Author's Note: For the sake of being semi-organized, I'm planning to group together fan mails of a certain type in each chapter. In this case, we concentrate on letters talking about money. I will write this as if all five Titans are reading such things simultaneously. Sure, you know and I know that it's highly improbable that all five Titans are going to read money-oriented letters at the same time, followed by all carefully reading another type of letter simultaneously, et cetera, after screening out the most obviously romantic ones (as seen in the previous chapter), but for my purposes I'm making some highly unrealistic assumptions in order to give each chapter a consistent theme. My rough draft of this story just jumped around from Robin reacting to one type of letter, and then a minute later Raven reacting to an entirely different type of letter, et cetera, without any sort of pattern to it. But as I started fleshing the idea out further, I decided it would be more satisfying to have each chapter show five different young superheroes each dealing, in different ways, with the same "general type" of fan mail at the "same time."
(I know, I know—I'm writing about a group whose five core members are a cyborg, a half-demon sorceress, a green guy who changes into animals of any size without even worrying about where the extra mass comes from or disappears to, an alien princess who learns languages by kissing people, and Batman's protégé—how on earth do I think I can get away with making unrealistic assumptions about such a normal group of people?)
Chapter Four: Money, Money, Money
2. Remember: We are not a bank. It's not our job to give or "lend" money. We aren't seeking great "investment opportunities," either. None of us are expert analysts of the financial markets, and even the professionals often get it wrong. And whatever you may end up doing with your own cash, don't make any promises involving funds in the team treasury. That money is not yours to give.
P.S. If the person is telling a really heart-rending sob story, salve your conscience by putting the letter in a bag to be sent to the Wayne Foundation in Gotham. They have staffers who know a hundred times more than we do about sorting out the real hardship cases from those who are just lazy.
(Quoted from Robin's guidelines.)
Dear Raven:
Everyone knows of your interest in the occult. As it just so happens, I recently inherited the private library of my great-uncle. He never managed to cast a successful spell in his life, but he kept trying, and trying, and trying—and kept buying any books that might help him get it right.
I have no interest in spending my life that way, so I find myself with an extensive library of arcane books and other documents which I would rather exchange for good old-fashioned money. I don't feel right about offering the rarest items up for auction to just anyone, but I thought you might be interested in picking up a five-hundred-year-old morocco-bound edition of The Necronomicon, and perhaps another volume reputed to be copied from the notes of the legendary Math ap Mathonwy, although my uncle suspected it only dated back to tenth-century Wales.
Raven looked through the rest of the letter, searching for the part that would mention arranging for her to examine the merchandise with her own eyes, even test a couple of spells from each book she might consider buying, before she paid for any of them.
That part wasn't there. The seller obviously expected her to send the money to him on sheer faith, and then just sit around the Tower twiddling her thumbs while waiting for her purchases to arrive.
She shook her head. Another hoaxer. Furthermore, he obviously didn't know two important things:
The Necronomicon had only been invented by H.P. Lovecraft as a useful buzzword to drop into his horror stories in the early twentieth century.
Raven already owned a copy of the complete manuscript of Al Azif (the original title used by the book's composer, Abdul Alhazred, in the early eighth century), and she also owned a copy of the Latin translation made by Olaus Wormius several centuries later.
(A smaller mind, one accustomed to thinking of the cosmos around it in terms of a single ongoing reality, where time always moved in the same direction and cause-and-effect worked in a simple linear sequence, might consider items A and B to be mutually exclusive. But these little "paradoxes" were easily resolved if you just knew how to look at them from the proper perspective. A five-dimensional perspective was about right. Being Trigon's spawn also helped. Otherwise, perusing the entire volume—in any language—might have driven her insane. But a book which could imperil the mind of a regular human was no more than mildly annoying to a psyche which was half-demonic to begin with!)
With that settled, Raven moved on to reject several letters from people who wanted her to help them pay their mortgages. Why they thought she would really care about their private financial dealings—much less have enough cash handy to help them out each month, even if she did care enough to try—was incredibly unclear.
(Actually, one enterprising fellow wasn't asking for money; instead, he wanted her to give nightmares to the people at his local mortage company. Something about his not having understood what an "adjustable rate mortgage" really was; therefore, these people should be punished until they quit hounding him each month over the "outrageous" payments they now expected him to make according to the documents which they had "tricked" him into signing. He obviously didn't understand that even if the people who had arranged his mortgage all had such terrible nightmares that they quit their jobs, this wouldn't end his legal obligation to keep paying the same monthly installments to someone. Even Raven knew that if a mortgage company went out of business, then its outstanding loans and other assets would just be acquired by some other financial institution, and nothing would really change.)
Dear Robin:
On the night of the fifteenth of October, at or about 10:30 PM, your friend Cyborg picked up my Nissan Sentra and hurled it across the street at Cinderblock. The villain was subdued, but my Nissan was wrecked. The problem is that when I lost my job I let my car insurance lapse, so the company won't pay to replace my car. But it seems to me that you Titans are still liable. Buying a used car, of the same make, model, and year as the old one, would cost me about $3000.
Yours,
Nick Alden
Robin sighed. Mr. Alden had his facts in error. The Teen Titans had worked all that out with the city, county, and state governments before they had moved into the Tower. The team would not be held liable in court for collateral property damage which happened "in the line of duty" when they were making their sincere best efforts to prevent even worse things from happening. But if it happened within the city limits of Jump City, then the damage would be covered by civic insurance policies, much the same as if the car had been damaged by gunshots fired by city cops tangling with more conventional criminals. Same principle applied if it happened elsewhere within the county, or outside the county but within the state.
