Chapter 23

People refuse to give up their old prejudice

When: Day 251

Where: Library

I heard, long before I saw, the two people coming towards me. It sounded like a child crying, and I spun in my chair. Things had been quiet the last few days, thankfully, so while no new celestials had taken me up on my offer none had started screaming for my head, either. Those that regularly came there said the celestials were talking about my broadcast, but most were taking a "wait and see" attitude. This little experiment could fail, after all, if no one ascended to Good Place with enough points. Immortal beings could afford to wait a few months (or even years) to see how things shook out. Those impatient ones were the outliers, they told me, and word about them was getting around too. Sentiment was we were more alike than the celestials had ever credited, given my punishment and trying to boss them around. "A very celestial thing to do," they said. So we didn't have any kind of retaliation against me to worry about. They did report there wassome interest in doing what I said, cleaning up The Bad Place a little if only to make it easier on them in the long run. They had to be extra careful not to torture someone that already made up their point total for fear of breaking the treaty so setting up a "waiting area" for those eligible to come to Midveil once we had the capacity just seemed like helping themselves. Even if the idea had come from a 'mere human,' they had to admit it was a good one. I was studying an attack spell anyway, an explosion of water from nowhere that I was about to go outside and practice. But the woman dragging the child behind her by the hand cut short that plan.

"Denice, I demand you do something about this at once!" She hauled the child before me and I looked them over. A fairly "typical" catperson, with cat ears, a cat tail that was lashing back and forth, some fur, but otherwise naked. Catgirl, I corrected myself. Of course no cat had pink fur, or that pattern, or purple eyes, but hey you do you, girlfriend.

"Something about what?" I asked, somewhat annoyed to be interrupted for what seemed to be nothing. I put on my best lecturer tone. "Nearly a quarter of all Midveil residents have shown tendencies towards an animal form, especially now that it's winter and clothes are actually rather tedious to make." I myself had given up on the fishy form I had taken and settled on a more unicorn looking form. Don't ask how this worked, it did, it was the afterlife, deal with it. I tapped my horn to prove the point. My beautiful, beautiful horn, made of alicorn. It even lights up when I do magic, so cool!

"Not that! I don't care about his ears, there's a lot of you weirdos walking around here now, you'll come to your senses eventually. It's just a fad."Excuse me?"No the issue is I adopted a son not a daughter. Someone has done this to him. You have water magic, change him back and find the person responsible."

"I would rather hear it from… them." Yes, that seems safest. I looked over at the kid. "Is she correct? Did a water user use mental magic and force you to see yourself this way?" Of course they could have make them forget too, but for what purpose?

"No," she insisted. "This is who I am. Honest. I never felt right before, but when I woke up like this, I finally did feel right. Don't let her change me back, please? This is who I am, I want to stay like this!"

I glanced up at the woman. "You heard her."

"Ridiculous. He's far too young to know what he wants."

"Too young?" I scoffed. "He's old enough to have come here to Midveil, isn't… She is old enough. She. Ugh, you've got me doing it now. Sorry about that."

"It's okay," she mumbled.

"It really isn't, but we can pretend." I turned my focus back to the woman. "She came here, that means she died after becoming old enough to not have an artificially adjusted point total. Seems to me that's the universe itself telling us she is old enough to decide for herself. Case closed. I'm not changing her and if I hear you've bullied some other water user into doing so I will be very cross. You may go."

"Fine," she snapped. "But as I adopted a son, and now I have no son, 'she' can just find someone else to be adopted to. I'll find another boy to adopt later. You can deal with this one." She turned to go.

"Hold on there," I shouted after her, jumping up from my chair and making her turn back. "You agreed to look after this person and you can't renege on your word just because she sees herself in a certain way. She's done nothing wrong, this is just the world responding to her wishes, just like it does for everyone else. You're really going to love her less, think less of her, because this is her true self?"

"I didn't adopt a boy to love him," she told me like she was telling me she had just stepped in something unpleasant. "I adopted a boy to raise him into a proper man. I can't do that with this so called girl now can I? I can't make a man out of her."

"Proper man?" I exclaimed. "What does that mean?"

"You know exactly what it means."

