Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Collections:
Yuletide 2023
Stats:
Published:
2023-12-23
Words:
2,785
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
65
Kudos:
157
Bookmarks:
19
Hits:
673

In Which Jason and Chidi Rob a Bank

Summary:

Neighborhood Experiment Reboot #573: Day 9
I’ve decided to use “Jianyu’s” latest unmasking to my advantage. Chidi will be absolutely tormented if he has to indulge Jason’s criminal tendencies for the greater good...

 

Chidi ponders the greater goods and lesser evils and may even come to (*gasp*) a decision about them.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Neighborhood Experiment Reboot #573: Day 9
I’ve decided to use “Jianyu’s” latest unmasking to my advantage. Chidi will be absolutely tormented if he has to indulge Jason’s criminal tendencies for the greater good... 

“…So I’m afraid you two are going to have to rob that bank.”

“SWEET!” Jia-Jason barked. Chidi was really beginning to marvel at how this man had managed to keep silent for eight days. 

Chidi squinted at Michael, then stuck his hands in his pockets and attempted to shuffle his feet casually. “I’m not following you. How will this save Ji-ason?” 

“Well I should think that’s simple enough. In the safe inside this bank is the money we’d need to pay the ferryman—”

“Charon? To cross the River Styx? I thought the Afterlife didn’t fit any Earth mythology that closely.”

“Well, no, it doesn’t. The ferryman’s name is Jeff. We pay him to take the wayward doomed across the Bay of REO Speedwagon.”

Chidi frowned. “You’re being facetious, aren’t you.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?” Michael peered so guilelessly at him that Chidi sighed. Michael was a Good Place Architect. He was incapable of being facetious. 

“Sorry. Go on.”

“As I was saying, this bank is where we keep the money to pay Jeff the Ferryman on the off-chance we need to send someone to the Bad Place from here. If the money is not there, we can’t pay Jeff, and if we can’t pay Jeff, he won’t take Jason to the Bad Place. I, by nature of my position as Architect, will be obligated to exile Jason if at all possible, but if it’s not possible, through some misfortune of the ferry money somehow not being where it’s supposed to be,” he shrugged, “well, I guess he’ll have to stay with us.”

“So, you’re telling us to steal the money so that you can’t perform your duties.” It wasn’t adding up. 

“I think Jason deserves another chance, don’t you? You’re simply exploiting a loophole out of mercy. Didn’t even Aquinas believe that the rule of double effect sometimes allows what seems to be sin if it’s in pursuit of the greater good?”

“He did, but that doesn’t—”

“Here. Have a snack and brainstorm together. Between your high intelligence and his experience pulling…creative heists—”

“Hoo-yah!”

“—I’m sure you’ll come up with something! Good luck! Jason’s soul is on the line!”

They sat on the edge of the fountain, eating Fruit Salad on a Stick and watching the bank.

“I don’t like this,” Chidi said finally.

“What, pineapple?”

“No. The idea that we have to commit an act worthy of the Bad Place just to keep you out of the Bad Place. It’s…illogical.”

“It makes good sense to me. All we have to do to save me from eternal suckiness is hold up one little bank?”

“See, that’s generally considered a bad thing.”

“It doesn’t hurt anybody.”

“Not that you can immediately witness. But the secondary consequences could be devastating for the bank’s employees, who could suffer trauma from the event, or, more materially, lose their jobs—”

“Ah.” Jason held up a finger and rocked a little, grinning as if he’d solved the Liar’s Paradox. “Maybe on Earth they would. It’s just pretend money here.”

Chidi blinked. “Pardon?”

“Nobody uses money in the Good Place! You just walk into Steak On a Stick and say, ‘Hey, I want some of that Steak on a Stick!’ and they say, ‘Here you go,’ or, if you’re thinking, you go, ‘Hey, Janet, can you bring me a grande basket of Stupid Nick’s Garlic Pepper-Spray Attack Wings,’ and she goes—”

“Fresh from the fryer!” Janet held out the basket of wings.

