EVERYTHING IS FINE, read the giant yellow-green letters on the wall.

The wall... probably... knows what it is talking about...?

A woman enters the room and looks her over.

"Chantal, right?"

"Y...es." (How sure is that wall about its assertions?)

"It's good to meet you," the woman says sincerely. "I'm Johanna. If you'll follow me into my office?"

"Okay."

Nothing good ever comes of not following someone into their office when they ask, she's pretty sure.

The office is comfortably and tastefully decorated. There's a few pictures on the wall, and one of those Chinese money cats on the desk. There's three chairs for her to choose from opposite the desk, and Johanna, sitting in a broad-backed leather swivel chair, gestures vaguely enough that she could be indicating any one of them.

After what is objectively way too long spent standing indecisively behind the chairs, she picks the one on the right because it's closest.

Johanna goes to lift her hand as she starts to sit down, then decides not to say anything.

The wall was LYING. It is a wall of DECEIT.

She clears her throat. "Alright. I'm going to start with the obvious. You, Chantal Joan Myers, are dead. Your life on Earth has ended, and you are now in the next phase of your existence in the universe."

Oh, wow, it really was lying.

"Um. Okay," she says, although it isn't.

"I understand you may have some concerns," Johanna says. "But, ultimately, what you need to know is: The people on Earth had it broadly right. While 'heaven' and 'hell' as you know them aren't real, there is a good place... and a bad place. The universe cares about what people do. Good things, bad things. And when you're done, you get what you deserve. And you deserved this."

She pauses for a moment. "You're in the Good Place."

Nnnno. No, that's not right. It's not right on multiple levels, because she didn't do anything to deserve this, and because if someone actually wanted good things for her they would not put her in a place.

"Okay," she says again. Wait, that sounded wrong. "...thank you?" Is that better?

"I understand that it's a lot to take in at once," Johanna says. "A lot of people feel like they're in the wrong Place. - it's obviously more common the other way around, but we do get people whose expectations for themselves are too high, who don't believe they could be good enough to deserve eternity in Paradise with the people they love. All I can say is, give yourself a chance to believe it."

Wait, the people she loves? Is her boyfriend going to be here?? And she thought it couldn't get any worse!

...she recognizes, after a moment, that this was the wrong reaction to have. She tries a smile, instead.

"...I'll... do my best?"

"You'll do great," Johanna says, with the smile of a woman who believes it implicitly. "Let's get out of this stuffy office."

They're suddenly in a green field, towards the back of an open-air seating area. Charming little wooden chairs are placed in rows along the springy grass. People are mingling, and a few turn to say hello to Johanna as she appears.

"Take a seat, the presentation's about to begin."

Wait but she was sitting and now she's not sitting and she has to pick a chair again and that went so well the last time and—

She parks herself in the first chair she sees, as quickly as possible, then immediately regrets moving so fast because it probably made her look like a weirdo.

She's also placed herself between an apparent couple who were about to sit down, who look mildly forlorn about it but go to pick some other seats before she can apologize.

A handsome young man goes to sit next to her, then hesitates. "Is this seat available, miss?"

"Um—? Yes, sorry—" She scoots sideways a little to make sure he has plenty of room.

He seats himself, occupying as little space as it is possible for a human being to require. "Thank you so much - I confess, it is a bit overwhelming here. Did you know there are three frozen yoghurt shops in the downtown. It feels very American."

"Um—is that too many or too few, I don't know how big the downtown is, I only just got here—"

"I don't think that I can confidently say that it is too many, Johanna says the calculations were very specific and she spent a very long time on them, but it is a lot of frozen yoghurt shops."

Johanna's face fills the screen before them. "Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first day of your afterlives! You were all, simply put, good people. But how do we know that you were good? How are we sure? Well, during your time on Earth, each of your actions had a positive or a negative value, depending on how much good or bad that action put into the universe. Every time you hugged a friend, or didn't tip a waitress, that had an effect that rippled out over time, and ultimately resulted in some amount of good or bad in the world at large." (Other examples with associated point values fill the screen: ruin theatrical performance with boorish behavior is a moderate penalty, as is steal copper wiring from a decommissioned military base, but fix broken tricycle for a child who loves tricycles has a good uptick, and end slavery would permit rather a lot of theater-ruining.)

(The handsome young man's eyes are flickering across the screen. He looks... disoriented.)

Chantal is also disoriented. That's such a list of... strangely specific yet oddly broad things? What about the size of the theatrical performance? How singlehandedly do you have to end slavery? Maybe they simplified it for the presentation. Probably they did.

