"Veronica." She shakes his hand. She mostly manages to conceal how weird and awkward she feels about it. "Good to meet you too." Dropping his hand as quickly as she can get away with, she says, "Soulmates, huh? That's new."

"Isn't it just! Johanna, is that - baked in somehow, a fundamental fact of reality, or merely one of your probabilistic calculations -"

"The answer to that question is approximately 'both' and also 'neither' but mostly 'ask me again after a few thousand years studying the fundamental nature of reality'."

"Johanna has been saying many cheerful things like that."

"Cheerful," she repeats, trying for sincerity and making it about five percent of the way there. "Yes."

"I've also been informed that - what was it, Johanna? The Good Place is so thoroughly optimized that -"

"- even a blade of grass out of place could cause a cascading system failure. But don't worry, we've got automated systems for that now. After your first few grass disasters - disgrassters, if you will - you learn to be pretty careful."

"Just so. I really consider that to be a fascinating revelation about the nature of reality. Veronica, would you care to visit our undoubtedly delightful new house, in which we are to spend the rest of eternity together?"

This is the face of someone who is trying SO HARD not to give any external evidence of a sudden attack of grass-displacing urges. Smile! No, more innocently than that! No, less innocently than that, that's too innocent and she probably looks like she's up to something!!

—right, a conversation is occurring, which she is a part of—

Somewhat stiffly, and still with that fluctuating smile: "Yeah sounds good."

"Johanna, if you would."

And they're standing in front of a house.

"You two have fun, I'm off to introduce some more soulmates." And Johanna is gone.

Veronica, still a bit panicked from the effort to conceal her thoughts of vandalism, wrenches open the door without really looking at it and strides into the house.

She freezes, then, carefully, without turning around, backs out again. She has forgotten to take down the Innocent Smile and it's beginning to look a bit glassy.

"I was not ready," she announces, in a slow, unsteady voice, "for that amount of clown."

Tintin opens the door and peeks inside.

"Bit blatant, isn't it," he comments obscurely. "Most of this has seemed - well, plausibly deniable."

"—uh, sorry, plausibly deniable...?"

"-oh, I'm sorry, I suppose it may be less obvious to you. Something's wrong." He pauses. "Actually, let me rephrase that. Everything's wrong."

"You... may have to start from the beginning here. Also, should we, uh, go into, the," she waves vaguely at the door, "clowns? I'm not super enthusiastic about going into the clowns but neither do I want to stand here all day." Oh shit she forgot to pretend she's a good person. "...and maybe you'd like to get off your feet?" she adds, weakly.

"Yes, let's go into the clowns."

They enter the clowns. Tintin sits in an appallingly ergonomic chair.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself properly. Doctor Tariq Saint-Martin. Professor of ethics and philosophy at Oxford. Or, at least, I was, until I performed some unwise political activism in my home country and was shot. Yourself?"

"Veronica Chaplin." Shit, did they use her last name? Fuck. She's pretty sure they used her last name but what if they didn't??? "I..... did.......... things." GOD SHE'S SO BAD AT THIS.

"I suspected as much."

Tintin hops out of the putative chair, strides over to a liquor cabinet, finds it filled with a wide variety of cocktail mixers and no actual alcohol, nods briskly. "Allow me to make some presuppositions. I'm a philosopher, it's a habit. One. You arrived here - the Good Place - following an untimely death. Two. Since arriving here, you have felt off-balance - off-kilter - out of sorts. You have been awed by the splendor, but not positively - you have thought wow, I bet I would love this if it weren't for... Three. No one else has seemed similarly off-put. Indeed, the other residents have struck you as almost inappropriately happy, for people who, much like yourself, recently passed away."

He uncaps a bottle of Lonely Gal Margarita Mix for One, sniffs it, makes an appalled face, and turns back to Veronica. "Are my hypotheses correct?"

"You, uh... yeah, you could say that, I think." Maybe if she is MAXIMALLY NONCOMMITTAL she won't trap herself into revealing anything she shouldn't.

"I could! Excellent. Now, I, perhaps like you, was informed upon my arrival in this place that all Earthly religions were wrong. This did not come as a particular surprise to me. Perhaps it came as a particular surprise to you! But as a man who has spent the majority of his life interacting with systems of moral and ethical logic, I have long believed that Earthly religions mostly lacked internal consistency. They did not have, as you might say, the spark of the divine. They had the spark of the tragically mortal. They sought to explain why, not how. - I'm getting distracted. People talk about the 'seventy-two virgins,' a muddy and ill-considered mistranslation of the Qur'an. People talk about 'a land of milk and honey'. Heaven, in a word, is pleasure."

He turns to Veronica, his eyes just a little bit wild. "Veronica Chaplin, have you experienced pleasure in this Good Place?"

She opens her mouth and what comes out of it is, "Coming on a little strong there, aren't you?"

No! Bad! Should not talk to her quote unquote soulmate like that!!

"—sorry," she says, in a voice that sounds as though someone is trying to squeeze the sarcasm out of it with some kind of industrial sarcasm press. The strain is palpable. "Um. No, I have not... as such... I mean, it's just orientation, right? Everything is very... nice... here, I'm just... ad...justing?"

He barks out a laugh, then - holds himself very still and breathes in and out. "I apologize. I have no intentions on your virtue. I - this is a stressful situation for both of us, I think, and I should not be taking it out on you, certainly not if you are - going to be living with me." He collapses back into the ostensible chair. "I have access to information which, currently, you do not - which, ostensibly, no one else does. That information colors my perception of this place quite strongly."

He grits his teeth. "You are, perhaps, under the impression that we are 'soulmates.' I have my doubts about that concept in and of itself - but coming as it does from a source which should have no reason to mislead us, I might accept it - were it not for this fact that I have hidden from the world."

He looks Veronica in the eye. "I am not attracted to women. I am, in fact, attracted to men. It would have to be a rather poor Heaven that picked you for my soulmate."

...that gives her pause.

Her face passes through several expressions in semi-overlapping sequence—surprised, confused, taken aback, thoughtful, considering, reconsidering—and she concludes, "Reasonably sure I'm not a man."

"I am, if not happy to hear it, then pleased to have saved you the discomfort. But perhaps you understand now - some things I can overlook. The general air of unease, the adherence to a tacky Americana-centric standard of happiness, the - clowns - I could live with those. But the idea that God in His Heaven looked down and knew enough about my internal motivations to set me confidently in the Good Place, but could not penetrate my closet - something is wrong. This Good Place is not functional. And I want to investigate if it is only me - and if not, why. I made inroads with a girl at the orientation, and I intend to visit her, ask her some probing questions. If you would like to come with me, you are welcome. I intend to bring her some baked goods."