A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 30
This is the seventh year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today’s story: Confess all your sins to this robot.
Have you ever wanted to confess your crimes, bear your soul, and spill your secrets? Have you ever thought, “No, better to not. Better to suffer in silence than take the wild gamble of confiding in another fallible human being?”
If so, lonely heart, there is a robot out there for you!
New York-based production company Third Party Films will be traveling around NYC in the coming weeks with a “pop-up confessional booth.” Volunteers can confess their sins to a robot that will “listen” to their stories and ask follow-up questions. The whole thing is supposedly being filmed for the pilot of an upcoming HBO documentary series about artificial intelligence.
Okay, I got it. The Catholic Church is facing a serious problem: A shortage of priests. Their average age is 63. Seminary enrollment is way down. One in five parishes does not have a resident priest. And the situation is only going to get worse.
Fortunately a Silicon Valley startup has a solution: Robot priests. They can baptize infants. Marry couples. Conduct funerals. Deliver sermons. Hospital visitations. And yes, even hear confessions.
Our story follows the adventures of Ignatius: Prototype Priest as he… er, it makes its way through daily ministry at a failing inner city parish. It’s a test, but the congregation, while having some misgivings, welcomes Ignatius and its programming chief Susannah into their fold.
Know what? Ignatius is pretty damn good at being a man of the cloth. Dressed in traditional priestly attire including a collar, since the robot has been downloaded with thousands of sermons, interviews with ministers of all stripes, and other such data, Ignatius has a wealth of content he can immediately sort through for just the right comment to a parishoner or line for a sermon.
Then a strange thing happens: Ignatius begins to feel empathy. Hearing confession after confession, people pouring out their souls, the robot starts to connect with the humans in the congregation. And the more human he becomes, his abilities as a minister change, no longer the perfect divinely inspired robot priest, but rather a flawed creature of God, just like the parishoners.
That’s a good enough setup and a solid idea for the final day of this series.
My thirtieth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!
What would you do with it?
Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.
See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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