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It would be a mistake to assume, because the demons of the Bad Place loved corkscrewing eyeballs so much, that they must be fundamentally and unchangeably sadists. Demons are not exactly like humans, and the afterlife is not exactly like Earth. One difference is that in the afterlife good and evil have a physical presence, like molecules, and in a demon's line of work, breathing them in is an occupational hazard. Back in the eyeball-corkscrewing days, the products of their work were pain and suffering, and the fumes that they breathed in were cruelty and rage.
But now the demons spend their days teaching humans how to be better, and the products of their work are kindness and wisdom, and the fumes that they breathe in are love and joy.
"Shawn, what you got?"
"Well, I'll begin by saying that this new system stinks, and Michael stinks, and we should throw this all in the garbage and go back to the way it used to be when everyone was tortured."
Shawn did not think that. He had of course begun the project with a natural, healthy dose of skepticism, but there was no question that it was working out great. Not that there was anything wrong with eyeball-corkscrewing and such, but it had been a bit...pointless. You got through your to-corkscrew list one day, and what did that mean for the next? You'd just do it over again, and the humans kept sucking, and maybe if you were feeling ambitious you'd design a slightly more excruciating corkscrew, but would either you or the humans really care if you did or didn't? Most of them didn't even understand why it was happening. They thought that you were being unfair, that they were martyrs. Which made what you were doing to them hardly a punishment at all.
But now you could look at individual humans and corkscrew their psychological weak points, and you could change them. You could watch their scores go up. It was surprisingly addictive. If you did a really good job, you could change them so much they would look upon their past selves with shock, disappointment, and remorse, and resolve to do better. What greater punishment could you inflict on a sucky human than to turn their very future self against them? It was, from a certain point of view, the most complete form of destruction.
It wasn't even so bad that such humans would be taken away from you and sent to the Good Place. It wasn't bad at all. New humans died every day, and now you could pay them so much more personal attention than was possible before, when they had just accumulated on a huge backlog that nobody had the patience to sort through. There were so many subtle individual variations of human awfulness to play with. It was a far more interesting job than letting them blend into a blur of generic, store-brand suck.
But obviously he wasn't going to say so.
"There's still some bumps in the road, but this system is good, and it's working," Michael said confidently. "Come on, admit it."
"I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, admit that," Shawn shot back.
Michael smiled. "I know, buddy. I know."
Shawn realized a second too late that he was smiling back at him. He quickly rearranged his expression into a professional scowl, hoping that nobody had noticed.
"...So then Tahani suggested the neighborhood could be a cruise ship, just an endless cruise, that there's no way to leave, but the disadvantage there is--" Vicky frowned. "Shawn, are you listening?"
Shawn blinked and snapped back to reality. "No. I wasn't."
Tahani looked concerned. "Is something the matter?"
He couldn't hold it in. "Did you know Michael's gone to be a human?"
Tahani said, "Yes? Is that news?" at the same time as Vicky said, "What?"
Shawn pulled up Michael's new human file on a screen. It began:
NAME: Michael Realman
DATE OF BIRTH: January 30, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Michael Realman was previously an architect in the Bad Place, and later a prominent designer of the modern afterlife system and chief architect of the Good Place. Upon completing his tasks in the Good Place, he requested that the Judge send him back to Earth as a human, as humans fascinated him and he felt incomplete without truly understanding their experience. Upon his arrival on Earth, he moved to an apartment in--
"Why?" Vicky sputtered. "I know it says right there, but that doesn't--just--why?"
"Is it really so surprising that an architect would be curious to see what the system they built is like from the inside?" Tahani asked.
"Yes!" Vicky shouted. "It's like if a mystery novel writer wanted to themselves be elaborately murdered!"
"He can't have thought through the consequences," Shawn said furiously. "What if he gets cancer? What if he gets Alzheimer's? He's a demon, there's no precedent for this, what if he can't handle being human? What if he sucks at it? What if he becomes a mass murderer? What if he dies and comes back here and gets permanently stuck in the testing system because it doesn't work for him because he's a demon? He's broken everything else he's ever touched, what are the odds he'll succeed at this?"
"Shawn," Tahani said gently. "You really don't have to worry so much. I love him too, and I agree it's a little scary, but he's a quick learner. I know he's going to be fine."