“Oh, dip, Stupid Nick’s! Thanks, Janet! How’d you know I wanted some?”

“You just asked me!”

“She’s so smart! Want some?” He waved the basket between Chidi and Janet.

“Uh, how much garlic and pepper—”

“I still don’t have a digestive system, but thanks for asking! Is there anything else I can help you with?” 

Chidi glanced up from studying the dollop of hot wing sauce on his finger (which might be no hotter than the hot pepper stew he’d grown up with in Senegal, but also might give him reflux in his supposedly now metaphysical guts). “No thank you, Janet, we’re fine.” Janet vanished as suddenly as she’d arrived. “But, Jason, you make a good point.”

“Yeah, I know? It’s like they say, ‘Stupid Nick’s: My Kinda Chicks!’”

“No, I meant about how we don’t need money here. Everything runs on free and immediate gratification. So why, in a magical post-scarcity gift economy, is there a bank here in the first place?”

“So we can rob it!”

“That’s…a circular argument.”

“This is the Good Place, right?” Jason scooted along the fountain’s edge, leaning in toward Chidi, hands in presentation mode. “So you get to do everything you always wanted to do? And who doesn’t want to rob a bank?”

“Well—”

“It’s like, this one time, me and Donkey Doug were gonna rob a bank for my birthday, right? We had all the tuna and stink bombs ready to go, but then a crew of rogue pirate reenactors from St. Augustine attacked Ponte Vedra so they had to close I95 for hippo infestation, and yeah, that was kind of a bummer for a ten-year-old kid, but in the end we got to go to Sea World, so—”

“You were te— actually, I’m not sure what part of that story I should question more.”

Jason clapped his shoulder. “You just leave it up to me, my good bro. I have the expert-ude for just this sort of happening. All you have to do is be my lovely assistant.” He jumped down from the fountain and started painting the air with his hands. “First, we gotta scope the place out. Get the lay of the land, as they say. Why do they say that? It’s a floor, not land.”

“It’s a figure of sp—”

“SO! You and me will go in, and split up. You take this side, I take this other side. We find that safe, we figure out how to get in it without getting caught, we scope out where the po-po might be standing guard—”

“Why would there be police? This is the Good Place.”

“Same reason there’s a bank! ‘Cause you can’t rob a bank without figuring out how to avoid the police!”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good! Let’s roll!”

There were no police inside the bank, or much of anything, really. It was a large, square room with a domed ceiling, a high counter of teller stations to the left, a few benches to the right, and straight ahead, at the far end, a conspicuous round iron door. This Jason sauntered toward, hands in pockets and whistling. Chidi wondered if any of his previous heists had actually managed to be successful.

Not that he had exactly warmed up to the idea of this being a heist, or that he was part of it. He reassured himself that there was no harm in simply looking around the bank, and he headed toward the teller counter and the apparently only other person present.

It was one of his neighbors standing behind the counter in a sharp skirt-suit with a name badge, which surprised him, as he hadn’t known any of the other residents to have jobs here before. “Hello, Vicky! You work here?”

“Please, no line-hopping.” She pointed toward the other side of the room, where a sign reading “Enter Here” marked an opening in the long labyrinth of stanchions.

“Oh! Yes.” Chidi made his way to the Enter sign, and gradually wound through the ropes. Vicky smiled patiently at him from the counter. 

After several minutes, he reached her again. “So, hello, Vick—”

“Did you bring your photo ID and deposit slip?”

“No, I’m not here to deposit anything—”

“Oh, okay. Would you like to apply for our Home Equity Line of Credit?”

“Uh, no, thank you. Actually, Vicky, I’m just curious why you offer credit in the first place,” he admitted honestly. “No one buys anything here. So why is there a bank, and why are you working at it?”

“It wouldn’t very well be paradise for me otherwise!”

“Working at a bank is…your idea of…paradise?”

“Uh-huh!” She began to wax rhapsodic. “Numbers, money, everything in its place!”

He nodded. “I can…see how that could be…reassuring.”