"You know how some people pull into the breakdown lane when there's traffic, and they say 'eh, nobody's watching'?" Jazz hands. "Surprise!"

A chuckle ripples across the audience.

"Anyway, when your time on Earth has ended, we measure your life, beginning to end, taking into account everything you did - everything you thought nobody saw - and we decide: were you a good person?"

A pause.

"The answer, in your cases, was a resounding yes."

No it wasn't! It couldn't possibly—

—could it??

She glances nervously at the young man sitting next to her, in case he has a better idea of how to react.

He doesn't seem perturbed. He notices her looking at him and gives her a reassuring smile.

...okay. She does her best to be reassured.

"And what happens to the people who didn't measure up?" Johanna asks rhetorically. She shakes her head. "Don't worry about it! The point is, you're all here because you lived a good life. Maybe you weren't always perfect. But you came pretty close. This is your reward. And - in case you were wondering - you won't be alone. You'll spend the rest of forever with your true soulmate."

The crowd gasps and murmurs.

"That's right! Soulmates! They're real! One of the other people here is perfect for you - and you get to be with them. Forever."

It's incredible how reassuring that isn't!

"So, welcome to eternal happiness. Welcome to the Good Place."

A final slide pops up, with a picture of two adorable otters. "Sponsored by: Otters holding hands while they sleep. You know the way you feel when you see a picture of two otters holding hands? That's the way you're going to feel every day."

The handsome young man looks at Chantal appraisingly, then says, "I'd like to talk later - didn't really get a chance to. If we turn out to be soulmates, great. If not, maybe we can get frozen yoghurt or something. See what the fuss is about. Alright?"

"Okay," she says, with a nervous smile.

Johanna shows up. "Ready to meet your soulmate? I really think you're gonna like him. Actually I know you're gonna like him, because it's literally inevitable!"

"I had a couple of questions for you, actually," Chantal's seatmate says to Johanna, entirely unperturbed by her teleportation.

"You can ask Janet," she says. Then she and Chantal are standing in another part of the field, facing -

- a man Chantal has met before.

"Hey!" he chuckles. "Uh. I - this is not the best first impression but I've definitely forgotten your name."

"—that's okay, I forgot yours too?" No wait that's a stupid response which sucks. Well, too late now.

He bursts out laughing and tries to scratch his head, with a momentary flash of irritation when his suit jacket limits his range of motion. "Thank God. Does that also mean you forgot what a clown I was in school? -Ari," he says, going in for a hug. "I'm Ari."

Oh. She's being hugged now. This is fine. Yes. Soulmate hugs. A perfectly reasonable and normal event, which only a crazy person would object to.

"I'm, um, Chantal. Sorry." Wait why is she sorry? Just sort of for existing in general? That's not a good enough reason. She is doing being sorry wrong.

"Chantal! What a pretty name. Um - you seem maybe a little overwhelmed, which makes a lot of sense - Johanna, can you show us to our house?"

Oh he's so thoughtful. Hoo...ray.

"If you're sure you don't want to meet your neighbors?"

Ari shrugs. "I'd rather my soulmate be comfortable. We can meet the neighbors later in eternity."

"Alright, Prince Charming."

They're standing in front of... a house.

oh no

The house is... tall. And pretty. Actually it's very pretty. Enormous windows sparkling in the sunlight, artistically placed vines (are they fake? she can't tell), things going on with white brick and stone tile that someone who knew more about architecture than she does would probably understand. A set of four curved steps leads up between a pair of thick stone half-walls to an arched double door with, again, huge sparkling windows; the doors are almost more glass than wood. Above them sits an even more enormous window, stretching from just above the door all the way up to the roof, through which an elegant crystal chandelier gleams like an exquisitely beautiful glass spider.

Tentatively, she ascends. The steps are a little too broad and the half-wall a little too short for it to be any use getting up them.

Inside, the house abandons the imposing stone-and-brick aesthetic for a more modern take on austerity. A pristine white carpet stretches the whole width of the disturbingly open-plan first floor, from the kitchen on the right with its spotless white countertops to the living room on the left with its angular white couches encircling a coffee table made of what seems to be a single sheet of glass bent over into a sideways U. Straight ahead, twin staircases spiral up in opposing gentle curves, framing a central area which her brain keeps insisting is the lobby even though houses should not have lobbies; in her defense, there's a potted plant and one of those long backless couch things you find in malls where people are only supposed to be able to sit down for two minutes at a time. Behind that, more windows look out on the worryingly immaculate backyard.

