Chapter Text
Klaus opened his eyes and saw a bright white light. Then he opened them again and saw the words Welcome! Everything is fine.
He was in a waiting room, pristine and well lit, with only a few twee knickknacks like abstract sculptures and fake plants to break up the Zen minimalism. Although the slogan on the wall gave him rehab flashbacks, the yuppie-day-spa decor was too upscale for any facility that would still take Klaus. The loveseat he sat on was firm but comfortable, not like the cheap folding chairs at the ER or the hard concrete benches in the drunk tank. He wasn't wearing a hospital gown. He wasn't strapped to a gurney with an oxygen mask on his face or being dragged by angry cops with his wrists in shackles.
“Oh, fork,” he said. “Don't tell me I'm dead.”
At the sound of his voice, he blinked. “Wait, did I just say 'fork'?” He tried again. “Fork. Fork. What the heck is going—” Klaus stopped, touching his mouth. “Heck? Holy shirt…”
His throat closed up as he tried not to panic. He wasn’t high, was he? After all, he had a pretty damn good idea of what being high felt like, and he was too lucid to have taken any substance that could have created a hallucination this vivid.
Pressing his fingers against his temple, he racked his brain for memories of the past twenty-four hours. The taxi ride. The leap out the door into traffic. The phone call with Pete. The adrenaline rush, the euphoria and ensuing numbness, everything turning fuzzy…
As a lily-pad fountain gurgled in the corner, Klaus felt a creeping dread. It was dawning on him that this time, whatever had happened might not be reversible.
Before it could escalate into a full-blown meltdown, a door swung open.
“Klaus Hargreeves?” said a dark-haired woman who couldn’t have been more than his age.
“That’s me.”
She motioned him forward. “Come right in.”
He stood on shaky legs and skipped to the doorway. To lighten the tension, Klaus said, “Is this a doctor’s office or something? If so, I should tell you, I've got a bad spine. Chronic pain issues, really sad. The only thing that works for it is Demerol. So if you could get your prescription pad out—”
“You’re a chatty one, aren’t you?”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“Where we are now, there’s no need for doctors.” She flashed him an indulgent smile. “I’m the architect.”
The woman wore coveralls, a chunky sweater, and a messy bun held up with a pencil. To Klaus, she looked more like a quirky art student than a professional architect.
Through the door was an office with a hefty mahogany desk and framed artwork on the beige walls. Oddly, the sideboards and shelves and coffee tables were covered with cacti in all shapes and sizes, but otherwise this reminded him of the offices his stepfather had dragged Klaus to for consultations with first-rate defence lawyers (back when the old man had still been willing to buy Klaus first-rate lawyers).
“Have a seat,” she said, motioning to a hard-backed chair in front of the desk. Klaus sat down, a block of ice in his chest.
On the other side of the desk, she sank into her leather chair with a contented smile. She reached for the pen holder and took out what looked like a hand clapper noisemaker, the kind with plastic hands on a stick given out as party favours at children’s birthdays.
“Thank you.” Klaus forced the brightest smile he could muster. “Nice office you got here. Makes me feel like I'm in a desert.”
The woman winced. “Oh, pardon all the cacti. Just a teensy glitch with our last Ben. But never mind that! Klaus, right? The name's Lila.” Instead of extending her hand, she stuck out the noisemaker in Klaus's direction.
Tentatively, Klaus grabbed the plastic hands and gave them a shake.
Lila leaned back into her chair and propped her legs up on the desk, crossing them at the ankles. As she idly twirled the noisemaker, the clap-clap-clap rattled through Klaus’s skull. “Well, let's get down to business, shall we? The bad news first.”
“Aw, why is it always bad news?” Although Klaus tried to sound lighthearted, a knot was forming in the pit of his stomach.
“I'm afraid you're dead.” From her tone of voice, she might as well have been telling Klaus that she was afraid they were all out of Gummy Worms today.
“Oh,” Klaus said. He didn't know how he was supposed to feel right now. “Well, that's a relief.”