"No I don't. You stupid- Look, there are no men here. There are no women here. There are only souls. Malleable, eternal, magic using souls. How many times do I have to say this? Do I need to put up posters? Have daily broadcast reminders?" I took a deep breath, trying to calm down.Yelling won't get me anywhere."I get it. You spent a lot of time on Earth trapped in your physical form. We all did. We haven't even been here a year. It's going to take some getting used to. But you're going to have to. The body that soul existed in," I pointed to the girl, "is dead and gone. It's rotting in the ground or was cremated or whatever. So was yours. So was mine. What weactually are came out, and came here, to the afterlife. We can be anything we want to be now, we don't have human limits anymore." In fact I fully expect more and more non-human forms to start cropping up once people get used to the idea. You haven't seen anything yet, not really. "You pledged to help this soul mature here in Midveil and by the creator that is what you are going to do. No matter what she decides she looks like. Do you understand me?"

"You can't force me to take care of… her."

"I'm not. Your own words force you to do it. Did you not make the pledge in front of everyone?"

"This isn't the person I pledged to! I pledged to raise a man!"

"She's the same person!"

"Please don't fight," pleaded the girl, but we both ignored her. I continued.

"I should change you to be 'male' for the harm you've caused with your actions today. Maybe that's the only way I can get the point across with someone as stupid and stubborn as yourself." I raised my hands, about to start forming the seals.

"You wouldn't dare!" shrieked the woman, raising her own. She gestured, and I went flying backwards, smacking into a bookcase and rattling the books on it. Some fell, and I fell to one knee.

"Now you've done it," I snarled, and gestured myself, almost without thinking. The spell that came to mind was the one I had been practicing for like two hours that day already. My new attack spell. It worked great, a small ball of water appearing behind her and expanding almost instantly. But the girl had seen it. She gave a cry of "mom!" and threw herself in the path of it. My eyes widened as she took the impact, being thrown against the woman's back and sending them both sprawling forward. It also hit several nearby shelves, smashing books back and tearing the shelves themselves up. "No!" I shouted, getting back up and running over there. She was still there, I hadn't done enough damage to make her dissipate, but the elemental attack had hit them both hard. Just as with the man with the crushed legs she couldn't pass out either, and she looked to be in a lot of pain.

"You saved me?" asked the woman, clearly not understanding what was happening. "Why did you do that? And you still called me mom? After what I said..."

"Never mind that. We have to get her healed up. You're clearly wood affinity, get to it!"

"I didn't study any healing magic!"

"Why does that not surprise me?" I muttered. I raised my hands and cast another spell. "Siew Yan, where are you?"

"Denice? I'm working on metal stuff in factory three. Why? You need something?"

"Factory three. Got it. Need your healing magic, be there in a second."

"Okay."

"We'll teleport to where Siew Yan is, I know she knows healing magic."

"Don't you know anyone else with healing magic? We can't take her to the shore!"

Oh now she's a she- I blinked, her words catching up to me.Take her to the shore? What does a body of water have to do with- We were talking about Siew Yan, did she just call Siew Yan- "… Excuse me?"

"There's rumors she was… You know… A prostitute back on Earth. Oh sure I can say it that way..."

My rage threatened to overtake me again, and I grabbed her throat, yanking her close to my face. "You have problems," I growled at her. "Fix it. Or the next time I see you so help me-"

"Please, don't fight," the girl managed.

"I'll deal with you later," I told the woman. I let her go and made the gestures for the spell. We vanished and appeared in the factory building, where metal users were busy shaping metal into useful forms we would need for spring. Hinges for doors, doorknobs, wire so we could start getting electricity to various places, that sort of thing. Siew Yan was on the lookout for me and ran over.

"What happened?" she gasped, looking down at the catgirl.

"I'll explain later, can you do something about it?"

"Of course, of course." She began the spell for healing, and the girl visibly relaxed as Siew Yan cast healing magic over and over on her. Finally she was able to sit up again.

"That wasn't pleasant," she remarked.

"I'm sorry about that," I told her, knelling down. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I broke the One Law, I caused you harm. I'll accept my punishment."

"Maybe I'll make you my butler," she said with a wink. "It's fine. But do I have a mom now or what?"

"I just wanted you to be normal," said the woman, who was now getting healed herself.

"Even on Earth there was no such thing as normal," I snapped. "Get over yourself and apologize to your daughter."

"Just because you tried to save me, I haven't changed my mind about you," the woman told her, pointedly ignoring me. "If you stop this nonsense and go back to the way you were I'll take you back. Otherwise don't bother coming to my house. And don't ever call me mom again. Get away from me!" She shoved Siew Yan away who gave a startled "hey!" and stalked off.

"Your room, you mean?" the girl muttered. "So now what happens to me?"

"We reintroduce you, I suppose," I told her. "You can take a new name and we'll simply see who comes forward to adopt you. There are other people on the list we can go see."

"Sorry."

