Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fork.
General Note: I'm pretty sure I made the point values too high for some minor offenses and put Henry too far in the red. I may go back and fix that. For now just consider it a OUAT-like utter failure to regard established numerical canon .
Chapter Note: Spoilers for the season finale of The Good Place.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ETERNAL MEDIOCRITY
+1222821
That was the average point total of people in The Good Place.
-24008
That was the score Emma arrived with. Which, considering all of the horrible things she'd done, was a lot better than she'd expected.
The original plan was for Emma to try and earn points in The Good Place, to improve her VORS and thus prove that she had enough value to stay here. Of course, that didn't work. Her motives tainted the result. There was no way she'd get anywhere near Real Emma's +2513654, Joanne's +1948668, or even Neal's +997485 by holding open doors or picking up trash.
Which led Emma to the conclusion that the only thing she could do to earn points was to give everyone apology notes with the intention of leaving. She wouldn't get to stay, of course, but at least she could go feeling good about herself, that she'd done the right thing, the sort of thing that would have gotten her in The Good Place if she'd done it in life. Something like not dragging her family to The Underworld.
At least, that was her plan before Janet, finally rebooted to a non-cactus-petting state, informed her that there actually was a Medium Place that was neither Good nor Bad made for just one person, some woman named Mindy. So, instead of heading to The Bad Place, they hijacked Sean's train and sort of kidnapped The Dragon to head out into the middle of nowhere to find a butt-naked woman picking Middle Mists from her garden.
"I had a dream about Joanne like this," Jianyu commented and Emma punched him in the nuts while the woman screamed and Janet waved.
"Hello! I'm Janet!"
"Welcome to eternal mediocrity. Welcome to The Medium Place."
Mindy's welcome video featuring Trevor and some woman concluded on her small analogue TV that had a stack of Cannonball Run movies on top of it. She was a strange woman in her thirties who wore a turquoise power suit with overly large gold jewelry.
"And that was twenty-eight years ago today," sighed Mindy. "I really need a drink."
"That's some sound Medium People talk," Emma agreed.
"Janet," The Dragon asked, "how about we go pick some flowers."
"I told you. My powers do not work here. I cannot assume the likeness of Joanne."
"Seriously!?" Emma scoffed at him. "What is wrong with you!?"
The Dragon shrugged. "But you can still make-out, right?"
"Yes."
"Great! We're going to go figure out robot sex!"
"Gross!" Emma growled, especially considering she just couldn't stop seeing the young man as the old guy she knew in life. The last thing she wanted to think about was old people sex. Well, old guy and young robot sex.
"Anything goes in the Afterlife International Waters!" he argued and hurried off with Janet.
"So... how did you end up here all alone?" asked Emma after the pervert and sex robot had left.
Sean was not happy. Sean was also very weird. He dressed like a judge and retreated into a cocoon whenever anyone got emotional in their testimony, particularly frustrating for Joanne who was not as good at being 'chill' like Baelfire or logical like Real Emma.
"Well this is just useless!" Joanne complained. "Humans are emotional beings! Fake Emma is practically family. I want her to stay!"
"Maybe," suggested Michael, "you should go have some frozen yogurt."
Neal sighed. This wasn't good. It was bad enough when he thought Emma had stolen he train to go to The Bad Place, but apparently she hadn't. She'd gone to some other in-between place and that had made this Sean guy whatever his equivalent of angry was. Neal understood what Emma was thinking, not good enough for The Good Place but not wanting to endure eternal torture. He didn't want her to be tortured for eternity either, but it would have been nice to at least having gotten to tell her how he felt.
Swirling her highball glass, Mindy explained that she was a corporate attorney in the 1980's and spent her time screwing over good people and snorting a lot of cocaine and having sex parties. Like Wolf of Wall Street kind of stuff. But then one night coked out of her mind she decided she had to do something good with her life, came up with a plan for a charity, and the next morning took out all the money in her bank account to do it... before dying horrifically in a subway accident.
"... so my sister found my plan," Mindy explained, "before I got sent to The Bad Place. Guess I was in a holding pattern for judgment or to be placed in the right Bad neighborhood."
"And then they had to see if yogurt enough good person points for the good you intended to do before you died," Emma deduced.
"Yep. They couldn't decide. So I ended up here."
"Better than being tortured by a fire monster."
"Exactly!" Mindy nodded. "Which is why you can't turn yourself in. It's all about survival. You have to look out for number one!"
"I've decided," Sean announced and snapped his fingers, summoning Bad Janet.
"Whaddup, forknuts!" the bad helper being exclaimed.
"I need to contact Good Janet," Sean told and used her mouth like Cora used hearts.
Janet and The Dragon returned and Emma asked, "How'd the robot sex go, pervert?"
"Mostly a lot of bumping into each other. Clearly Janet was never programmed for sex."
"It was weird," nodded Janet.
"Well, I guess we could all sit down and watch some..." Emma picked up another stack of videos. "Dead of Summer? Never heard of it. Must be pretty mediocre."
Suddenly Janet went still and began talking in a man's voice.
"Attention, idiots! This is Sean, supreme judge of all existence! Get your butts back here or your friends Neal and Joanne will be going to The Bad Place in your place! You have twenty-four hours!"
"I don't want to go to Hell," The Dragon complained, pacing the porch. "I may not have been a good person, but I'm no Hitler or Queen of Hearts. I'm a medium person. I can stay here with Janet. It won't be same as gardening with Joanne, but it's better than being tortured for eternity."
"Do you actually like Joanne?" Emma asked, "or do you just have a creepy pervert obsession with her like my husband had with me? I'm a really bad judge of that."
The Dragon shrugged. "Does it matter? I'll never see her again."
Emma sighed and rubbed her temples. "Look, I get it. But I've been using a long list of foster parents' crappy parenting to excuse my behavior my whole life," she lamented. "But no more. It's time to go back and face the music. And if you can't do it for Joanne, do it for the daughter you skipped out on."
"Fine," Jianyu agreed. "But I'm taking the Cannonball Run tapes."
They walked back into the living room where Janet was sitting on the couch while Mindy was taking off her clothes.
"What? It's my masturbation time," said Mindy. "I thought I'd teach her some moves."
While The Dragon looked interested in that, Emma grabbed his arm and ordered the robot, "We're leaving, Janet."
"Okay!"
"We're here to go to The Bad Place!" Emma exclaimed as she burst into her own sort of house.
"It's too late," Sean retorted. "It's already decided."
"But-"
"I made my decision," he repeated as Jianyu and Janet entered the room. "The deadline was missed. I just want to go back to my pod and go to sleep. The Bad Place requires two people. At this point, I don't care which two of you go. You've all done awful things since you got here. You have thirty minutes to decide," he told them setting a clock on the holo TV.
"Bring me the list of frozen yogurt flavors. There's work to do there as well."
Looking pained, Michael told the group, "All I wanted when I designed a neighborhood was for all of you to be happy. Somehow I blew it and you're all suffering for it. This is truly the saddest day of my life."
He then followed the Eternal Judge out of the room, leaving the mortal souls to decide their ultimate fate.
AN: If you watched the finale of The Good Place you probably have an idea where this is headed.
Next up: Unhappily ever after.