She stands there frozen, afraid to go up the stairs because if her—their?—bedroom has this many windows she may find herself jumping out of one. There's too many windows. And not enough walls! Where are the walls! Are there bathrooms in this house? Do they have walls???

Ari looks... concerned. "Um. This is... very nice. Will we be able to... adjust it... to our personal taste, by any chance?" He laughs self-deprecatingly. "I mean, I'm- I was an architecture student, and I can't think of anything more satisfying than, uh, living in a house that I designed..."

"Oh, we know! And you are! This is actually taken from one of your earliest designs, when you were still living with your adoptive mother. You wanted 'a big fancy house' where you could run around however you liked and anybody could come in and say hello. You actually drew parts of the façade on some notebook paper, and we lifted them with some minor adjustments. The furnishings aren't to your exact specs, but it can't all be for you; some adjustments had to be made for your soulmate's taste."

Which parts of this are adjusted for her taste, exactly??? "The, um, windows, are nice," she says, because they did look very pretty from the outside, even though they do also kind of make her feel like some kind of science experiment being observed under floodlights.

"Oh, I like the windows too!" Ari says happily. "Lots of natural light. Um, I was more thinking of - you know what, never mind. Maybe we'll talk it over later, see where our tastes are different, see how we can reconcile that. I, uh, the coffee table is - we can talk later. Is there a bathroom?"

"You no longer have the grotesque bodily functions with which you were saddled by evolution!" Johanna chirps. "There is, however, a bath upstairs."

"Great, I'm sure it'll be... very... big. Johanna, thanks so much for the tour - can you, um, let us settle in for a bit?"

"Sure thing! I'll let you lovebirds 'settle', and I'll just pop by later."

And she's gone.

Oh no she's alone with her soulmate now. He might expect her to interact with him. Terrible.

"I... wonder what the rest of the house looks like?" she says uncertainly. No, wait, if they go look at the rest of the house they might end up in a bedroom with a bed in it—oh well, too late now.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Let's see what the Celestial Bureau of Bad Taste has in store for us upstairs. -do you mind if I change, this suit is bugging the living shirt out of me."

He furrows his brow. "Um. The shirt, I mean. The - the fork. What the fork is this."

"...um," she says. "Are you... trying... to say words... other than... the words that are coming out of your mouth."

"I cordially invite you to try to swear. Uh - câlique. Batarnak. The French too? Forking here. I can't even say here?"

"...I believe you. Okay. Um. —I don't mind at all if you change," as long as she doesn't have to be in the room, wait, are there even enough walls for that, whatever it's fine she can leave the house no wait maybe that would be weird—

"Janet?" Ari says.

A woman appears directly behind him. "Yes?"

Ari turns and smiles at her, only slightly strained. "Can I get some real-person clothes? This suit isn't really my style."

"Certainly," she says blandly. "What style of real-person clothes would you like?" 

"Uh. Can I get... just... basketball shorts and a T-shirt?"

"Unfortunately, your neighborhood has placed fashion restrictions for aesthetic reasons. I can get you slacks and a polo?"

Ari makes a face. "Ugh. Fine."

There's a ding, and she hands him the clothes. "You're welcome!"

Then she disappears.

Ari starts to strip.

Chantal is just going to... look... at... the kitchen?? To. See what is in the fridge?? This is a reasonable activity, yes? Good yes okay she's over here now.

"Oh, sorry," Ari says, sounding faintly amused and equally faintly guilty.

"The fridge," she announces, "contains a truly unreasonable amount of cream soda." She's still trying not to look at him but is somewhat less panicked about it.

"Ooh!"

Ari traipses into the kitchen, shirtless and with his slacks half-buttoned, to look. "That is a pretty unreasonable amount of cream soda," he agrees. "I do like cream soda, though. Score one for the Good Place."

"I like cream soda but I do not think I like cream soda quite this much."

She starts peeking into cupboards. All the plates and so on are alarmingly fancy, and she can't seem to find any actual food items. She turns back to the fridge, because she thinks she remembers seeing an opaque drawer, only to find that the drawer in question is full of..... cans of cream soda instead of the 2L bottles packing the shelves.

"...I guess dead people don't... actually need to eat?"

"Yeah. And I know I can't cook, and if you can't either then maybe we're just supposed to call on Janet or eat out when we want something. And... the kitchenware is... in case we want to learn, maybe. And there's no solid ingredients because... they don't want them to go to waste if we don't decide to learn?"

He shrugs. "Or maybe that's just Male Answer Syndrome and the whole thing is a glitch in the matrix. Who knows."

