A New World

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Disclaimer: I failed to put this in at the first chapter, but (just as with all my other stories) I have no fiscal or remunerative claims to the Teen Titans in any way, shape, form, or fashion. So there.

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Chapter Two: Hunger

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The halls in Titans' Tower were by no means narrow. Mr. Silas Stone had spared no expense in the construction of the odd building; Victor also spent rather a long time trying to come up with various unpleasant scenarios that might take place there, and then designed the physical plant to aid in their defense. Plus, he knew that they might have to lug large pieces of equipment around from time to time. So the passages snaking through the Tower were spacious, especially at the junctions.

What that meant for Starfire was that she could fly around in the building without much trouble and without it being a hazard to the others. Most of the time.

The doors to the Ops Room sensed her approach and fwished open, allowing her free access, which she appreciated. For that matter, they all liked that aspect of the place, and congratulated Cyborg frequently on his penchant for innovation. The only time it was a problem was when two of them were approaching the same door simultaneously from opposite directions. Each would be expecting it to open, and perhaps not paying quite enough attention to what was waiting on the other side.

That was Beast Boy's situation. So when Starfire swooped into the room, nearly taking his head off, he could be forgiven a sudden … um … overreaction.

She made a tight U-turn in the air and landed beside him, taking in the mess: he'd been carrying a large bowl of something sort of off-white-and-brown, and was now wearing most of it; the bowl was upside-down across his knees. "Oh! I am so sorry, Friend! Please, allow me to acquire a cloth of washing and I will aid you in the getting of clean."

The green teen blinked at her, then looked down at himself and chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Starfire. Gimme a sec." He frowned briefly in thought, then transformed into a tiny insect. Most of the varicolored goo slumped into a puddle on the floor. Gar spent a few seconds cleaning himself off with his many legs, then flew up a meter or so, buzzed over next to the alien, and morphed back into his human form. He gazed sadly at the mess. "Shame about the pudding, though."

"Pudding!? You have made a pudding? What variety? What does it signify? What are we doing the celebrating of?"

He was a bit taken aback by her sudden enthusiasm, but recovered quickly. After all, the team members were (to greater or lesser degree) slowly getting used to the effusive girl's intensity where emotions were concerned. One dark green eyebrow rose. "Celebrating?"

"Oh, indeed! It might be a Pudding of Gorlarlanor, for this is the correct season … except it is the wrong color, and you left out the speth mites. Or …"

He turned slightly pale. "… Mites? As in, bugs?"

"Well … that is the best translation I can formulate, given the deficiencies in nomenclature. They are akil speth larla … similar to certain wingless parasitical creatures on this planet. Except larger. Much, much larger, and with a great many eyes, and poisonous barbs on its head which contribute to the tangy nature of the dish. It does not take very many to make one Pudding."

"… Great." He wrestled that mental image back into its hole and nailed the door shut, then swallowed and said, "My pudding wasn't for any … uh, celebration. Not officially. It's just something I hadn't tried before. I got a delivery of tofu and wanted to see if I could duplicate this recipe and …"

"Oh!" She clapped her hands. "I see! You are doing the surprising of us with a new dish! How exciting!"

It'll be exciting if I can get Cyborg to try it, ran through his mind. He responded, "I don't know as I'd call it a surprise, exactly. Just … sort of an experiment."

Robin seemed to materialize next to them. "What's an experiment?"

Beast Boy eeped! and jumped away a step. "Blast it, Robin! Make some noise when you walk!"

The other teen shrugged. "Force of habit. I don't like to alert the bad guys to my presence with stomping or squeaky shoes."

"That is a most wise tactic, Robin," put in Starfire. "Then the evil-doers may be destroyed without exposing yourself to injury."

"Ah … well … captured. Not destroyed."

"… Captured?"

"Yes."

"Not destroyed?"

"No. The powers that be frown on that, and besides, heroes don't go around randomly squashing bad guys like so many bugs."

"… No?"

"Of course not. It just isn't done."

Under her breath, in Tamaranian, she muttered, "Of course not? What is 'of course' about it? Truly this is a most convolutedly strange world."

"I beg your pardon?"

Her gaze jerked back to his. "What?"

"I didn't catch that."

"I am sorry. I was just … (she had a sudden insight that arguing for the sagacity of killing evil-doers out of hand might not go over too well at present) … I was adjusting my vocabulary. While I gained a basic knowledge of your language of English from our first contact, the subtleties of the speech of the days is many times hidden. This I must learn from experience."

"Oh, right. Sure. Makes sense." Mention of their 'first contact' led to Robin fighting down a blush. To cover it, he gestured to the congealing mass on the floor. "What's all this, then?"

Sadly, Beast Boy answered, "My tofu-date-pecan pudding."

Robin gave him a slightly queasy look as he backed away to leave. "And it ended up on the floor. Um … terrible shame, that."

