Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Creative Writing Contest] All the People You Could Come to Love, published by October on October 25, 2021 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Teagan was so bored that she thought she’d die. She had just turned eleven and had been shipped off to her grandparents farm just outside Appomattox, Virginia to stay out of her parents' hair for a few weeks until school started. Her mom was busy preparing lectures for her first year of teaching Constitutional Law at Georgetown, and her dad, well, he was doing “critical work” at the White House. Teagan’s dad was the Chief of Staff, which was a shockingly boring description of what apparently was a very important job. Ever since President Garman took office at the start of last year, her dad was gone from before she woke up to after she went to sleep. They had gotten a new house in Foggy Bottom, a new, massive car with black tinted windows, and several security guards that followed them around at all times -- except when she was at school, because the school came with its own security guards. But out here, on the fifty rolling acres of farmland, there was no need for security guards.
She didn’t blame her potential attackers for not wanting to trek out to Appomattox.
She had only been here two days and she’d already exhausted the easy topics of conversation with her grandparents (Yes, she liked school. Yes, she did like to read/bike/play soccer. No, she didn’t miss her parents. Yes, she had liked horse-riding camp, and so on.) She had escaped the dusty interior where her grandmother was catching up with her Bridge group, passed her grandpa watering his apple trees, and found her way through the tall grass to the end of the property where the fields melted into trees. There was a half tipped over barbed wire fence, its posts covered in lichen and the metal wires rusted a warm orange.
She sat on a rock under an elm tree and watched some sparrows dance up and away. So this would be summer -- sparrows and trees and the endless quiet. She let the minutes pass. She heard the sound of a distant lawn mower revving up. Suddenly, she saw movement through the trees. Someone coming towards her. She started up just as a boy around her age jumped the fence and landed noiselessly in front of her. He was slightly taller than her with brown hair and green eyes. But something was off about him -- as if the edges of his body shimmered slightly and she could see the trees through them. He was insubstantial.
“Hello,” He said, in a voice that sounded as normal as any of the boys on the bus to the Friends school, “I’m Ethan.”
“I’m Teagan.”
He watched her looking through him to the forest behind and gave a small, almost wistful smile, “I’d shake your hand, but I can’t really do that sort of thing.”
Teagan wasn’t one to be phased. She looked him up and down and asked, “Are you a ghost?”
“I’m the opposite of a ghost.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Ghosts are people who have already died. I haven’t been born yet.”
“That’s a weird kind of ghost.”
“Oh, because the other kind of ghost is so normal.” He half turned as if to retreat back into the trees.
“No, don’t go!” Teagan knew this would likely be the most exciting thing to happen for the rest of the summer. “Is there something you want? Ghosts always want something.”
“Yeah, I guess there is.” Ethan paused and looked up the hill towards the house. “I want to be born.”
Teagan stared at him, mouth open. “How am I supposed to get you born? Isn’t that your parents' problem?”
“Yeah, largely. But they need to exist.”
“They’re going to die?”
“They might, along with a lot of people.”
“And you want me to stop that?”
“Yeah. I need you to stop a war.”
“What war? What do you mean?”
“Figure out what your dad’s so busy with. Pay attention to a place called Taiwan, and figure out what he’s building -- it will be the end of d...