"I used to cook some. I guess I wasn't very good at it."

"Oh! Well, if you want to pick it up again, we can always Janet up some groceries."

"That... might be nice," she says, although the mention of Janet also causes her to scoot over so that her back is firmly pressed against the countertop. Please no mysteriously appearing behind her, thanks.

"Oh, Janet obeys a use-mention distinction," Ari reassured her. "You have to intend to call her."

"Oh—sorry. I'm just—being paranoid, I guess."

"I think I get it. ...do you want to check out the rest of the house and see what the Celestial Bureau of Bad Taste in fact has in store for us? I may have designed this house but I did not invent this furniture, it's grotesque."

"It is, um,"

She tries to come up with something positive to say about the furniture.

"...furniture," she concludes. "Sure."

"Sure forking is."

He leads her up the massive incongruous stairs. "On the one hand I do still think this design is cool," Ari notes. "On the other hand, it's a lot to... live... in."

"There are some cool things going on here," she cautiously agrees. "The... stairs are pretty. Um."

And then she forgets what she was about to say, because the second floor is even more aggressively open-plan than the first.

On their left as they emerge from the stairs, there is a bathtub so big it's really more of a swimming pool, a white marble edifice with gleaming silver fixtures. Suspended above its very center like the sword of Damocles is what looks like one of those rainfall-simulating showerheads, a big flat metal disk with lots of little holes in the bottom, only it has lots of little downward-facing point lights around the rim as though someone recognized how much it looked like a chandelier and decided to run with it.

As if that wasn't terrifying enough, especially when combined with the fact that there are no walls up here, there is also a bed off to the right. It's more than large enough to feel vaguely intimidating, without being quite large enough to turn sharing it from an internal screaming situation into something more like having neighbouring sleeping bags on the same stretch of floor. The mattress rests on what seems to be some kind of heart-shaped marble dais, with a matching heart-shaped mirror set into the ceiling above.

Also, there are still way too many windows.

Despite her best efforts, Chantal us visibly frozen in shock.

"...Chantal? Are you... okay?"

"Y...e...s???" she says, in the most unconvincing tone of voice ever heard by human ears.

"Janet."

"Hello."

"We need screens up here. At least around the tub, at least until we're comfortable with each other. We also need curtains. White curtains preferably, don't want to mess up the façade, but curtains."

"Curtains will interrupt the natural light," Janet says. "And you don't actually want screens."

"I am not the only person who has to live here. Screens. And curtains. Please."

"Fine. You don't have to bully me."

Screens and curtains. Vanishment of Janet.

Chantal looks somewhat less terrified.

"...thank you," she says. "Sorry. I shouldn't—sorry."

"You shouldn't what? Not be as much of a compulsive exhibitionist as I was when I was eight years old?"

"—if this is the house you wanted I don't want to—get in the way—it wouldn't be fair, just because I'm—being silly about things—"

"I wouldn't describe anything you've done today as 'silly'. I'm not going to deny that it'd be nice to live without worrying about who sees who naked. You know what else would be nice? Living without worrying that I'm making my soulmate desperately uncomfortable."

She laughs weakly. "I, um. Well. Sorry."

"Do you want to go over your furniture opinions, or do you want to take a nap while I sample cream soda, or do you want to put the bed through its paces, or what? I'm open for anything."

She does not quite successfully prevent her face from indicating that 'putting the bed through its paces' is possibly the thing she wants least out of all things she could possibly have right now up to and including spontaneous combustion.

"...maybe I'll have a nap," she says, because you know what sounds great right now? Not having experiences. Not having experiences sounds like her best option in this scenario by a long shot.

"Cool," he says, not quite managing to hide his disappointment at his soulmate's apparent revulsion. "I'll just... occupy myself."

"—sorry. Sorry. Enjoy the, um, cream soda."

"Sure. Hope you feel better."

He trots downstairs.

She is going to curl up in this terrifying bed and have a sad awful nap like the sad awful person she is.

And Ari is going to drink some cream soda and wonder how he could possibly have been soulmated to a girl who doesn't even want him.

"Janet?" he asks.

"Yeah?"

"...sorry for yelling at you. It's been kind of a day."

"Well. Today is the worst day of the rest of your life, and all that."

"Not totally sure that's how it goes."

"Maybe not. Is everything up to spec in the house?"

"...um. Could you get me... a recipe and ingredients for Chantal's favorite food?"

"I am aware that you cannot cook."

"I can try, can't I?"

"I suppose you can."