"Yeah. Can't even give it to the soup kitchen now."

Starfire stared around the room. "We have a kitchen dedicated solely to the production of soup? Where is it?"

With an indulgent chuckle, Beast Boy shook his head. "Not us. The United Way." When that produced an even more intensely confused look on her face, he said, "Let's get a mop or two and get this cleaned up, and I'll tell you about it."

"I think that would be the most kind of you." She followed him to the kitchen, where they rummaged for a minute and finally produced a mop, a dust pan and a squeegee. Beast Boy also grabbed the garbage pail, and shortly they were engaged in trying to find the floor under the sticky mess.

"See, there's this charity organization. Actually there are a lot of 'em. But this local one that runs the soup kitchen is part of the United Way, which is … kinda like a coordinator or maybe a clearinghouse for a bunch of smaller charities."

"Please … what is 'a charity'? I understand that the word means the capacity for giving aid to another, but the context of your explanation does not fit very well."

"Uh, well .. okay, if you've got a group of people who see a need in the community, and they want to get together to do something about it, a lot of times they'll form an organization to do it. Like … okay, like when Councilwoman Majors died from breast cancer last year, and they created a public fund in memory of her, and all donations go to breast cancer research. Something like that."

Starfire frowned again. "Please … what is cancer?"

He looked at her in shock. "You don't … wait … do Tamaranians not get cancer?"

"This word is in my vocabulary, but it does not say anything to me. Is cancer a … oh, what is the related concept? Is it a sickness?"

"Yeah, it is, a really bad one. A lot of kinds of cancer are just plain fatal. I guess all of them are if you don't get treatment."

"I see." She mulled that over for a minute. "There are many such concepts that I picked up from Robin with his language, but they have no analog in Tamaranian."

"… 'scuse me?"

"Let me think. Yes." She looked up and held his gaze. "The people of Earth seem to be subject to a great many illnesses. There are bacteria and viruses and tiny parasites that have laid waste to whole populations throughout your history, if my interpretation of this is correct."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"So. Malaria. Ebola. Cancer. Smallpox. Cholera." She grew very thoughtful. "Truly, this is a sad revelation."

He prompted her, "So do Tamaranians not get cancer? Like, ever?"

"This idea of 'disease' is not known among us, no. My impression is that our … immune systems? Yes. Our immune systems have much more of the robust than the immune systems of humans. The only times I have known of one of my people to do the becoming of ill was when someone else poisoned him."

That brought on an almost comical gawk. "Seriously? You guys, like, never get sick?"

"I have never developed any such debilitating illness that would be similar to what seems to be quite the common thing on Earth."

"Wow. I wonder if our medical research types would be able to figure out your secret?"

"That, I do not know. I would suspect that it has more to do with the extremely harsh environment of our home. Earth is a much more … hospitable planet. Perhaps there is a greater variety of ecological niches, and the … germs? Yes, that is the common term for microorganisms. The germs developed to take advantage of it."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So then a 'charity' is a group of people who band together to … fight disease?"

"Oh, not just diseases. Heck, not usually diseases. The soup kitchen we talked about? They feed the hungry and homeless."

The look she gave him then was even more mystified than the one she had used when asking about cancer. "What do you mean?"

"You know. People down on their luck, lost their jobs, lost their houses. Living in homeless shelters, or even on the streets. They don't have any way to buy food, so the soup kitchen was set up to keep them from starving."

She was having a lot of trouble wrapping her brain around this concept. "Please, Beast Boy … is this one of the 'jokes' that you are fond of? You are … 'pulling the prank' on me? Yes?"

"Uh … no? What do you mean? Joke about what?"

"Are you being the totally serious? You have … there are people … in this city … with no home?"

"Well, yeah. Jump City's pretty big. Any big city is gonna have its share of the down-and-out crowd. We're no different."

"But … but, why?"

"Uh … why, what?"

"Why are there homeless people? People without jobs, without a place in your culture? How can this be?"

"Well, hey, I don't know about how they run things where you come from, but here bad things happen sometimes. Maybe a company goes out of business and all the people who worked there suddenly find themselves out of work. Maybe some of them can't find another job, and …"

"But how is that even possible?"

"Starfire, I gotta tell ya … I'm not following this. Most people go through a rough patch or two in their lives. It just happens."

She was suddenly mad. "Are they not … oh, what is the word? Are they not trained?"

"Trained?"

"For their position in your society. Surely you do not mean to say to me that there are people on your planet who have not been trained to do the contributing to society! Please tell me this is not the truth!"

He blinked and took a step back. An angry Starfire was more than a little intimidating. "Um … well … see, not everyone has that kind of opportunity, you know? Most people who can afford it will go to college, but even that's no kind of guarantee that they'll be able to find a job."