“I’m glad this is the Good Place. I can’t imagine how a bank here could ever become a hostile working environment!”

Chidi’s stomach flipped over. “Yes. What a— what an incredibly impossible possibility.”

“Hey, banker-lady? What would happen if I blew open the door to this safe?”

Chidi sighed. Vicky frowned.

“A portal to the Bratwurst Dimension would open and suck everything in a half-mile radius into a two-pound cheese sausage.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Oh. What would happen if I just opened the door to this safe?”

“Then you’d have access to the only source of money used to pay Jeff the Ferryman to escort the damned across the Bay of REO Speedwagon.”

“Sweet.”

“Also I’d get fired.”

“Oh.”

“Which involves actual fire.”

“Harsh. Okay then. So, we’ll need YOU to op—”

“Excuse me.” Chidi stepped forward. “Jas— Jian— J— can I have a word with you? Outside.”

“Sure, bro!” Chidi had been preparing to drag him out by his shirtsleeve, but Jason bounded after him cheerfully. “’Sup?” he said when the bank door closed behind them.

“I can’t do this,” Chidi said flat-out, with only a slight twinge at the assertiveness of it. “You heard what she said. There are obviously extreme safeguards in place to prevent anyone from opening the safe, and I will not be complicit in cheating Vicky out of her deserved afterlife, or turning the block to sausage.”

Jason’s brow furrowed. He started counting on his fingers. “So we can’t blow it up, and she can’t open it for us.”

“So I guess that means—” Chidi said slowly.

Jason met his speed and continued, “We cut it open.” Not quite what he’d been going for. “Hey, Janet?”

“Hi there!” Chidi jumped. He wondered how long it would take him to get used to Janet’s arrivals.

Jason didn’t flinch. “Could you please bring us an industrial-strength laser cutter with metal drilling capabilities?”

“Like this?” She handed him a heavy-looking device with a glowing tipped rod. 

Jason accepted with wide eyes. “Sweet, yeah!” Janet disappeared again conveniently before Jason powered it on and swept a laser beam through a cement planter, spilling roasted hibiscus onto the sidewalk.

Chidi swept a hand over his face. “This is ridiculous.”

“I know! It’s like, light, but it’ll cut you like you’re jello!”

“It’s a test of some sort,” Chidi continued. “You have clearly already earned your spot in the Bad Place, and by continuing to pursue this course of action when we know for sure it will have negative consequences, we’re just cementing it. The only morally correct move we have here is for you to give in and face your just deserts.”

“There isn’t any jello. It’s a figure of speech. See, I can do that, too.”

“What I’m saying is, since you deserve to go to the Bad Place, you have to go. A just society demands you pay for your misdeeds.”

Jason’s face fell, and he seemed to shrink entirely into a wounded puppy. “That hurts, man. How can you call yourself a good person and send someone to the desert for all eternity? I’m from the swamp, bro! I’d turn to jerky in the Bad Place!”

Chidi put on his sternest professor voice. “Technically, I’m not sending you anywhere. You put yourself there through your actions on Earth.”

“Forever? I sure didn’t spend forever alive. How is that fair?”

“Sometimes it’s not about fair, it’s about right.” But even as he said it, his stomach knotted up. Even Kant didn’t think the punishment should outweigh the crime. He added, “I’m sorry.”

Jason watched him for a moment, then nodded. “Apology accepted. Let’s do this.”

“What?”

“So, you distract her with your smart people talk again, and I’ll go cut the safe while—”

“No, no, no! I will not be a part of this! If you honestly think you can get the money without further damning yourself, go ahead, but I am out!”

“But I need you! You’re my smart guy!”

“Yes, and the smart thing to do is NOT THAT.”

Jason fell to his knees, hands folded in supplication. “Please, please, man! I don’t want to be turned to jerky, or eaten by fire lizards, or whatever the other weird shirt Michael said was! You gotta help me!”

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?” Vicky swept out the door, positioning herself between the two of them.