“I know it's a shock, but don’t you worry. You'll adapt quickly to death. The change is a bit rough at first, but we've got resources to help with that.”
Opening a drawer, she pulled out a brochure and handed it to Klaus. He looked at it. So you've just found out that you're dead, the cover said in bold lettering. Underneath was a cartoon of a smiling old man standing arm-in-arm with the Grim Reaper. Both of them were flashing thumbs-ups.
Klaus folded the pamphlet up into a square and shoved it into the tiny pocket in the seat of his leather pants. “Looks great,” he said, nodding aggressively. “I'll, uh, definitely give it a read later.”
“I suppose you'll want to know how you died?”
Klaus's smile became strained. “I already know how I died,” he said, in a tight voice.
“Pity. I was looking forward to telling the story.” Lila held the noisemaker up to her eye like a telescope and rotated it, examining it from all angles.
Klaus ignored her. He was staring at the beige short-haired carpet beneath his feet, counting every fibre. Right now he was becoming too conscious of his organs, of the weight of his muscles and bones. He didn’t want to ponder the metaphysical implications of still having working organs, not now when an invisible band around his chest seemed to prevent his dead lungs from expanding fully.
It was funny. Klaus couldn’t say this was unexpected. He’d accepted years ago that it was only a matter of time before one of his fuck-ups left him dead in a ditch. But it hit him like a cold slap to the face that the process of pissing your life away was different from the aftermath of seeing it washed down the drain forever. Only now did he realize he'd never truly given up. When you were alive, no matter how much you’d lost, you could still hope. You could close your eyes and pretend that tomorrow might be the day you got your shit together, that next time in rehab might be the one that stuck and made you a brand-new person. But now it was too late. Book closed, end of story. No erasing the ink on the page or writing a satisfying conclusion. Chapter 1: Klaus would never amount to anything. Epilogue: Klaus didn't.
“Anyway,” said Lila, “now that we're through with the unpleasant part, I'm sure you're dying”—she cackled at her own joke—“to know what the verdict is.”
“The verdict?”
“On your life!” She balanced the toy on the bridge of her nose as she leaned back, feet still on the desk. “Whether you were a good or bad person. What your actions meant for the grand cosmic scheme of the universe!”
“Are you telling me that all of it was supposed to mean something?”
“Of course! From the moment you’re born, you’re being watched by our expert accountants. And every action you take, even the most insignificant, is assigned points based on its moral value. For example, if you give a hundred dollars to a reputable charity, that’s worth twenty points. Steal a hundred dollars? You lose forty. So when you”—she made bulging eyes and stuck out her tongue as she drew a finger across her throat—“all your points are tallied up, and we give you a final score. Depending on the result, you’ll either be sent to the Good Place”—Lila pointed up—“or the Bad Place.” She made a face and pointed to the floor.
Klaus's heart beat more quickly. (His heart that shouldn't have been beating at all, because he was dead. By now he'd given up on grasping the logistics.) Although he was afraid to ask how many points were deducted for shooting speedballs, something told him that regardless of the answer, the...adjacent stuff had sunk him. His mother crying over broken strings of pearls on the floor, rainbow shards of glass on the wet pavement beneath him sparkling with the colours of flashing police lights—Klaus shook his head to dislodge the images like they were drops of water.
“Aren't you curious to know how you did?” Lila sat up, her eyes wide and innocent.
Klaus chuckled bitterly. “Not sure you'll tell me anything I don't already know.”
“Don’t be such a spoilsport. Come on. Take a guess for fun. Pick a number.”
Really, she didn't have to drag it out so much. For a moment, Klaus wondered if she was enjoying his misery.
“Ninety million,” Klaus said.
Lila laughed. “I love a man with unearned confidence. But never mind the score. It’s time to find out where you’re destined to spend eternity.”
He gulped and closed his eyes. Well, Klaus had always run cold anyway. Maybe a toasty climate wouldn’t be the worst fate for him.
“Based on your score...drumroll, please!” Lila started drumming her hands on the side of her desk. “Klaus, the verdict is...the verdict is...”