Ingredients spread across the countertop, along with a laminated recipe card.

"...read the recipe all the way through before you make it," Janet recommends. "It helps."

Then she disappears.

An hour or so later, Chantal wakes up, tries to get back to sleep, fails, tries again, fails again, and finally drags herself downstairs with rumpled clothes and a mildly despondent expression.

Ari is wrestling a waffle iron. "Just - open up - you stupid machine -"

She stops just past the bottom of the stairs and peers nervously at the kitchen.

Ari finally wrenches the waffle iron open, beholds its contents, and makes a strangled noise of distress.

Then he notices his soulmate. "Chantal. I - I wanted to -" He swallows. "I wanted to make you something nice."

"oh," she says in a very small voice, and she sits down on the bottom step and bursts into tears.

That makes two of them, actually.

"Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry—" She hides her head in her arms and tries to stop crying and can't and hiccups and sobs indecipherable apologies into her knees.

The doorbell rings.

why this

Ari lurches to his feet and over to the door. He opens it, wipes his eyes with his other hand, beholds the gentleman ringing the doorbell.

"Hi," he croaks.

"...We can come back if it's a bad time," the gentleman says softly.

"We, uh, brought brownies?" says the woman standing next to him. "Wow, you've been having a bad day, huh." She winces slightly and adds, "Sorry, uh, to... uh, sorry."

maybe if she scrunches even SMALLER and covers her head with her arms even HARDER there will STOP BEING THINGS

"Do you want to come outside and - be outside," Tintin asks Ari somewhat desperately.

"Yes please," he says thickly.

Tintin heads inside, crouches next to Chantal, and speaks softly, as one might to a frightened animal or a crying girl.

"I'm taking your soulmate outside," he says, "and you can be alone, and if you want you can come out with us later, and if you don't then you don't have to. Alright?"

...okay. That is an allowed thing. Maybe.

She manages the tiniest nod, really more of a rock, a shifting of the whole arms-over-head assemblage. A sniffle emerges. Then she goes back to trying to curl up the smallest that anyone has ever huddled in the history of very sad people.

"So," Tintin says to Ari once they're all outside and sitting at one of the patio tables scattered around the lawn, "I suppose I don't have to ask how your day's been."

"Pretty well shirt, yeah. Sh- yep. Pretty forking bad."

"...is there a personal decision not to say fork going on here, or... Wow, okay, that's happening."

"I'm so happy to help you with this step on your personal journey."

Snort. "Thanks."

"I suppose we'll go around the table and introduce ourselves, how's that? Tariq Saint-Martin, call me Tintin, professor of ethics and philosophy. I like white wine and the work of René Descartes. Pass to the left?"

"Ariel Kaltmann, call me Ari, ethical slut and former architecture student. I like... most things... but sex and architecture hold special and distinct places in my heart."

"Veronica Chaplin. Still processing the fact that apparently I died of being hit by a car while jaywalking, like some kind of modern Aesop."

"Oh, that sucks. I apparently had a seizure and drowned at the beach. Which - I mean, everybody's death traumatizes somebody, but - I dunno. There were kids there."

"Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure." Tintin shakes his head. "Regrettably untrue. You have my sincerest condolences, Ari."

"Wow, yeah, that sucks. I guess dying usually does."

Did her death traumatize somebody? Is she supposed to care about that? Whoever ran her over probably didn't have a great day but she kind of feels like that's their problem and not hers.

Tintin glances at her thoughtfully, then back to Ari. "I'm sorry to ask this of you, but would you explain what caused you to be in the state in which we found you? I'm doing some research, you might say - trying to figure out why this place is so, well, poorly optimized."

"Well... I wasn't in a great way to start, what with dying. And Johanna said some things that reminded me of my mother, and how she... wasn't the best person? And then I met my soulmate, and she's a girl from my high school, like, she was nice enough but she didn't leave an impression - and we get to the house and the architecture is kind of okay in some ways and utterly batshirt in others, and Chantal's having an even worse time of that because she's shy and it's designed for me when it's designed for anyone at all, and - and I tried to fix it, got some dividing panels in, but - she doesn't even want me - sorry, just - my soulmate isn't attracted to me at all and it's kind of forking me up."

...oh shit, wait, what's the Good Person move here? She could sympathize with him but then she'd be kind of being a dick to Tintin??? And also it probably wouldn't ring very true because she doesn't actually feel all that sympathetic? Maybe she should sympathize with the crying girl?? No, then she's being a dick to Ari... ugh, being good is exhausting.

