It was a dark and stormy night...

The turbolift door swished open at that moment, startling them all. Captain James T Kirk stood there with two armed security officers with drawn phasers.

Everyone looked at the Kirk at the table with RuPaul. Then they looked at the Captain and the security officers. Even Spock appeared startled.

"All right you stinking shapeshifter! I just got back on a shuttle from Starfleet Headquarters and learned about your little impersonations! Take him, er, that is them, away. Put them in the brig or shoot them out the photo torpedo tubes, I don't care which!"

The security team lead away the false Kirk and RuPaul, who were wailing that this was prejudice. The lift swished shut and departed. Captain James T Kirk walked to the table.

Sherlock Holmes took in all the drama of Captain Kirk and False Kirk and then sniffed his pipe. "What have I been smoking here?"

"It's called leaf" Bulbo Baggins said as he appeared out of nowhere.

The others looked at the whiskey bottle on the table.

"Never mind what he's smoking, what kind o' rum is this in this bottle!" Ahab growled

Doc Watson sniffed the bottle. "Formaldehyde. Reminds me of Afghanistan. We'd drink anything there, too. I'm cold. Dracula sucks all the warmth out of the car." Doc Watson pulled on a black leather jacket. "What? it's on loan from James Dean."

Dracula read a book on Marx, Kirk and Spock argued about trust and Central Park, and Jack the Ripper dreamed in the dark on this wild train ride...

As Rupee-Shwoopee and the Kirk-like entity sashayed into the sunset, Watson thought he heard Fake Kirk proclaim, "Let me be your salty dog, or I won't be your man at all. Honey, let me be your salty dog." Which was enough for him to rescue the Martin from its gig bag. He didn't really have anything else pressing at the moment - he'd already transferred most of the monetary assets of the poker players from their wallets to his.

"Gentlemen, I'm gonna use D standard for this next piece." He twisted a couple of the pegs on the headstock and listened intently while he tuned. Once he was satisfied, he commented, "You know, I'm not so upset to see those two go."

There was a murmur of agreement in the car.

"Standin' on the corner with the low-down blues
A great big hole in the bottom of my shoe
Honey let me be your Salty Dog"*

Spock stomped his feet in time and hollered, "Yeeehaw!" Then he abruptly simmered down and, somewhat self consciously, began inspecting his fingernails.

Watson chuckled, "Yeah, go-man-go, shuffle them cards, Spock."

Baggins nodded towards Holmes, "Hey, man, don't Bogart the pipe."

Suddenly the whole train shuddered, shook in fact...




*Hey! This story has footnotes! Just like David Foster Wallace's stories do! And exclamation points! Just like Friedrich Nietzsche used to use! Well, okay, it has footnotes and exclamation points, anyway. Musical credit: http://youtu.be/t4-XuhXonxM

it felt like it had gone off the rails. Everyone started shouting at once, giving conflicting and often ridiculous explanations for the problem:

Holmes leaped to his feet: "Watson! The game is afoot! Moriarty is trying to blow up the train!"

Watson cocked an eye at Holmes: "Don't think so, Sherry. Someone just turned up the bass woofers, what? Dashed good music."

Jack the Ripper cowered under a seat. "Judgement! God himself has come to punish me for my wickedness! Mea culpa, Misericors Deus ignoscat!"

Bilbo Baggins vanished in a flash "Tis Sauron come after my ring! Where the hell is Gandalf when you need him!?"

Captain Ahab produced a great harpoon from somewhere. "Tis Moby Dick, the Great White Whale!"

Captain Kirk produced his comunicator: "Klingons! Scotty arm all photon torpedoes! Ready phaser banks!"

Spock interrupted:"Belay that order, Scotty. It is not logical that the Klingons are in this sector, far less likely on this strange conveyance."

Scotty yelled back at them. "I'm kind o' busy right now with this pickup at Deep Space Nine! Admiral Decker's coming aboard. No, stay there Captain, Mr. Spock, the Admiral says he must rest and that he'll be down later."

Dracula laughed. "Creatures of the night! What music they make!"

At that moment, Ismael came on the loudspeaker. :Lubbock! Anyone off at Lubbock? Coming aboard, Sir?"

The cloaked and slouch-hatted figure on the platform gave an eerie laugh. "I am. I know what evil lurks in the hearts on men."

