LW - The Soul Key by Richard Ngo

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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: The Soul Key, published by Richard Ngo on November 4, 2023 on LessWrong.
The ocean is your home, but a forbidding one: often tempestuous, seldom warm. So one of your great joys is crawling onto land and slipping off your furry seal skin, to laze in the sun in human form. The elders tell horror stories of friends whose skins were stolen by humans, a single moment of carelessness leaving them stranded forever on land. That doesn't happen any more, though; this is a more civilized age. There are treaties, and authorities, and fences around the secluded beaches you and your sisters like the most, where you can relax in a way that older generations never could.
So your sisters no longer lose their skins by force. But sometimes it happens by choice. Sometimes a group of your sisters wrap their skins around themselves like robes and walk into the nearby town. The humans point and stare, but that's just part of the thrill. Sometimes young men gather the courage to approach, bearing flowers or jewelry or sweet words. And sometimes one of your sisters is charmed enough to set a rendezvous - and after a handful of meetings, or a dozen, to decide to stay for good.
You never thought it would happen to you. But his manners are so lively, and his eyes so kind, that you keep coming back, again and again. When he finally asks you to stay, you hesitate only a moment before saying yes. The harder part comes after. He finds you human clothes, and in exchange you give him your beautiful skin, and tell him that it must be locked away somewhere you'll never find it - and that he must never give it back to you, no matter how much you plead. Because if there's any shred of doubt, any chance of returning home, then the lure of the sea will be too much for you. You want this; you want him; you want to build a life together. And so the decision has to be final.
Years pass. You bear three beautiful children, with his eyes and your hair, and watch them blossom into beautiful adults. You always live near the sea, although you can't bear to swim in it - your limbs feel unbearably weak and clumsy whenever you try. You and your husband grow into each other, time smoothing down the ridges left from pushing two alien lives together. You forget who you once were.
After your youngest leaves home, you start feeling restless. You have disquieting dreams - first intermittently, then for weeks on end. One day, after your husband has gone to work, your feet take you up the stairs to the attic. As you brush aside the cobwebs in one of the corners, your hands land on an old chest. You pull on the lid, and it catches on a padlock - but only for a second. The shackle has been rusted through by the sea breeze, and quickly snaps. You open the lid, and you see your skin laid out before you.
What then?
You look at your skin, and your ears fill with the roar of the sea. A wild urge overtakes you; you grab your skin and run headlong towards the shore. As you reach it you see your husband standing on the pier - but that gives you only a moment's pause before you dive into the water, your skin fitting around you as if you'd never taken it off.
As you swim away, you envisage your family in tatters: your children left baffled and distraught, your husband putting on a brave face for their sake. But it was his fault, after all. He failed in the one thing you asked of him; and you can't fight your nature.
You look at your skin, and see a scrap of paper lying on top of it.
I knew you'd only open the chest if you were restless and unhappy
, it reads.
And I would never cage you. So go free, with my blessing
.
You catch your breath - and, for a moment, you consider staying. But his permission loosens any tether that might have held you back. You leave the note there, alongside a little patch of fur torn off your coat: a last gest...