"Sorry to hear that," she says vaguely. "Do you, uh, want a brownie." Shove baked goods in people's faces, prevent them from saying words she has to respond to, take credit for her soulmate's generosity, win-win-win.

"Sure, I guess."

Ari takes a corner piece and nibbles on it. 

Tintin is squinting at Veronica, but stops when she looks at him, instead turning back to Ari.

"I'm sorry. I'm sure by now you've noticed that many things are wrong here, and I think the soulmate matching system may be the most fundamentally broken. I'm not sure yet if our true soulmates are around here somewhere, or if... well. I'm beginning to come up with a hypothesis about our situation, but it's not very polished - I'd need to consult an expert."

"Well. That's better than not having any idea what's going on. This brownie is very nice," he notes aside to Veronica.

"Thanks!" she says, feeling incredibly fake and surreal about how chipper she sounds. "Baked it myself, with a little help from my soulmate!" Wait, no, obvious lie, turn it around. "That's a joke, he did all the work." Humility is a good person thing, right?

Ari chuckles. "You're very lucky, then. He's cute, too, that has to help."

"Be my guest, he's super gay." Wait, do good people not suggest soulmate swinging within five minutes of meeting a person? And also without consulting the soulmate in question? Oh, and she's probably gone and reminded him of his unattracted soulmate situation, too. Great. She should just stop saying words.

Tintin twitches violently.

Ari goes through a couple of expressions - interest, realization, mild alarm upon noticing Tintin's expression - and settles on a sort of thoughtful frown.

"This has been very interesting," he says abruptly. "I might talk with you later, if that's alright, but right now I think I need to check on my soulmate."

"Yes, I think that would be good. I have some calls to make as well."

...???

Ari steels himself and re-enters the house.

"I have a quick philosophical question for you," Tintin says. "Veronica, what is a good person?"

"Uh."

Okay she has fucked something up and she has no idea what.

"I, uh. I guess... somebody who... does... good things? And not bad things??"

"I think that's a definition that can be gotten along with," Tintin nods. "Janet?"

"Yeah?"

"First, I would like to confirm that everything I ask you is confidential."

"Naturally. Even Johanna can't access my data; it's a necessary prerequisite for anyone to feel comfortable talking to me about anything. What kind of pornography did you want?"

"...none at present, thank you. I wanted to ask: what would happen if, by some - profound cosmic accident - a bad person was put in the Good Place?"

"Total catastrophe. Their behavior would warp the system around them, every negative intention and thoughtless action twisting the metaresponsive fabric of the demiplane further and further until it became a nightmare for everyone in it including them."

"Thank you, Janet."

"You're welcome! Is there anything else I can help with?"

"Again, not at present. Thank you."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa???????

"What the here did I forking do?!"

"It is a theory. A theory which has so far been borne out, but I welcome you to contradict it. Veronica, please tell me something good - meaningfully good - that you did in your Earthly life."

"No, wait—that's not—I can't—first you gotta tell me what the fork I did because I can't for the life of me figure it out!"

"Are you somehow unfamiliar with the concept that outing people is bad."

She clutches her head with both hands in profound aggravation, as it finally wins out over confusion and panic.

"You—forking—who does that? Who the fork—you just went and told me and you didn't even say to keep it secret it just came packaged with your forking wild-eyed rant on how something is rotten in the state of Goodplace—like I don't even have to be bad to miss that one I just have to be kind of slow which I apparently am because I had literally no idea—who gives a shirt, we're all dead here—I am going to shove a literal eating utensil in the eye of whoever came up with this stupid forking censorship scheme—"

"I'm not saying this makes you evil. But you're - conspicuously antisocial in ways that don't fit into how this place is structured. If something is messing up the algorithm, it's you. And clearly, something is messing up the algorithm."

"Augh what do you mean I'm conspicuously antisocial! I'm trying SO HARD not to be conspicuously antisocial!!!"

"...points for trying, I guess? I don't think it's enough points to get you into the Good Place, though. Listen, I doubt that the Bad Place is that awful. Any system invented by entities moral enough to recognize good behavior and intend to reward it wouldn't just - torture people forever, you know? It's a logically bankrupt concept. Here - Janet, what's the Bad Place like?"

"It's where those who failed to reach the Good Place are tortured forever," says an abruptly present Janet. "Here's a sound clip."

The sound clip is not encouraging.

"Coulda forking told you!" she mutters.

"Anything else?"

"No, thank you Janet."

Janet vanishes in a puff of logic. "What the fork," Tintin says emphatically.