"Try Jack the Ripper." Ismael said, indicating the second pullman. The Shadow swished his cape and vanished, as he had the power to cloud men's minds so that they could not see him.

"Shouldn't have rolled my cigarette with the stuff that Hobbit gave me." Ismael muttered as he set in motion the train once more.

Doc Watson began to sing softly.

"Well I can hear that train a-coming
It's rolling around the bend
And I ain't seen the sunlight
Since I don't know when
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison..."


Footnote: Folsom Prison Blues, written and recorded by Johnny Cash

And, I realized the darkness is in my despair and the storm is in strength.

Mercy sakes alive!

Just then eleven long-haired friends of Jesus rolled up in a chartreuse micro-bus.

And Holmes said to the Count, "What a long, strange trip it's been, eh, Drac'?"

"Not at all, Sherlock." Dracula replied. "Others are coming soon. My brothers from Universal, those that walk in darkness, ancient evils and man made monsters!"

Suddenly The Shadow appeared beside them, laughing like a madman. "And I promise you that I will bury them beside you!"

Ismael came over the loudspeaker: "I'm going to try to put that microbus in behind that suicide jockey. We're hauling dynamite and need all the help we can get!"

Our carriage full of assorted kooks shook their heads in disbelief, that is except for Bilbo Baggins and The Shadow who had vanished again.

Holmes steepled his hands in front of his face. "I deduce, Count, that your, ah, "friends" are in the next car behind us."

Doc Watson strummed a few chords and whispered, "Mercy sakes alive, looks like we've got ourselves a convoy!"

And so the train and indeed the entire convoy gained speed as it left the Lubbock rail yard. Ismael was manning the brakes while Scotty watched the needle climb into the red. "'Smael," he said, "she can't take much more o' this. The main boiler, she'll blow, sure as I'm eatin' a bucket o' haggis!"

Ismael smiled as the needle settled back down into the green band. The train had begun a steep decent off of the table-top flat plains of the Llano Estacado, gaining more speed, and entering tight right-hand turn. He looked ahead, squinting into the setting sun, and immediately raised the alarm. "Scotty! My God! Ahead! Look ahead, man!" Mr. Scott dove for the brake handle, "The brakes, lad, pull the brakes."

But Scott's quick thinking wasn't quick enough. The front locomotive crashed at full speed into a burning barricade that had been erected on the tracks. The first two cars pancaked, the next four cars accordioned, the rest of the train cars were tossed clear of the wreckage, scattering across the desert floor like the toys of a spoiled child. During the mayhem, in what can only be described as an odd sight to see, the tank carrying the white whale burst, sending the leviathan barrel-rolling across the West Texas landscape, going to ground, achieving flight, going to ground again, pectoral fins flailing unnaturally, kicking up great geysers of red sand.

The survivors of the crash soon gathered around the whale and attempted to console Ahab, who was visibly distraught watching his life's purpose suffer and die in the moonlight; its blow hole trying to expel a foamy mixture of sand, water, and blood; its thin lower jaw futilely hinging back and forth, the beast gasping for air.

Watson said, "Don't look now, fellas, but we got company."

And sure enough, lined up along the edge of the caprock, looking down on the train wreck, still as statues, gloriously lit by a harvest moon and resplendent in their war-making togs, were two dozen Comanche Warriors. Our merry band of pranksters didn't need to wait long to know their intentions. The braves spurred their ponies forward and began streaming down from the high mesa. Upon gaining the flat ground, the warriors yipped and shouted, slapping their mounts on the hindquarters with an open palm encouraging the animals to a full gallop. The band settled onto a loose Vee formation and quickly bore down our group of various literary and television characters, a sleuth, a vampire, a psychopathic killer, a space alien, a Hobbit, a flat-picker, some hippies, a graphic novel aberration, and a dying albino sperm whale.

Spock leaned over to Watson and said, "Now'd be a good time for tune, Doc - something soothing."


*I was having trouble deciding what new characters to add to our story, so I went for a run, which gave me time to think about it. Around about mile four, I settled on the only logical choice: a band of Comanche Warriors.

Captain James T Kirk whipped out his phaser. Spock unfortunately had forgotten his.