Mr. Alden's insurance company wasn't interested in helping him collect since he wasn't a paid-up policy holder at the time his car was damaged, but that didn't mean no other insurance company owed him any money. Apparently his old company hadn't bothered to explain that to him. Robin drafted a reply to be mailed later.
Then he went back to his stack of mail. Someone was generously offering to sell him half of an old treasure map which showed where the notorious pirate "Dark Conrad" Constantine had supposedly stockpiled his loot, two centuries ago. (Apparently the fact that the other half of the map was missing was the reason the owner hadn't dug up the treasure himself by now.)
Yeah, right. Surely none of Robin's friends would fall for such an old scam as that?
Cyborg had a letter asking for his "help" in sneaking millions of dollars out of Nigeria. The idea was that a childless multimillionaire with the surname "Stone" had recently died intestate in Lagos . . . and if "Victor Stone" showed up and claimed to be the next of kin, then a probate court would turn the money over to him. The guy writing the letter claimed to be a Nigerian attorney who would handle all the details of the legal paperwork in exchange for a generous commission. (Why the real next of kin couldn't be found, even if he or she might turn out to be an obscure third cousin of the deceased, was a point which the author of the letter completely failed to address.)
The whole thing made no sense. It was likely that Cyborg had some distant relatives in that part of Africa—if so, very distant—but they wouldn't have called themselves "Stone" anyway; his patrilineal ancestors had only taken on that surname during the nineteenth century, well after the family's arrival in the Western Hemisphere, and he'd never heard of any members of the family migrating right back to Africa within the last century or two. And if the so-called "lawyer" just wanted a front man for a fraudulent claim, why couldn't he find someone he already knew well right there at home, instead of beating the bushes by sending letters halfway around the world to complete strangers who just happened to be named "Stone"?
Dear Sir:
The wise know how to make money work for them. The common herd only see it constantly flowing out of their hands without ever grasping how to reverse the process with a little ingenuity. We feel certain that you will recognize a new opportunity for legitimate self-enrichment when it is brought to your attention, however!
All you have to do is send one dollar to the person whose name is four spots above yours on this list. Then add your own name at the bottom of the list and mail copies of this message to ten other people. If each of those ten send back their dollar to the person whose name is three spots above yours, and then they add their names at the bottom and forward copies of this to ten other likely participants apiece, and so forth, then by the time the money starts flowing into your mailbox from the people four steps further down in the chain, you'll be looking at a potential ten thousand dollars in very short order! Of course, some people will likely decline to participate, but your profits should still be considerable! And no one gets hurt, because any given participant only spends one dollar! (Plus the trivial costs of running off ten copies of the list with his name attached, and finding envelopes and postage for them.)
The letter closed with four names (Sanders Fortescue, Abraham Embezi, Lisa Trepoff, Jacob Morgenstern), each accompanied by a Post Office box number.
Beast Boy read that again, carefully.
Did this Mister Fortescue really think he could pull the wool over the eyes of a Teen Titan? Did he think Beast Boy was no brighter than the typical sucker? Did he really expect Beast Boy to send copies of this list of names (with his own attached) to ten other people?
It was obvious what a clever man whould do in this situation! He'd add his name to the bottom of the list and then send copies to at least a hundred other people! Even if each of them only forwarded new copies to ten people apiece, et cetera, as specified in the original letter, then the enterprising guy who had sent out ten times as many copies as he was "supposed to" would be looking at a possible profit in the neighborhood of a cool hundred thousand dollars!
Hmmm. Making his "quota" for replies to his adoring fans might turn out to be a heck of a lot easier than Beast Boy had anticipated!
(It did not occur to Beast Boy that the four names listed on the letter in his hand might all be aliases for the same man, who had never sent a dollar of his own to anyone else, and had no intention of so doing.)
The letter in Starfire's hand seemed to say (in rather convoluted prose) that she was already a "winner" of something called The UK National Lottery.
That was a trifle peculiar. Starfire had never even been to Britain since arriving on this world, and she was certain she had never purchased any British lottery tickets. How did one go about winning a lottery without obtaining a ticket first? They didn't have lotteries on Tamaran, but Raven had explained the concept to Starfire once, saying she regarded money spent on such things as "a stupid tax." Then she had clarified that—Raven didn't mean the tax itself was lacking in wisdom; she actually thought the concept was diabolically clever from the governmental point of view. But her basic position was that actually spending hard-earned money on government-sponsored lotteries amounted to "voluntarily paying a tax in direct proportion to how stupid you are."
Starfire thought that over and then incinerated the letter with a flash from her eyes. Probably best not to get involved with these "lotteries" when she still didn't really understand them—besides, she didn't want to make Raven grouchy. (Well, no grouchier than usual.)
She examined another epistle.
Some people at a magazine's headquarters were telling her how beautiful she was—which was nice of them, she supposed—and were also offering her . . . how much to pose for photographs? Couldn't they find enough existing pictures of her in other magazines, or by taking stills from video recordings of old news broadcasts?
Wait—these photographs were supposed to be taken in the nude?
Why should that be so important?
Author's Note: No, Starfire isn't going to do it. Trust me on this. But it suddenly occurred to me that she must get such offers occasionally, and for my purposes those offers should logically be classified as "financial communications," same as everything else in this chapter.