"Why are you surprised—see, that's the problem with good people, you go around expecting everybody to be nice to you—if this," she gestures wildly around them, "is what they come up with for the VIPs, why would you expect the Bad Place not to suck even if they were trying??" A pause, as realization strikes. "At least I can still say suck. This place sucks. You suck. Everything sucks. Go suck a deck. ...oh, come on."

"I assure you, I have never expected anyone to be nice to me. I was born in a place where I could have been publicly executed for any of half a dozen personal characteristics, and very nearly was on multiple occasions. I emigrated to Great Britain at the first opportunity, and found it full of violent racists. Then I went back to Senegal so I could make it better. People being terrible is not news to me. For the briefest forking moment, I entertained the hope that the entities who are attempting - however incompetently - to provide us with eternal bliss were better. The fact that they aren't means that I need to make them better."

"No but that's still—you were all 'they wouldn't just torture people forever' and they totally are! You went and told me you're gay and expected me to keep it secret without you even asking! As soon as you think you've found the good ones you let your guard down! You're all doing it constantly and it pisses me the fork off! I haven't let my guard down since I learned how to use a toilet by myself! Ugh, get on my level, what the fork do you think will happen if you try to complain to management?!"

"The entire point of there being good people is that you can let your guard down around them. That is, from a reductionist perspective, the entire reason we have a civilization. I do not intend to - to complain to the management, like some American woman with a bad haircut. I intend to find out why they are doing what they are doing, and when I understand it, to make them stop by any means in my power."

"Oh fork," she sighs, "a revolutionary. Can you leave me out of your harebrained schemes, please? They're gonna pack you off to the Bad Place for insubordination or whattheforkever and I don't wanna be collateral damage."

"I would love nothing better than to leave you out of my harebrained schemes. Unfortunately, our fates are somewhat intertwined, as it were - you being here by mistake and destabilizing the system, and me having my secret revolutionary plots, and us being, ahem, soulmates. If either of us is discovered, it will likely have consequences for the other."

Tintin paces. "If we are to make an impact - if we are to do what is right - then we must present a unified front. A front of goodness. And - perhaps, if I can make you good, the imbalance will be corrected? The primary objective must always be the liberation of the Bad Place, but there are innocents being tormented here as well..."

He claps his hands together. "It's decided. I, Tariq Saint-Martin, shall teach you, Veronica Chaplin, to be good."

"...sssooooo," she says, slowly, "there is, I guess, a sense, in which, that solves, a problem, that I have,,,"

"Our alternative, currently discarded as flagrantly immoral, is that I turn you in to the authorities and operate solo. If you refuse my offer, that returns to the table. Blackmail, for the record, is not good, but we'll get into utilitarian trade-offs later in the curriculum."

"Oh, if I'm going down, you're going down with me."

She sighs.

"But it's not like I'm opposed to learning how to fake it better. And if getting it down well enough actually makes everything stop sucking that would be nice. So sure, we'll try it your way. Let's My Fair Lady the shirt out of me."

"Excellent!"

Meanwhile, earlier:

Ari enters the house. "Chantal?" he calls. "I'm home."

snfl

Ari sits within cuddling distance but outside of Chantal's personal space. "So, our neighbors are interesting," he says. "Seems like they're also having a time of it."

"it was really nice of you to try to make me waffles."

"Oh! I, um, do try. That was the intent. Thank you. - maybe in future I'll just ask Janet for some, though."

"'msorry I burst into tears about it." She hugs her knees. "That was probably not the outcome you intended."

"I mean, no? But also I'm pretty sure burnt waffle mess wasn't what either of us wanted, either, so I'm pretty much counting that as my bad."

"...okay. I guess. You didn't—do anything wrong though—"

"...not, like, morally? But I wanted to do something nice for you more than I wanted you to have something nice. I don't know if that makes sense."

"...I guess. But. ...don't want you to feel bad for trying to do something nice for me."

"I don't. I feel kind of bad that I sucked at it but - I can practice, probably somebody around here knows how to cook, and in the meantime I'll try to actually help instead of trying to make myself feel better."

"Well. Okay."

Ari lets his head clonk against the wall gently. "What a forking day. Um, I might take a walk through downtown, see what kind of stuff's on offer - you wanna come with me?"

She contemplates this prospect, and the prospect of sitting at the bottom of the stairs being miserable for the next several hours. Going for a walk with her soulmate seems... Probably better?

"Okay."

So they go for a walk. Ari considers taking her hand, and decides against it.