Holmes shouted at Watson "Your trusty revolver! Now!"

Watson snorted. "I don't carry it when I'm on a gig. Left it at 221b."

Jack the Ripper had a long, thin knife in both hands. He laughed. His laugh was echoed by a figure in a black cloak and hat who suddenly appeared with two .45 automatics. The Shadow had returned.

Bilbo Baggins also reappeared with a short sword. "Taste Sting you savages!"

Ahab had his harpoon, but unfortunately chased after Moby Dick. An arrow in his forearm made him spin around. The harpoon was thrown so hard it took out three warriors at once. "Damn! I be missing Quequay right about now!"

Dracula, meanwhile, was covering under the shade of an overturned car. "Don't vorry, they cannot harm me. But the sunlight ist a different story. So sorry."

Ismael came out from the engine with a marlin model 1890 .30-30 lever action rifle firing rapidly.

Scotty's voice came from somewhere "Captain! We have a collision w' a asteroid field. Cannae say how long frae repairs."

A wrinkled Pullman burst open. Three figures emerged. There was a giant Frankenstein Monster, a huge, shuffling mummy, and a man in ripped clothes who ran to cower next to Drac. "No moon, no werewolf." He gasped "Hope the Lone Ranger doesn't show up. I could be hit with a ricocheting silver bullet."

11 long haired hippes stood beside the tracks holding hands and singing:

"Come on people now! Smile on your brother!
Everybody get together right now!" *

"Great." Ismael moaned. "We would have to get the non-violent type of hippy!"

And in far off Kansas, the cyclone was edging ever closer to Dorothy's house...

* the Youngbloods - Get Together.

The battle raged. The Comanche war party seemed to thrive on motion, circling the Merry Band of Pranksters, who had fallen into a static defensive position in and around the whale carcass.

"We're in a tight spot, boys." Declared Kirk.

Then, in a bizarre turn of events, a quick-response team from the LAPD showed up. But they reacted poorly to the situation, firing on and killing a little old lady from Pasadena in a souped-up drop-top '69 Pontiac GTO. At which point the officers left the scene to answer questions at the CNN news-feed tent.

Kirk called after the retreating policemen, "Comanches, you idiots, not Pontiacs."

For their part, the Comanches displayed stupendous horsemanship. Most of braves could ride at full gallop and simultaneously unleash, on average, twenty arrows per minute. One of the Comanche warriors had and old Winchester lever-action rifle, which he was firing one-handed while riding at full speed. He was slid over the side of his horse using it for cover, riding with one leg looped over the animal's back and the other clamped beneath its belly. His left arm hugged the horse's neck gripping the mane while he fired his weapon with his free hand below the horse's neck.

Holmes hunkered down with the hippies in a low spot by the whale's tail and commented, "Man! I sure picked the wrong day to quit eating opium." Eleven long-haired friends of Jesus nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, back in Kanas, the wind was starting to get serious about blowing. Dirt was leaving the ground just as shingles were leaving the roof of Dorothy's house. The grain silo leaned precariously and the family's windmill decided it'd had enough and took off downwind at roughly forty knots.



*Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynn is a Sancho-approved book about the rise and fall of Comanche nation.
http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/a...psdf74770a.jpg

"We need to regroup or we're dead meat." Kirk said. "We should be able to win, we have superior firepower."

Spock spoke up. "You do realize, Captain, that History shows the Comanche Nation was never defeated. The army then gave them blankets with smallpox and cholera germs. They lost much of the tribe to these diseases. Quanah Parker then surrendered, but the Comanche were not defeated on the field of battle." *

Jack the Ripper was fighting skillfully with both blades. "The army gave them illnesses on purpose? And they thought I was a monster."

Watson had joined Holmes and the hippies. He strummed his guitar as they all sang: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." **

The power of the undying monster created by Frankenstein and the long dead giant mummy was turning the tide, but only slightly.

Count Dracula cursed. "Damnit! Eef darkness vould only come! Then you and I Volfie vould show them."

The Shadow and Bilbo were at the front of things. The Shadow went through all four of the .45's he habitually carried. He then disappeared to reload. Bilbo glanced around finding himself surrounded. "By Elbereth and Lothien the Fair!" he swore vanishing himself.