After a pause that must have lasted ten seconds, she said in a warm voice, “Congratulations. You're in the Good Place.”
Klaus blinked his eyes open. “The...Good Place? So I’m going to heav—”
“Shhh!” said Lila, covering her ears. “There's nothing religious about it. The Good Place is just...a place. A place that's good. A non-denominational good place.”
“Huh.” He thought he should be happy, but the only emotion he could drum up was mild confusion. “So...what's so good about it?”
“What's so good?” Lila gave him an incredulous look. “Klaus, this is paradise. Only an elite few make it in. The best of humankind. And every atom of this neighbourhood was perfectly designed to accommodate three-hundred-and-twenty-two worthy souls. It should have everything you could ever want. Fun activities, cute animals, frozen yogurt...And I should know. I made it.”
“You made this.” Klaus scrutinized the wacky young woman in front of him, with her lime-green fingernails and feet on her desk and pencil in her hair and noisemaker that she was now sticking up her nose. “You're...Gosh?” He did a double-take. “Holy shirt, did I just call you Gosh? What the fork? Okay, what's going on here?”
“Oh, I should explain the word filter,” said Lila. “Some of our residents aren’t too fond of vulgar language, you understand? The Good Place attracts a wholesome demographic.”
“Are you sure this is the Good Place?”
Lila stopped flicking the noisemaker in her nostril and froze. Then she gave a high-pitched laugh. “You're such a card, Klaus. Of course it's the Good Place.” She glanced sideways, at an especially tall cactus by the window. “But to answer your question, I'm just an architect. There are people way above me running the show.” In a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “To tell you the truth, this is my first neighbourhood.” She gave a bashful smile. “I'm sort of nervous, actually! So I'd appreciate it if you don't fork anything up for me.”
“You know me,” said Klaus, with a stilted laugh. “If there's one thing I'm known for, it's not forking up.” Then he shifted positions in his chair. “Not gonna lie. I'm flattered you picked me and all. But the best of humankind? I thought your standards would be higher.”
“Klaus, spare me the self-deprecation.” She gave him a kind and reassuring smile, although the effect was marred by the toy protruding from her nose. “I can't think of a more deserving candidate than you. The Good Place is for the best of the best. If you made it here, that says it all.”
He chose to ignore the nagging voice in the back of his mind that something didn’t fit, basking instead in the warm glow washing over him. Now who's the disgrace to your last name, Reginald? “You know, if I weren't already dead, that unironically would have been the nicest thing anyone's said to me in my life.”
“Ah, that's a surprise,” Lila said. “If memory serves, you got heaps of praise for building that orphanage.”
Klaus froze. “Wait, what orphanage?”
“Good point, Klaus!” Lila nodded. “There were several, weren't there? But I was thinking of the one in Uganda. For refugee children. That whole project earned you tens of thousands of points. I remember some hullabaloo about a speech and a medal from the president.”
He was struck with the sensation of plummeting down a mine shaft. Immediately he turned to his first instinct in a pinch, which was to bullshit his ass off. “Yeah, well, that speech was nice and all. But I’m not in it for the accolades. The only reward I need is making those poor kids happy.” He wiped a fake tear from his eye. “When I see the smiles on those cute little angels' faces, it’s all worth it.”
“You’re so humble,” Lila said. “It’s a pleasant surprise. Between you and me, if thousands of acolytes were calling me a prophet and hanging onto my every word, I'd have a bit of a swollen head.”
He fought to conceal his bewilderment. “It’s no big deal. You’ve gotta work with what you’re given, you know? Instead of letting all this charm and beauty go to waste, I wanted to use it for a good cause. Like...starting a cult, apparently.”
“Don't sell yourself short,” said Lila. “It's not a cult. It's an alternative spiritual community. You can rest in peace knowing your doctrine made the world a better place. I mean, self-sacrifice, abstinence, temperance, and commitment to public service? Those are values more people should apply to their lives.”
“Right.” Klaus loosened the collar of his mesh turtleneck. “Uh...am I supposed to be here?”
