Chapter 2: Net Gain

James stared at the feather. Not just any feather—the feather. The kind you saw in ancient Egyptian murals, the one supposedly weighed against your soul. It hovered above the scales with a self-important air, delicate and smug as a cat in a sunbeam. James regarded it with mounting irritation. If this was the New World, it could take its cosmic accounting and fuck right off.

He was still waiting for a sign—some booming voice, maybe a parade of ancestors—but all he got was the feather, drifting as if it had nowhere better to be. He considered blowing on it, just to see if eternity could be disrupted by a light breeze.

Instead, his mind wandered to the messier details of judgment. “What about my mom?” he blurted out, the words tumbled out before he could swallow them. If the scales were tallying everything, surely family counted for something?

The judge—who looked like he’d been carved from pure, judicial disappointment—blinked slowly and fixed James with a look equal parts exasperation and boredom. “You groped her breasts while you were both drunk, I’d hardly count that as a felony, Mr. Smith.”

James went beet red, every nerve ending alight with shame. The room seemed to lean in, waiting for an explanation he would never give. Maybe this was hell—forced to relive every mortifying mistake with a celestial audience.

He tried to summon some dignity, but even his internal monologue had packed up and left. All that remained was the feather, perfectly balanced, perfectly indifferent, hovering in the void.

God, he remembered how they’d felt—saggy, sure, with long, thick nipples, but warm and yielding in his hands. He’d been too drunk, too desperate for connection, but there’d been something shockingly good in the feel of her flesh, something that had haunted him afterward. He’d taken a photo, too—actually, if he was honest, he’d taken more than a few. The images had become late-night currency, jerked off to countless times over the years in the lonely privacy of his room. He’d always stopped short of anything more, never crossed any further lines, and that was his dubious boundary.

Now, standing before cosmic judgment, he found himself pondering the limits of privacy in the afterlife. Would a colonoscopy of his browser history be next? Did God audit incognito tabs? He shuddered, deciding quickly that some topics were best left undiscussed in this court. For once, silence seemed the only option.

James turned his head in a daze, looking at the scales and, yup, they were still equally balanced. Was that such a bad thing, or did boring equate to not getting into Heaven these days?

“As for each and every act of goodness or harm committed by the Appellant,” the Counselor for Heaven intoned, lifting a thin dossier between two fingers as if it were contaminated, “insofar as they exist at all, their weight has been established by binding celestial precedent as interpreted in the matter of St. Peter v. Humanity, and subsequently clarified in Seraphim v. The Fallen.” He paused, tapping the papers, “The relevant facts are not in dispute: the Appellant’s actions, or more accurately, his notable lack thereof, are reflected in the Scale. As is procedure, the balance before us is the primary instrument for judgment.”

He gestured toward the golden balance, which remained resolutely still, as if it too was unimpressed by the whole affair. “It is thus the submission of Heaven that, as the weight of Righteousness and Sinfulness is determined according to long-standing jurisprudence, all that remains is for this Honorable Court to render its determination of the appropriate post-mortem disposition.”

Judge Raguel’s wings rustled faintly, the angelic equivalent of an eye-roll. “Counselor, the Court is intimately familiar with the law. Please proceed to the salient point.”

The Counselor for Heaven straightened his already-straight tie. “Very well, Your Honor. It is the long-standing position of Heaven, as codified in Paradise Lost & Found v. Mortal Coil, that only a demonstrable, deleterious imbalance of infractions against Heavenly Law results in damnation. Absent such an imbalance, and in keeping with the principle that Man was originally created perfect and without Sin, the default disposition ought to be admittance to Heaven, subject to a Sentencing Hearing to determine the appropriate tier of reward. Our brief is submitted for the record.”

He stepped back, clearing his throat with the kind of strained optimism reserved for public defenders at hopeless trials. Heaven’s argument, James realized, sounded more like a tired HR manager citing policy than a battle for an immortal soul.

The Judge scribbled something on a scroll that unfurled endlessly across his bench, then nodded at the Counsel for Hell, who rose with a theatrical sigh.

The Counsel for Hell gave the faintest of bows. “May it please the Court, it is, of course, Hell’s position that to err is human, but to err persistently is Man’s special talent. While my esteemed colleague would have us believe that the stain of history does not follow the Appellant into the afterlife, precedent—see Abaddon v. Prodigal Sons—suggests otherwise.”

He gave James a quick, appraising glance, as if double-checking that he was, in fact, as bland as the record suggested. “It is not Hell’s business to embellish when the facts speak for themselves. The Appellant’s record is—if I may borrow from Bureaucracy v. Enthusiasm—’vanishingly neutral.’ Not enough wickedness for proper damnation, but hardly a shining paragon of virtue. The notion that a soul such as this should default to Paradise is, in our view, inconsistent with the spirit of meaningful reward. To quote Infernal Revenue Service v. Uninspired Sinners, ‘It is not the business of Hell to settle for leftovers.’”

He paused, pretending to review a non-existent stack of papers, then offered a faint, performative shrug. “Therefore, we respectfully suggest a continuance, or the possibility of a third path—perhaps a celestial audit or remedial purgatorial assignment—should the Court find neither argument compelling. In conclusion, Hell is unopposed to further deliberation, but asserts that a purely neutral existence ought not be so easily excused or rewarded.”

Heaven’s lawyer bristled, clutching his brief as if it might burst into flames. “Your Honor, the matter remains spiritual, not merely behavioral. It is Heaven’s view that a spirit created good should not be rendered otherwise without compelling cause. As Cherubim v. Mankind upholds, default goodness is the standing order of Creation.”

The Judge raised a hand for silence. The two sides seemed exhausted by their own rhetoric, as if this was not the first or last time they’d debated the eternal fate of someone so aggressively unremarkable.

James listened intently to Hell’s argument, heart pounding in his chest like he might somehow sway the cosmic debate just by paying attention. He entertained no illusions about being held up as a paragon of moral virtue—he had never fed the poor, never saved a life, and had only the faintest whiff of charity attached to his name, and that mostly from rounding up at supermarket checkout. If he was honest, the last truly questionable thing he remembered doing was sniffing his mother’s panties after she’d been out for a jog and then masturbating furiously to the forbidden thrill of it. Fortunately, that particular titbit seemed to have slipped neatly into the cracks of his mediocrity—just another smudge on an otherwise blank slate, neither dramatic enough to condemn him nor virtuous enough to save.