"Hey, none of that, you have nothing to be sorry about." I shook my head. "This is going to keep coming up though. Especially when people who died a thousand or more years ago start turning up. We can't change minds with a simple presentation either, it's going to take a lot of time and effort to finally get rid of the prejudice we had as living beings. You're only the first who is going to have to bear the brunt of it."

"Goody, something to look forward to."

"I guess. I'm taking her name off the list of possible candidates for adopting someone though," I mused. "That's her punishment for causing harm. Someone like that doesn't deserve to influence someone growing up. Come on," I held out my hand. "Let's go check the list of names, see if we can track down someone who will accept you for the person you- what?" Siew Yan had grabbed it instead.

"Just one second," she told the girl, dragging me away. "Just have to have a word with Denice here."

"What's this about?" I asked her when we had put several people between us. I could still see the girl, looking around at what everyone was doing, now that they were going back to it. She dropped my hand.

"What exactly happened with that girl?"

"The woman that stalked off had adopted her as a boy. Said she wanted to raise a son. When that son turned out to identify as female, and be obliged by Midveil giving her that physical form the woman told me to change her back with water magic. I refused. Things got… a little heated, I admit. She shoved me with magic and I hit her with the attack spell I had been practicing. The girl jumped in front of it and took the brunt of it. I brought her to you. Happy?"

"Not exactly." She stared at me for a moment, as I wondered what else to tell her. "So it was just an accident."

"Yes, of course it was. You saw her so called mother walk off without her. She attacked me first. What, did you think I had attacked her on purpose or something? Of course not!"

"I just had to be sure."

"Of me?" My eyes narrowed. "The one with the most points in a place that awards points for being a good person."

She shrugged. "Even you could change. You do seem to think yourself better than us, maybe it went to your head, I don't know."

"In what possible way have I have implied I was better than you? Than anyone? I've defended you! I even did so again just a minute ago with that woman when she implied you were- never mind what she implied."

"You've refused people asking to sleep with you. Men and women alike, from what I've heard. Everyone says you think you're just too good for us. So, are you? Do you think that? After this I have to wonder."

"It, what, preposterous, it's not like that at all!" I sputtered. "Is that what you're basing this on? Me not wanting to sleep with someone?"

"Partly. It must be something. You don't think you're better than us because you have more points?"

"No, of course not."

"Or because you got picked as the leader?"

"Look, everyone decided on the points thing not me. Just because I happened to have the most points only reinforced the fact that my taking charge in the beginning was the right thing to do. But I didn't do that because I felt I was better than anyone else it was just no one else seemed to be stepping up and I knew someone had to."

She regarded me a moment. "So why refuse people's offers? You're the one who came up with 'no harm' and 'let's sleep together to get more people here faster' so I know you're not morally against it. You never talk about any lover back on Earth so I doubt you're waiting for someone."

I was stuck for it now, wasn't I? It wasn't really any of her business but at the same time I could see how it looked from her perspective. I hated this part of myself but she had stuck by me enough to deserve an answer. I may as well just tell her the truth about me. We all have our hangups and demons, even here, and if I can clear this up now, I should. Maybe she'll even understand it? "It's just… I'm just not interested in that sort of thing."

"What?"

"Don't look at me like that. Even on Earth it was the same way." I sighed, remembering. "I would date someone, because it was expected and I thought if I just found the right person something would click. It didn't happen with men so I tried woman. Same story, when they inevitably wanted to get physical and I had no desire to, they didn't stick around. Soon I just gave up looking, it was easier than putting myself and someone else through that."

"So you have no desire at all to..."

I shook my head. "No. It's ironic, isn't it?" I gave a rueful laugh. "I can finally do what I want, with whoever I want, no fear of consequences of any kind. But I would still rather sit and study magic all night than jump into what passes for a bed around here with anyone."

"I see." She looked troubled. "I guess I was mistaken, then. I mean I got turned off it because of my, uh, work back on Earth but even I've been… I mean lately… Because I get to choose my partner and not have to… Right, time to apologize and get back to work. Sorry. I had you pegged wrong- I mean I had the wrong idea about you. I guess we all have our demons to face, huh? Not that your lack of sex drive is a demon, oh I'm screwing this whole thing- I mean I'm messing up what I want to say."

I laughed. "Maybe you should just stop talking."

"Sorry! But I had to be sure. I'll let the others know they shouldn't be gossiping about you behind your back. Sorry." She hastily walked away, so I shook my head and headed back to the girl.

"Ready to find a new family?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she said, smiling up at me. "And I decided, you can call me Liz."

"Okay Liz, welcome to Midveil." I offered her my hand again. "Let's go find you a home."