to bury. Even the house where fans left flowers is owned by a company managing the Government’s portfolio of state-owned private properties. The money Jem made in sponsorship and product placement was ploughed into the destruction of Old Towns and creation of New ones. The only genuine thing about Jem was how much she was adored, for a time, by you.
‘For a long time, I expected the truth to come out and for this to blow up in our faces, but it didn’t. Perhaps if our print journalism hadn’t been decimated by social media then we might still have paid investigative reporters who would’ve asked more questions about who she really was and where she came from. Instead, the life and death of Jem Jones was accepted at face value by you all.
‘When it became apparent the tide was turning against the Marriage Act, my employers made the decision to kill Jem and make it appear as if she had been driven to death by people like you: those opposed to the Act. First, my team and I created thousands of fake accounts to troll her. Then, months later, we would end her life as it had begun, on social media. I lived with Jem for so long that I felt I owed it to her to be the one to kill her. So we filmed my hand holding the gun and pulling the trigger before mapping hers onto it. I Deepfaked a Deepfake.