“No! No, thank you, we’re perfectly fine.” Chidi caught Jason’s eye over Vicky’s shoulder. 

Jason, who’d composed himself and stood back up, laser cutter in hand, winked at him. Conspicuously. Then he slipped through the door behind Vicky’s back.

“Oh. OH! No, this was not the— Jason, wait!”

But Vicky had turned, staring slack-jawed at Jason as he approached the safe. She shrieked and ran after him. “You can’t!” she cried, skidding past him to plaster herself against the safe door. “If the money inside this safe is ever disturbed, then my soul is forfeit!”

Jason froze with the laser cutter pointed, forgotten, at a now disintegrating light fixture. “You mean, you’ll get fired if I cut it open, too?”

“Probably with your fire there.” Vicky gestured helplessly toward the laser cutter. 

Jason let the cutter (now shut off) fall to his side. “That sucks. Who made these stupid rules? Hey, I got an idea. I gotta go on the run, since I can’t get to the money that would send me to the Bad Place, right? So why don’t you come with me? You wouldn’t have to worry about anybody trying to fire you ever again. Maybe we could start a new bank in the Outside of the Neighborhood!”

Vicky looked bewildered. “I don’t think it works that way. But that was really nice of you for offering!”

It really was, Chidi thought. Jason could have continued pursuing the ferry money to save his soul at the expense of Vicky’s own, but he stopped as soon as he realized she would definitely be hurt. Jason may have had no concept of the categorical imperative, but he was perfectly familiar with the concept of kindness. Reckless and lawless were one thing, but Jason didn’t have a cruel bone in his entire metaphysical body.

And in that instant he knew. He knew exactly what he had to do.

“What are you doing?!” Jason hollered as Chidi wrenched the laser cutter out of his hands and aimed it at the safe. “You’re going to catch Vicky on fire!”

“You don’t deserve to go to the Bad Place!”

“You just said I did five minutes ago!” Jason tried to pull it back, but Chidi held firm.

“I changed my mind!”

As the laser melted the steel around it, the steel crackled and folded like paper. Only when the walls around it started to crumble did Chidi finally drop the cutter and yank Jason and Vicky backward.

The safe, now looking like a ball of discarded wrapping paper, burst through the domed roof. Chidi could only stare up at it as the bank collapsed around them, wondering how it would feel to be a sausage.

But no Bratwurst Dimension manifested. Instead the former safe manifestoed, its charred remains and coveted contents scattering and raining down in the form of thousands of copies of Kant’s Die Metaphysik der Sitten and Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social.

Through the fluttering pages Chidi watched the entire neighborhood gather to gawk. Tahani’s unmistakable posh inflections cut through. “Good lord, what happened here?”

“Chidi cut the safe in the bank and it all went up in treatises!” Vicky shouted. 

“It was my bad, everybody!” Jason stepped forward with a wide sweep of his arms and a half-bow. “Chidi only cut the safe ‘cause Michael said if we didn’t rob the bank I’d hafta go to the Bad Place, and Chidi just wanted to save me!”

All eyes turned to Michael. Eleanor crossed her arms and glared at him.

“So wait. In order to save Jason from the Bad Place, he had to commit a felony, and for some reason you thought CHIDI would be the best person to help him? CHIDI, Mr. Pondering-Paper-Versus-Plastic-Gives-Me-a-Stomachache? CHIDI, who thinks it’s literal torture to—” Her eyes widened. “OH!”

Michael sighed. “Here we go again.”

“HOOOOOLY motherforking—”

And Michael snapped his fingers.

Notes:

Credit to my 14yo, who, when I posed the question “I have to write a story about Chidi and Jason: what should they do together?”, immediately replied, “They rob a bank,” and I said, “You know, that actually might just work. How do they do it? WHY do they do it?” “I’M not the writer!” they protested. “It just popped into my head! I didn’t expect it to WORK!”

I misread the due dates and did not get this in on time, so it's possible you have TWO gifts now! Yay! Two cakes! That's me spinning my stupidity for you.