Shawn groaned. "I just--" he stopped. Paused several seconds. Glared viciously at Tahani. "Wait. What do you mean, too?"
"What?" said Tahani.
Shawn hit his palm against a nearby desk in frustration. "All right, that's enough. I'm sick of discussing Michael. Why do you people keep bringing him up anyway? Whatever, I have a meeting, I'm out of here." He turned and began walking away rapidly.
"You brought him up!" Vicky shouted after him. He ignored her. She shrugged and turned back to Tahani. "You're really sure he's going to be fine?"
"I'm really sure," Tahani promised her.
Michael opened his eyes in Vicky's office. Shawn and Tahani were sitting to the side.
"Congratulations," Vicky said. "You passed."
Michael thought about this for a moment, reviewing the memories of his tests, which had just been restored to him. Then he shrieked. "WOO-HOO! I DID IT! I DID IT!" He jumped up from the couch and started a victory dance, which Vicky watched in resigned amusement while Tahani clapped and cheered and Shawn put his face in his hands.
After several minutes of this, Shawn snapped his head back up and said, "Okay, that's enough self-congratulation for a few thousand Jeremy Bearimies. Stop now or we're retracting the verdict."
"You can't do that," Michael said dismissively, which was true.
"You can't just run off and become human because you feel like it!" Shawn retorted, which was, evidently, false. "Did you think for a moment how badly it could have gone? I could spend days listing all the ways you might have failed! Do you have any idea how frightening it's been to watch you do this?"
Michael tilted his head in contemplation, then said, innocently, "What's so scary about watching me fail, exactly? I thought you'd enjoy it."
Shawn blinked. His expression froze, as if he'd suddenly realized that he'd walked into a trap.
"Why am I here?" he said to Vicky. "I never come to these."
"Um, you told me you wanted to be here."
"It must've been a mix-up." He stood up. "Bye."
"Shawn!" Michael called out, grinning, as Shawn edged through the doorway.
"What?"
"Shawn, buddy, it's good to see you again!"
"No, it isn't," Shawn snapped, and slammed the door.
But to Vicky and Tahani's surprise, when they returned from escorting Michael once again to the golden hot-air balloon, Shawn was still standing outside Vicky's office. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, his gaze directed at a spot on the ground three meters ahead of him.
"Shawn?" asked Tahani.
Shawn was slow to respond. Finally he said, without moving, "You know Michael. He's a workaholic. He can only exist while there's a rock to push up a hill. But this was the last rock." He looked up into the distance. "To become mortal. Finite. It was the last rock. As soon as he gets back to the Good Place he's going to leave."
Vicky stared. "You're right." She turned to Tahani. "He's right."
"Yes," Tahani agreed.
There was a pregnant silence.
Tahani said, gently, "I suppose you've--never had to say goodbye before."
Vicky glanced at Shawn, who was staring at the floor again. "No," she answered for both of them.
"If it makes you feel better," Tahani said, "people don't disappear when they leave. It's just the opposite, really. After that they're--everywhere. They become part of the--fabric of the universe. Part of you. And you carry them with you wherever you go."
Shawn glared at her. "Tahani, why in seven thousand neighborhoods would that make me feel better?"
Tahani shrugged and smiled. "Anyway, I'm sure he'll have some great parties first."
Michael did have some great parties first. And he had the last of them in the Bad Place, where he had begun, sitting in a warm, comfortable living room surrounded by his old architect--friends? Is "friends" the right word? Oh well, can't think of a better one.
Tahani raised her glass. "To Michael! Michael, of course, is the reason I'm here today at all. When I first met him, he was trying to torture me, but instead he ended up teaching me everything I needed to learn about myself to become the well-adjusted, productive person you see before you. Then, not satisfied with that, Michael, you decided that you had to do that for everyone else too. And we had some truly unforgettable adventures in between."
Michael grinned widely. "You're the best, Tahani."
Vicky went next. "Michael and I have had our differences, but the fact is, my job was unbelievably boring before you came around. I just wanted to express myself as an artist, but there was no space in the system for creativity whatsoever, and somebody cocooned me any time I complained about it."
"That's because back then all your ideas were bad," Shawn said.
"That is--actually fair. Which is why I needed Michael to get me out of my rut. You showed me how to make art that matters. Art that changes the world." She smiled at him. "Also, you're actually really nice when you're not projecting your personal insecurities onto the people around you."
