"...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."