"You speak of this 'finding of a job' as if it is a mystery! How is it possible that your society is so … so … by X'Hal, what is the word? Ah, so haphazard as to be organized so poorly that there are not places for everyone?" She paused, looking slightly pleased. "Yes. Haphazard. A good word. It means the same as zelg'lekteg. The concepts are identical. I do not usually find that to be the case in translation." Then her features steeled again. "An examination of certain related concepts in your language shows me that my fears are true." She shook her head and looked away. "I had thought the Earth to be more of the advanced than that. But it is not so."

Beast Boy didn't know how to respond to that. He was a little affronted by her obvious dismissal.

"So. Malnutrition. Starvation. Hunger. These are not the concepts of the abstract? They are daily situations that many of your people must confront?"

"Um … yeah. But that's why we've got the soup kitchens and subsidized housing and free medical clinics and …"

"But you are …" she was shouting now, "you are flailing at the vines and leaves!"

"… Sorry?"

"Wait." She thought furiously, then gave a sharp nod. "That is the wording. You are striking at the twigs of the problem when you should be digging at the roots."

"What do you mean?"

"You have too many people for the available work. That is why they cannot be the employed. It is very poor planning on the part of your government."

"Well, it's not like we can just keep people from having kids!"

Giving him a bemused stare punctuated by a raised eyebrow, she asked, "Why can you not?"

"Because … because … well, you just can't! Humans are going to make little humans. That's just the way it is."

"Wait." She paused again, closed her eyes, and mumbled to herself for a minute. "I see. So. Fertility. Freedom. Reproduction. These are essentially separate from the general rule of government." She nodded and mused, "Although I do not believe I would state it so. Freedom must always assume a measure of responsibility for the actions that one takes. What you have here, in your culture, does not seem to carry the same level of … no, the word is not 'culpability'. Maybe 'obligation'? Yes, that will do. On Tamaran, one must have the king's permission to do the procreating, and …"

"Hold on just a tic! You mean to say you can't have kids without the government's say-so? That's crazy!"

"What is the 'crazy' is this uncontrolled reproduction. We have the obligation not to burden society with citizens who cannot contribute. Here, you have a portion of the population that cannot support itself and … yes, it constitutes a drain of resources for the rest, this is true? This is what you mean by 'charity', I think."

"But … but, Star, it's not their fault!"

"I did not mean to do the implying that it was. Indeed, it is not. It is the fault of the government for allowing it to happen."

He barked a short laugh. "Yeah, just try getting that one through Congress! If the voters thought the government wanted to tell them whether or not they could have kids, they'd clean out both Houses, and the politicians know it."

She considered this state of affairs silently. Beast Boy didn't interrupt, instead going back to cleaning up the spill. After half a minute, Starfire knelt and helped him. She didn't say anything else until they had finished. "Beast Boy?"

"Yeah?"

"You have given me much to ponder. The differences between Tamaran and Earth are much more of the profound than I had imagined."

"I guess so." He hesitated, then asked, "Does that mean you're gonna leave?"

"What?!"

"Um … well, you know, if we're so backward and all that you …"

"No! Oh, no, my Friend! I have not the intention at all of departing Earth! It is a glorious place!"

"Oh. Okay. Good. But I thought …"

She grabbed his hands, her eyes sparkling. "No! I believe I have done the figuring of it out! It is because of the disease."

"… You lost me again."

"Do you not see? It is the very obvious! Because of the many, many diseases that plague humans, they must reproduce at a furious rate because if they do not, the race may die out! Is this not the truth?"

"Uh … well …"

"And so it is derived from evolutionary pressures! It is not such a wonder to me, then, that humans are so very driven to reproduce. It must be a part of your very … oh, what is the term? Genes? Wait … Ah! Your genetic makeup." She thought for a second. "That is what that means! Deoxyribonucleic acid! Of course!" She released his hands and zoomed around the room in the ecstasy of discovery. Landing again, she turned suddenly serious. "This gives us the large problem, though, does it not?"

"… What problem would that be?"

"Hunger, of course! The soup kitchen? This is the place that feeds the hungry people?"

"Yeah. So?"

"We must make the very sure that the soup kitchen does not run out of food. If humans have to be always about the making of surplus humans, so that there is a stock from which to draw when plague wipes you out, then it is important that they be as healthy and not-hungry as possible, yes? It is the very simple."

"… If you say so."

"Then we will go and collect the food for them! They are a charity, yes?"

"Yes." The word was breathed with a small sigh of relief. That was the first question in a while he felt completely sure he could answer without screwing it up.

"And the charity must be supplied with donations of food, yes?"

"Absolutely."

"We will do this thing!"

"Um … sure?"

"Glorious! Let us go and find the others and share this plan." She grabbed his arm and zipped off down the corridor.

Plan? Wait, what plan? Who said anything about a plan? Aighhh! He didn't quite smack into the wall as they tore around that first corner.

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A/N: Boy, some of the differences are a little less subtle than others, aren't they?

Let me know what you think!

Concolor