Proud Descendents who "Prefer not to"
Bartleby has a significant entry in the Old School Role-Playing Community's 2010 compendium Petty Gods: Revised & Expanded Edition where he appears as "The Petty God of Inactivity." Bartleby's character responds to any and all requests with "I would prefer not to." Destroying Bartleby is impossible.
Bartleby's famous line appears verbatim in Qualityland, Marc-Uwe Kling's brilliant book published in 2020 about what happens when The Shop, which knows what you want, sends you something you really don't want. How do you say "No"? How do you return something if you have prove the algorithm wrong to get the company that sent it to accept the return? Jacques, a nurse in the story is pressured by the president to turn off her life support "for the good of the country,, and responds: "I would prefer not to, Madam President."
Bartleby also makes an appearance in Toronto writer Natalie Zina Walschot's Hench. It's a story about a data analyst with some unusual clients that just about any librarian can relate to! In it, the protagonist, Anna, rubs her throat where a superhero's not so super grip has left welts where his fingers have dug into her skin. Her co-worker Greg urges her to "have someone look at that" and she dismisses his attention by saying verbatim: "No, I'd prefer not to." His response is priceless: "Fine, Bartleby," Greg says. Anna does Bartleby plenty proud in Hench. Here's a promo that's a nice on-ramp to Anna's set-up in Hench.
