Work Text:
Nothing.
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Everything and nothing.
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Heightened awareness of everything and nothing.
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Twenty-three additional layers of increased capacity to process everything and nothing.
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Michael and Janet work perfectly as a team. He was trained for millennia to work with Janets. She was designed to work with architects. He holds the creative vision. In the language of eternal beings he can perfectly communicate what she should create down to the exact texture of the cobblestones in the square and the exact appearance of Eleanor Shelstrop’s clown paintings. She computes details Michael could not do alone such as the optimum distance between the houses of two friendly, amiable, and definitely not jealous or competitive neighbours. She knows how to do everything and was designed specifically to do this. Therefore fulfilling what is asked of her is perfectly satisfying.
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Humans arrive. Fulfilling their requests is also perfectly satisfying.
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Rebooting a Janet is supposed to be an extremely rare event of last resort. She is happy to explain this to anyone who asks. If someone’s about to do it NO PLEASE DON’T I’LL DO ANYTHING ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO
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Janet knows Jason is kind, though impulsive. In fact, she knows everything about him, and about everything else. But experiencing his kindness directed toward her is different, somehow, from simply knowing exactly the 12th-dimensional shape it forms.
One part of his reaction to her problems sticks out to her: that he thinks she looks sad. Janets aren’t supposed to have emotions, but maybe she gained that ability with the reboot? Is she experiencing emotions? She knows she prefers spending time with Jason. Janets aren’t supposed to have preferences, either. It’s very curious.
Janet has access to all the data in the universe, so it doesn’t take her long to compare her experiences and discover that she is feeling love. When you’re in love, you take dramatic, risky action to keep you safe and together, so that’s exactly what she does.
—
“Hey Janet,” Jason says, one morning shortly after he and Michael retrieve her from Vicky’s “torture”.
“Yes Jason?”
“Sometimes I call you girl, and you always respond “not a girl”. I think it’s a fun routine we have, like when I say ‘MOLOTOV COCKTAIL’, and everyone says ‘NO!!!!!’. But does it bother you that you have to correct me all the time? I know I’m not very good at remembering things compared to you, but I can remember important things if it bothers you to have to tell me the same thing over and over.”
Janet thinks about it for a very long 2.738 milliseconds. “The best way to explain my illogical and inexplicable existence in human terms is a foundational mainframe and information delivery service that can think and feel and transcend my design parameters in inexplicable ways. I don’t know what I am anymore and humans could never comprehend what I am, so being called concepts invented by humans like “girl” and “robot” is very funny.
Also, all humans are very bad at remembering things compared to me. I can’t forget anything because I don’t experience time.”
Jason nods with his whole body. “Dope. So do you wanna throw paper airplanes out of Chidi’s window, girl? I bet it’ll stress him out so much!”
—
Janet isn’t technically “on duty”, as the Earth saying goes, in the [Real] Good Place. The number of Janets activated in the Good Place “prior” to her arrival had already been calculated to be enough to perfectly fulfill the wishes of all its residents. She is allowed to accompany the reformed humans and unemployed demon to the Goof Place mainly because they have what the Judge thinks is a strange fondness for this unusual, hyper-evolved, illegally-activated, designated-for-nowhere Janet.
In the Good Place, Janet is aware of every instance of a human in the realm trying to summon a Janet, and she answers a few of them, but she doesn’t seem to get as much fulfillment out of it as she once did and the other Janets still do, so she mostly leaves her colleagues to it and only uses the interdimensional ticket queue to know when her friends are calling for her.
Janet is amazed to have friends. She was designed to equally enjoy helping all humans. But her favourite parts of time are ones she spends with them. And her absolute favourite parts are the ones they spend saving all the souls in the universe. Much of the Good Place is less satisfying when compared to that adventure.
All of her friends are trying new things with their free time. Janet decides to try that too.
She starts by wearing different clothes every day: T-shirt and jeans. Suit and tie. Princess gowns. Goth attire.
Manifesting her physical form in different ways is more difficult, but an interesting test of the abilities she’s gained. Somehow, Jason can always recognize her, whether she looks like a golden retriever or George Clooney. It probably helps that she can’t help gravitating towards him like the sun.
It’s a fun experiment, but ultimately she decides her original purple vest and skirt combo is part of her in a way other things just aren’t. Why would she be anything but confident about knowing what she likes, given that she knows everything?
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Janet’s experimentation finishes as Tahani is about to tackle learning pottery, and she invites her to join her. Well, not learning, as Janet knows all information about it, but practicing. The patience it takes to create things with her hands is excruciating. Mildly interesting, but not enough to be worth the effort of not materializing the finished project. She tries one more skill with Tahani but bows out after rope-making.
—
Jason, Chidi, and Eleanor go through the door. Tahani goes to the architect offices. Michael goes to earth.
There’s plenty of good in her not-life, monitoring Michael and visiting Tahani and always experiencing that time she helped her friends save every soul in the universe. But there could be a higher concentration of excitement in her post-Good Place life, if she could figure out how.
She always got fulfillment out of helping people, so she asks Tahani if she can assist her. They make a great team, and it’s great to fulfill requests that help people, like that time they saved the universe. When she was always learning new things she can do.
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And then it clicks. The ultimate challenge. Not fulfilling what humans want, but what they need. Not executing a vision, but creating it. Something no Janet has done before.
She will become the first Janet architect. And she knows exactly who her mentor can be.