No one noticed that behind them the train was putting itself back together on the track, or that the track was now clear of debris. So intent were the eleven long haired friends of Jesus, accompanied by Doc Watson and Sherlock Holmes, now playing violin, that they didn't even notice when Moby Dick vanished as his tank car replaced itself on the tracks.

Ishmael was now talking on a radio. "How much longer, Scotty?"

"Ah, laddie, gae us ten minutes."

Ishmael looked over at the battle. Ahab now had three arrows in the left arm, Kirk was bleeding from a head gash, and as Ismael watched The Shadow took a shaft in the leg.

"We might not have ten minutes! We need power, now!"

Meanwhile near Coffeyville, Kansas, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em raced to the storm cellar. "Dorothy!" They screamed. Dorothy hugged Toto to her chest. "I have a bad feeling about this"... ***

* Info taken from Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

** John Lennon - Give Peace A Chance

*** Couldn't resist this often reoccurring line from the Star Wars movies!

"Abandon all hope," screamed one of the hippies.

Nothing seemed to phase the circling Comanches, not a huge white whale, a pointy-eared alien, a cloaked man with gargantuan incisors, a '60s muscle car, a train reconstituting itself, or even a disc-shaped space ship hovering nearby. But when a large black man materialized out of nowhere, the Indians stopped cold.

The man filled in from the feet upward, like a Coke bottle filling itself with the static of a television set tuned to a dead station. And there he was: bare chested and bare footed, bald head highly domed, tattooed face, and holding a harpoon.

Ahab was elated. "Queequeg." He shouted.

Baggins commented, "Those effects weren't very special."

The Comanche Chief dismounted and advanced on foot towards the new arrival. The black man threw his harpoon to the ground. The Indian cast away his bow and quiver. The two men circled, eyes locked on each other. The black man raised his dukes. The Indian closed. The black man jabbed, but the Indian caught his left arm by the wrist and pulled him closer. The men went into a clinch, foreheads mashed together, each man with a hand on the back of the other man's neck, each man restraining the other man's free hand. A clinch of death.

Or was it? Slowly the two men relaxed their grips. Slowly their muscles unknotted. And ever so slowly their clinch of death morphed into a bro-hug. They slapped each other on the back and disengaged.

The Indian spoke first, "You're no paleface, my friend."

"My people come from Africa." Said the black man.

"We're pretty sure our folks come from Asia, but there's some dispute about all of that."

"Your English is good, my friend. Where did you learn it?"

"From my mother. She was a Parker. I am Quanah. Are you the one they call Queequeq? Because it would be odd to have two leaders of men out here in the middle of nowhere both with first names that start with Q, eh?"

"That'd be weird all right. But I'm not Queequeq. Must'a been some sort of mix up in the teleporter with that harpoon and all. I'm Iron-Mike Tyson." He stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Quanah."

Holmes had wandered over and was holding out his pipe to the Comanche Chief and the Prize Fighter. "Peace Pipe, fellas?"

"Don't mind if I do." They said in unison.

Kirk chimed in, "Go easy on the loco weed, boys. We gotta get to Kansas, pronto."



*In this episode, El Sancho ripped off: Dante Alighieri, Gene Roddenberry, William Gibson, Mike Judge, and Mel Brooks.

**Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was a very special book for young Sancho. It was when I first realized there is more than one version of history - and more than one version could be right (and wrong) at the same time.

Quanh Parker turned to the Comanches. "I don't think these are the men we were looking for. Stay on watch, but let the Iron Horse go. I will travel with Iron Mike for a time. Isa-tai, you are in charge until I return." *

The Comanche withdrew taking their wounded. Miraculously, no one was killed on either side. The train had finished reconstitution, and Ismael bellowed, "All aboard!

This time the group spread out over several cars. Quanah Parker and Iron Mike Tyson took the car recently vacated by the entity known as RuPaul and the fake Kirk. They exchanged stories of daring deeds and smoked a peace pipe with some really excellent Mexican Gold.

Holmes and Watson stayed with Kirk and Spock.The Shadow now appeared as Lamont Cranston, and joined them, smoking a cigarette rolled from "leaf". His eyes were now like limpid pools.

Dracula joined the Frankenstein Monster, The Mummy, and the Wolfman in the next car. The four began a poker game.

