Meet Your Ancestors

Genealogy seems an increasingly popular subject, possibly because with the advent of digitised records it's become much easier.

This seems to lead some people to speculate about the lives and personalities of some of their ancestors; they may express a wish to have a meeting, or at least a conversation, with that individual.

Well now, thanks to BorgCo, it can -after a fashion – be possible.

The process is fairly simple, if not exactly cheap (you will need a major credit or charge card). Simply give as much information as possible about the individual concerned, and provide as many photographs from that side of the family that you have.

Using our portfolio of highly trained performers and Deepfake technology, BorgCo will research the likely appearance (including facial appearance – they may be a bit like you) and background of the relative, and compile an appropriate – if generic – “back story”.

Let’s say that your relative lived in the early 19th century, in a small town, and was an innkeeper – that’s nice and generic. A “stage set” will be assembled in a studio, giving the performer space to move around and carry out various activities, with the typical props placed around the scene. The performer will be very, very thoroughly coached in terms of accent, speech patterns, social attitudes, and their own “personal” story – childhood memories*, experiences, ordinary stuff.

And then you can put on a virtual reality headset, and have a video call with them. “Hi, I’m your great great granddaughter (or son) … and I’m really interested about your life.

The performer responds to a digital avatar of you, which is on a screen placed by the stereoscopic camera that feeds your headset. Around the camera are large screens, on which support technicians who monitor the call can put up useful information or responses, but of course sometimes the performer will need to “ad-lib” - not everything can be easily scripted.

Be warned. The person you’re going to be talking to is very real. They have typical likes, dislikes and attitudes of their time. You’re liable to discover that they’re actually – by your standards – pretty repellent, being petty, small-minded, resentful of their better-off neighbours, greedy, abusive towards their children, blatantly racist, and a part-time drunk. And you can certainly ask them “What do you think about the possibility of a war between X and Y, then ?” to which they will probably respond “Huh ? Who cares ?” and then deliver a bitter diatribe about the woman next door who keeps dumping cabbage stalks over their fence at night, and the disgusting cost of getting a plumber to fix the privy, and this sore on their arm that really hurts and just isn’t getting better and the doctor was bloody useless and charged me a fortune just to look at it ….

*Including the one about the spider that lived outside their window. Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there's a big egg in it ...