The downtown is kitschy in a vaguely delightful way. There are more frozen yogurt establishments than can be credited. There are also little antique shops.

"Ooh, can we go antiquing?" Ari asks, bouncing slightly on his heels.

...she smiles. (They're just very good bounces, you see.)

"Sure, if you want."

The antique shop is named The Extraordinary Find. Ari immediately discovers a cedar jewelry box inlaid with mother-of-pearl and small gemstones. He's delighted by it.

"How much for this one?" he asks the proprietor.

     "Oh, we don't use currency here!" she chuckles.

"Oh! Then I can just - take it?"

     "Well, no - the real pleasure of antiquing is in finding something, not having it cluttering up your house. It's an antiquing store, not an antique store."

"...then..."

     "Put it back so someone else can find it!"

"...okay."

He puts the box back where he found it and leaves the store, trying not to look too obviously sad.

"...it was really pretty," she says.

"It was, wasn't it," he sighs. "I guess they're right, though - we've got eternity, the house would get pretty cluttered."

"You could put things back. When you got tired of them."

"Yeah, but - mm."

He doesn't really have an answer to that, actually.

"Wanna get some frozen yogurt? I don't see anywhere for ice cream, but I like frozen yogurt okay too."

"Okay."

They get some frozen yogurt. It's very aesthetically pleasing, and it tastes nice. Ari gets a big fluffy concoction with loads of toppings.

Chantal gets the Gummy Sea Creatures Special because she wants to find out what is in a Gummy Sea Creatures Special.

"I don't know what I expected," she says, gazing contemplatively at the sea-blue contents of her cup, and the gummy sea creatures piled thereon. There's a little plastic trident stuck in the shark at the top of the heap, possibly to assist her in eating the gummy sea creatures.

Ari stares in delight. "That's wonderful," he says.

She lifts her shark on its trident and delicately nibbles its translucent tail.

"Squishy," she pronounces.

"That's the best way for a gummy shark to be!"

Ari tries some of his ridiculous concoction. "Kinda blends together into sugarslop," he diagnoses. "But I like sugarslop."

"I like gummy sharks, I think. I don't know that I've ever had one before."

Nomf. She spears a wiggly tentacular gummy next, considers it for a moment, then holds it out to Ari. "Jellyfish?"

Ari delicately bites it off the trident. "Thank you kindly."

Oh good. (Tiny wiggle.)

What good wiggles. What a good soulmate he has except for all the part that he's not thinking about.

What a good soulmate she has except for all the part she's not thinking about! They have so much in common.

She notices that she's wiggling, blushes, stops, and eats a bright yellow tropical fish gummy instead. "Oh! Lemon! I don't know why I didn't expect that."

Aw, no more wiggles? But the wiggles were good. Ari has some more undifferentiated sugarstuff. "I think I could get used to this place," he says thoughtfully. "Just - a little more of this, a little less of. The rest of it."

"I think I see what you mean."

She gazes contemplatively into her frozen yogurt ocean. Tries some oceanic frozen yogurt. Discovers that it's weirdly salty and actually she would rather have more gummies.

"Want a lemonfish?" she asks, spearing one and holding it out.

"Can't stand lemon," Ari says. "Enjoy. If there's any red fishies I might go for one, there's few things you can flavor red candy that I won't go for."

She eats the lemonfish, inspects the pile, and discovers a blobby little red thing. "I think it might be cherry," she says. "Either that or it is a red fish that is unrelatedly shaped sort of like a butt." She offers Ari the buttfish.

"...I think it's supposed to be a blobfish?"

He consumes it. "Again, delightful."

"Well now I want to try one and see what it tastes like."

She investigates her dwindling heap of sea creatures, but can't find another red buttfish anywhere. Hmm. A dilemma.

She approaches the counter again. "Hello, I would like another Gummy Sea Creatures Special, please. It is for science."

The person at the counter smiles. "Certainly! There's no need to watch what you eat anymore, after all!"

They collect her another Gummy Sea Creatures Special. This one has a cherry blobfish on top, speared directly through its center of mass by the trident.

Hmm. Now she has two cups and that is also the number of hands she has and she cannot really deploy a trident effectively under these circumstances.

She turns back to Ari. "I may need you to feed me the cherry buttfish," she says gravely. "For science."

Ari will absolutely do this.

After using it to boop her nose.

Squeak!! "Thapf my noeff!!" she says around a mouthful of gummy.

"And it, like you, is adorable. And I felt the need to boop it. With the blobfish."

Om nom nom. "Okay, I concede that you have a fair and reasonable point."