Chapter Text
“You, William Cedric Alden, are dead.”
He was sitting in a cosy chair in what appeared to be an office with beige coloured walls and large windows with flower pots on the sills. Orchids, he thought as the faint floral aroma hit his nose. There were more plants and flowers, but he didn’t know their names. There was a portrait of a young man on the wall between the two windows. The rest of the artwork were abstract paintings that he couldn’t make sense of. For some reason, he smelled coffee cake, but it didn’t have a source. There was just an ever-present scent in the air, surrounding him and calming him down.
He felt as if he was in a dream. He wasn’t even sure how he got there.
Staring at the man in front of him, he realised that he was saying something.
“I- I’m sorry?” he asked.
“No, not sorry, William. Dead ,” the man corrected him. “Your life on Earth has ended and you’re now in the next phase of your existence in the universe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s completely normal. That’s why I’m here,” the man smiled.
William looked him over. If he assumed he was human, he would guess the man was in his sixties, but William knew better than to do that. His hair was perfectly white and his skin resembled parchment in a way. His eyes were large, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the glasses he was wearing or if they were just like that. He was wearing a purple striped suit with a shirt of a lighter shade and a bow tie with a floral pattern.
“But… who are you?” he frowned. “Are you some kind of… manifestation taken from my mind? My ancestor or something?”
The man laughed. “Well, for starters, my name is Michael. No, I am not your ancestor nor am I taken from your mind. I kind of… run this place.”
“Michael? Archangel Michael?”
“Goodness, no!” he seemed to be getting more and more amused. “No, I’m not an angel. Or an archangel. I’m far from that,” he took a small pause. “Why don’t I show you around? I’m guessing you would appreciate some fresh air.”
“I think I would faint if I stood up now,” William said.
“Let me get you a glass of water then,” Michael suggested. “Janet?”
“Hi there!”
A woman suddenly appeared with a faint bloop sound and a bright smile on her face, making William nearly fall off his chair and cuss under his breath.
“William, this is Janet,” Michael introduced her, completely ignoring the shocked expression on his face. “She’s sort of a… guide here. She’s here to help you get settled in, to get used to living in the afterlife. Anything you need, she can get you. She knows everything there is to know in the entire universe. Including everything about you.”
“Including what now?”
“Janet, would you care to give us an example?” Michael asked her.
“Absolutely!” she replied with a cheery voice. “You were born in 1986 in Scotland. You have a twin sister who is exactly eleven minutes and thirty seven seconds older than you, which she used to mock you your entire life. You also have a younger sister, whom you have been protecting from bullies for years. You started doing theatre as a way to cope with your parents’ inevitable divorce. Your-”
“Okay okay okay stop,” William said. “I get it now. Can I get some water please?”
“Here you go,” Janet smiled and with another bloop sound, a glass of water materialised in her hand. William’s mouth hung slightly open as she handed it to him.
“I… thank you,” he stuttered.
“Is there anything else you need help with?”
“I-I’m not sure.”
“Then I will return to my void. If you need anything, just call my name.”
“Uh… okay. Thank you, Janet.”
“No problem.”
With one last bloop, she was gone.
“So… dead,” William looked back at Michael, taking a sip of his water. “I’m dead. Alright. That’s okay. It’s clearly not as bad as I thought it would be. That’s great.”
“Well, you’re not the only one. No one has ever guessed what the afterlife is like. Apart from Doug, of course.”
“Doug?”
“Doug was a stoner kid in Calgary. In the 70’s, he and his friend got high on mushrooms and his friend asked hey, what do you think happens when we die? And Doug went into this huge monologue where he got about 92 % correct.”
“So… what is it like?”
Michael watched him for a moment, a small smile on his face. “You seem to be feeling better now. Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
It was a small town with narrow streets that curved so much that seeing the end was completely impossible. The sun shone brightly but not so much that it would blind him, the air was warm and there was soft music playing from somewhere.
“I don’t want to assume, but…” William began. “This seems to me that I ended up in the… nicer side of the afterlife.”
“I’m glad you put it like this,” Michael nodded, greeting people who passed by them. “Most people would say the good side. And it used to be correct. Not long ago, the afterlife was divided into a Good Place and a Bad Place. There was a point system. Good deeds got you points, bad deeds lost you some. It worked, or better put, it used to work. But as humanity progressed and life got more and more complicated, so did trying to decide what was good and bad, because actions started having unintended consequences.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Neither did I for quite some time. It’s okay,” Michael assured him. “Imagine you’re someone living hundreds and hundreds of years in the past. And you want to get your mother some roses. Where do you get them?”
“Probably in the garden.”
“You pick them.”
“Yes.”
“And now imagine you’re the same person, but in the twenty first century. Where do you get roses for your mother?”
“From the florist probably.”
“Can you see the difference?”
“No?”
“Hundreds of years ago, getting your mother roses got you about one hundred and forty five points. But now, in the twenty first century, it lost you four points. Because by buying them, you supported the use of pesticides, exploitation of migrants, a racist billionaire CEO who sends his female coworkers pictures of his genitals, and also left a huge carbon footprint, because the flowers had to be transported from thousands of miles away.”
William stayed silent, processing the facts. “That… that makes sense. But still, I don’t know what it means for me.”
“It means that if we didn’t change the system, you, along with the entire human race, would be forever rotting in the darkest depths of hell. Now, along with your actions and their consequences, your intentions and your morals can get you or lose you points as well, based on the circumstances, your options, and the environment you lived in. It’s incredibly complicated and it takes hundreds of thousands of millions-”
“You could have just said billions. ”
“-Calculations that have to be all done without a single error. Otherwise humanity would suffer for eternity. Cupcake?”
“Wh- no, thank you.”
“Fair enough. After all, you will have plenty of time to try them all.”
With each step he took, the ground seemed to be swaying under his feet more and more, his head spinning.
“I need to sit down.”