Hi, I'm Lovar Burton and this is Lovar Burton Reads.

In every episode I can pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

You know, as artificial intelligence improves and we assign AI and robots more and more human tasks,

of course there's a huge discussion about what actually makes us human.

Maybe one of the things that makes us unquestionably human is our failings or more accurately our struggle,

our struggle to love, to believe, to endure.

Today's story is about religion, AI, robots and the human struggle.

Sinitor is about a robot visiting the Vatican long after most nearly all humans on earth have left their bodies.

Their consciousnesses and possibly their souls have joined the cloud,

but there is one person remaining in the sea of robots who still wander the earth.

Now in centuries past there was a tradition in Catholicism of a member of the community referred to as a sin eater and their job,

their function in the society was to literally eat the sins of the dead or dying.

Originally the sin eater actually ate food prepared by the deceased's family,

but over time the meal disappeared from the ritual.

Now this was a valued service to the community, but the sin eater was shunned.

After all, who wants to hang out with someone who's full of everyone else's wrongdoing?

The story is by the multi-award-winning British author Ian R. McCloud,

who's written The Light Ages, The House of Storms, The Great Wheel and a host of short stories and novellas.

His most recent collection is ragged maps and it includes today's story.

Please do check out the written content advisory in the episode description if you are so inclined and now if you're ready.

Let's take a deep breath and begin sin eater by Ian R. McCloud.

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