"We did just go through a whole thing about how not to do that, didn't we?" Michael acknowledged. "Thank you, Vicky."
Which made it Shawn's turn. He stared into his glass, took a deep breath, and looked across at Michael.
"You," he said, enunciating with extreme carefulness, "stink." His voice would have sounded perfectly steady to any human ear, but unfortunately for him, while some came closer than others, nobody in the room was one hundred percent human.
"You stink. Everything that's gone wrong is your fault. I'd gotten used to every day being the same as the next. I thought it was normal for everyone to suck and never change. I had myself convinced that it was fine. It was great.
But then you came along and smashed it all up. You, you stuck me with--goals. Plans. Visions of the future. Celebrations when we win, which is the same as saying disappointment when we lose. This--horrible, horrible new ability to see the world through other eyes, and this insane compulsion to care what I see--and the hopes and fears and--" his voice cracked. "--And feelings--"
"Shawn," Michael said, and stood up from his couch and walked over and hugged him.
Shawn instinctively hugged him back. It was a strange instinct for him to have, considering that he had never hugged anyone before and in fact had previously had no conception of what a hug was beyond it being one of ten thousand indistinguishable items on the laundry list of disgusting things humans did. But it made sense in the moment. Chalk another one up to Michael's malign influence.
"That was a beautiful speech!" Tahani said, clapping.
"Shut up, Tahani," Shawn said from Michael's shoulder.
"Okay," Michael said happily, releasing him. "That was awesome. You guys are all awesome." He picked up his guitar. "In exchange, I want to give all of you a little concert..."
"Wait, what?" Shawn protested. "Was this on the invite?"
"...Of all my favorite songs I've written! It should only take a few hours. The first one is 'Sparkling Purple Petals of Wonder'..."
"Vicky, do we still have those ear-scorpions? I need to use them on myself."
"I think we're better off sitting quietly and getting this over with," Vicky said sagely. "Any pushback will only prolong the torture."
It was good advice, but somehow the partygoers found it difficult to follow, and ended up heckling Michael so much the whole thing took five times longer than anticipated.
Shawn woke up the next morning with one of Michael's songs stuck in his head.
"Sugar roses and butterflies of topaz..." he sang under his breath as he went to the office.
There was a commotion on the way to his desk. Anthony, a young, recently-certified architect, was having a fit, throwing staplers and kicking trash cans. Nobody else was around. "Leave me alone!" he shrieked as Shawn approached, then suddenly realized who he was talking to, and crumpled. "Sorry, boss," he muttered. "Sorry, I--sorry."
"What's the matter?" Shawn asked.
Anthony groaned and put his head in his hands. "It's just...I've been an architect for an entire Jeremy Bearimy and I haven't graduated a single human! There was one...I thought I was close! I was up all night trying to push her over the finish line, but she--it was all a scam, it was all completely self-serving..."
"I see." Once, Shawn's preferred method of handling a situation like this would have been to cocoon Anthony and tell him to come out when he'd learned how to control himself.
But there are more effective ways, said a voice in his head, which was his own voice, but someone else's at the same time.
"Am I just that bad at architecture?" Anthony asked pleadingly. "I know I got lucky on my certification exam. It was a fluke. Maybe I shouldn't have passed."
"No," Shawn said firmly. "You're doing nothing wrong. We all have moments when we feel that way. It can be a frustrating job."
"Then what's the point? Begging and pleading, fighting tooth and nail, for these humans to learn anything, to grow a tiny bit, to think for once in their stupid little afterlives about anything outside their own head...why? If they don't want to change, why do we care that they change? Why should we be the ones to save them from themselves?"
"I wondered the same thing when we started," Shawn told him. "Why is any of this our responsibility? What do we owe them? But what I've learned--" he paused to arrange his thoughts, to listen to the voice in his head that was his own but also someone else's. "What I've learned is, well, for one thing, I can't choose not to care. I think you feel the same way, or you wouldn't be so upset in the first place. But even if I could choose, I wouldn't. Because, no matter how infuriating people are in the present...the future comes, eventually. It might take a long time, but this is the afterlife. We have all the time in the universe. And when it does come, it's worth it. I promise."
"You promise?" Anthony echoed hesitantly.
Sugar roses and butterflies of topaz...Shawn smiled, and didn't force himself to stop. "Yeah. I promise."