“You are the Klaus Hargreeves who was born in Dallas in 1960, right? The one who started a movement called Destiny’s Children that inspired thousands to devote their lives to serving the poor?”
The gears in his mind whirred. He didn’t understand why Lila’s impression of him seemed so off the mark, but if Klaus had learned one thing in his life, it was not to look a gift horse in the mouth. When the ticket inspector forgot to check your stub, you kept walking before he noticed you hadn’t paid the fare.
“Yep,” he blurted out. “Sounds exactly like me.”
“Good.” Lila laughed. “Almost scared me for a moment there! I'd be in a spot of trouble if I'd mixed up the file, wouldn't I?” She grimaced. “Imagine condemning the wrong Klaus to eternal torment. But enough prattle. What time is it?”
She pulled the toy out of her nose and stuck it between her teeth. (Even as someone who wasn’t too proud to eat out of dumpsters, Klaus shuddered at the lack of hygiene, but maybe germs were academic in the afterlife.) With her free hands, she grabbed a heavy contraption that Klaus had thought was a paperweight but upon a closer look resembled a six-pronged hourglass twisted around itself. She rotated it, examining the sand that fell through the intricate tubing in the center.
“Is it quarter to Maybe already?” she said through her clenched teeth. She put the object down, then took the noisemaker out of her mouth and stuck it in her bun alongside the pencil. “Darn it, I wanted to show you around, but there’s no time before my next appointment.” Lila clapped twice. “Ben!”
Out of thin air, a man appeared next to Klaus, startling him. He clearly had a central theme going on with his wardrobe: black hoodie, black sweater, black jeans, black boots. Like the creepy nerd in high school who secretly wanted to be a goth but was too afraid of non-conformity to commit to it.
“Hey,” Ben said.
“Be a dear and help our new arrival get settled in, won't you? And fetch him a set of clothes that’s more to his taste. No idea how he wound up in this skimpy number.”
Ben shrugged. “Sure.”
“Who's this ashhole?” Klaus asked.
“Ben is a vessel for all knowledge in human history,” said Lila. “He's here to assist the residents of this neighbourhood whenever they have a request. Like your personal butler and librarian rolled into one.” (Ben stiffened and looked at the ground.) “Picture him as a guide to everything you ever wanted to know about the universe but were too afraid to ask. Like Ask Jeeves on steroids.” She paused. “Just checking, they still use Ask Jeeves in 2019, right?”
“Don't ask me. I haven't owned a computer in years.”
“Let me check my archives,” said Ben. He squinted in deep concentration. “No. They don't.”
“Never mind,” said Lila. “Once you’ve shown him around the neighbourhood, you can take him to his custom home so he can meet his soulmate.”
“I guess,” Ben said.
“Wait.” Klaus looked up. “Soulmate?”
“Of course,” said Lila. “Every person has a soulmate.”
“Can you be more specific? Is that a wife? A forkbuddy? A queerplatonic partner?”
“I mean the love of your life. The person whose soul we’ve determined is a perfect match to your own. Most of the time it’s a romantic connection.”
“Ah. Sounds very Disney-movie.” Klaus mulled it over. “Hypothetically, can you have more than one soulmate? Because between you and me, I'm not sure one person is enough to handle all my physical and emotional needs. Just saying, I'm high maintenance. Maybe it's better if I play the field with multiple—”
“Oh, no. You can only have one soulmate. Singular.” Lila held up a single finger. Then she frowned. “Funny, I thought monogamy was one of the tenets of your alternative spiritual community. Maybe I should double-check the files— ”
“Wow, I am so excited to meet my soulmate!” Klaus sang, springing up from his chair. “My one and only soulmate. I might start dancing with joy.” He grabbed Ben's hands and spun around in a pirouette. Ben stood woodenly, not moving.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” said Lila. “Of course, I know that with your vow of celibacy, you won't want to consummate your relationship.” She gave him a suggestive wink. “You might want to give your soulmate advance warning on that front. But between you and me, your man's a bit shy, so I'm sure he'll roll with it.”
Your man. Klaus felt a stab of glee at how many religious authorities would have an aneurysm over that bombshell. Good to know the afterlife was equal opportunity, at least.
As for that vow of celibacy...well, Klaus was sure he could find a way around it.
“Anyway, once Ben gets you changed into something more comfortable, you can explore the neighbourhood,” Lila said. “Make yourself at home. You'll be here forever, after all.”
When Klaus and Ben were a few feet from the door, Lila called, “Oh, and Klaus?”
Klaus stopped.
“You'll love it here,” she said, flashing him a giant grin. “After all, if you aren't happy in the Good Place, where else in the universe can you be happy?”
Somehow that only made Klaus nervous.
---
The door closed.
Lila counted down in her mind from fifty, staying frozen in place.
Three. Two. One.
Her hair fell loose above her shoulders as she yanked the pencil and noisemaker out of her bun and flung them against the wall. She pulled her legs off the desk and sat up straight.
“You can come out now, Mum,” said Lila.
The tall cactus by the window morphed into a woman in a jagged emerald-green dress and a veiled hat full of pins. Her hands were covered by studded pale green gloves that went past her elbows. She raised them and began to clap slowly. “Not bad,” she said. “Although the noisemaker was overdoing it, don't you think?”
“That's just part of the act,” Lila said. “I need to seem dotty but harmless. Absentminded enough to make a fork-up this big.”
“Admit it, darling.” Her mother strolled over to her on green spiked stiletto heels. She stroked Lila's cheek, and Lila smelled her thick perfume. “You're having fun with this, aren't you?”
Lila felt a small grin on her face. “Maybe a little.”
“Honey, get your kicks where you can. Just remember what the goal is.” Her mother's voice turned low and predatory. “It's to make those pukebags suffer. Not to play stupid games to keep yourself busy.”
“I told you, Mum, this isn’t a game. It’s about allocating our resources more efficiently through delegation. Why hire one demon to strap down the victim, another to turn the rack, and a third to work the penis flattener when we can outsource the work to the victims themselves?”
“A whole village for a handful of people is not what I'd call efficient.”
“Mum, it's an experiment. We have to test it out with a small group of subjects first. Once we have proof of concept, we can fine-tune it. Soon we'll mass-produce neighbourhoods like this one. But you need to trust me first.”
“Why does that not inspire me with confidence?” Mum's expression darkened. “Speaking of the subjects, have the others got settled in?
“Almost,” Lila said. “We're just waiting on the movie star, and then we should be good to go.”
"Did you solve the little hiccup with her soulmate?"
Lila fidgeted. "Don't worry, it's been...dealt with. Everything is under control now, I promise."
“For your sake, let's hope so.” The Handler rested against the edge of the desk beside Lila. She pulled out a cigarette holder, then struck a match and held it to the cigarette at the end. But nothing happened. “Ugh, I forgot this shirthole had a no-smoking policy. The sooner I get out of here and back to the Bad Place, the better.”
“I know, I'm losing my shirt here,” said Lila. Everything in this simulation was so puritanical that she wanted to hurl. Granted, that was the point, but sometimes this felt like a kamikaze attack where Lila was being tormented more than the subjects.
“Well, don't blame me,” said the Handler. “This was your bright idea.” She leaned in closer. “You know, we had a good thing going on for ten thousand years. The system was working fine. But someone couldn't leave well enough alone.”
“Oh, come on, Mum. You and I both know the old ways are stale. We can't just use lakes of fire forever like it's the fifteenth century. It's time for modern methods that are a lot more subtle.”
“Little one, I trusted you enough to let you take initiative with this silly experiment. Call it a mother's weakness. Don't let my little show of nepotism be a mistake. Because if it is...” She grabbed Lila's chin. Lila felt the Handler's sharp fingernails poke through her gloves and into Lila’s skin. “Others in our organization aren't as soft as me. You know what the penalty is.”
Lila gulped nervously. Demons didn't feel pain as strongly as humans did. But if the situation was excruciating enough, they could feel enough pain to be made very uncomfortable. And their higher-ups were very, very good at coming up with excruciating situations.
“I'll do my best,” she said.