In the fourth car eleven long haired friends of Jesus were buying more "leaf" from Bilbo Baggins, and beginning to sing "Kumbaya." **

Ahab shared the next car with Jack the Ripper only because the next car in line was the tanker with Moby Dick inside.

"Next stop, Albernathy, TX!" Ismael announced.

Just then Scotty's voice came from the Enterprise. "Captain Kirk, the Admiral would like a word with you!"

And on the outskirts of Coffeyville, the dust begin to circle above the graves of the Dalton Boys, and a white hot lightning bolt struck their headstone squarely... ***


* Isa-tai (White Eagle) was a genuine war chief for the Comanche.

** "Kumbaya" or "Kumbayah" (Gullah, "Come By Here" — "Kum ba yah") — is a spiritual song from the 1930s. very popular with Hippie protest movements in the 1960's.

*** The Dalton Gang were natives of Coffeyville turned outlaws. On October 5, 1892, five members of the Dalton gang, including three of the brothers, attempted to rob two banks in Coffeyville on the same day. The disastrous attempt left all dead except Emmett Dalton, who was not expected to live, having taken both barrels of a ten gauge in the guts. He had a final total of 23 gun wounds.He was given a life sentence in the Kansas penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas, of which he served 14 years before being pardoned. He lived until the age of 66, a writer and actor in Hollywood.

When the admiral rang in, Kirk had been watching the countryside go by his window. He knew they needed to get to Kansas pronto, but he didn't know why. It was as though there were great cosmic forces drawing them there, sucking them in, like the gravitational pull of a black hole. Their whole universe seemed to be spiraling inward. Perhaps an apocalyptic cyclone was drawing them unrelentingly towards a singularity in the middle of Kansas. Or perhaps they were just a turd in the intergalactic toilet bowl circling a couple of times and then down the pipe, to be forgotten like yesterday's chili burger.

Whatever the case, Kirk watched the angry night sky turn angrier. It truly was a dark and stormy night. The day prior, before the battle with the Comanches, he remembered seeing high feathery cirrus clouds decorating the western sky. Then as the Indians lined the caprock, huge towering cumulonimbus had been their backdrop. The thunderheads had reached maturity as the train motored north through the night and Kirk was certain he'd seen a tombstone explode under a direct hit by a bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning.

Now with the sun rising yet again, the train was running under blood-red mammatus clouds. Kirk recalled from his climatology class back at the Star Fleet Academy that mammatus clouds were so named because of their resemblance to a woman's mammary glands. It occurred to him that these particular clouds looked less like a woman's breasts than they did like malignant blood-filled tumors. He also remembered the warning his primary flight instructor had given him, watch out for mammatus clouds - the mamas will spank you. As he headed for the communication center to take the admiral's call, he remembered another rule of thumb he'd been given at the academy - when in doubt, run towards the gunfire. This, it seemed to him, was exactly what they were doing. Perhaps the admiral had the answers.

Meanwhile a few cars back, the hippies were deeply involved in a discussion about the transcendental nature of cataclysmic weather and how it relates to the circle of life, the seasons, and the transmigration of souls. Bilbo Baggins would have joined in, but he was ensconced in the reading room of the car, reviewing the headlines of the High Plains Tribune. He learned that a hurricane was battering Louisiana's gulf coast; a tsunami had made landfall on Japan's Honshu Island; a real shaker of an earthquake had precipitated a city-wide fire in San Francisco; and a meteor shower had hurt hundreds of people in a small town in Russia.

Out in the main part of the car, one of the hippies yelled, "Jaysus Christ, Baggins! How about a courtesy flush?"

"Sorry."



*Okay, sometimes I just feel like talking about the weather.

My contribution- from 2:10 to 4:10:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdiTHlWkN_8

Feel free to use the rest if it works with the plot.

Kirk flipped out his communicator. "Kirk here, Admiral Decker."

"I ought to have you up on charges, Captain!. He said the last word like it was a curse.

"Read you loud and clear, Admiral!" Kirk said, making a face and a rude gesture

"Of course you read me loud and clear, idiot! I'm standing right behind you!" *

Kirk's face turned red. "Ah, that gesture was for a guy in the other car."

"Save it, Kirk. How did you get our flagship connected to a multidimensional railroad train?"

"Believe it or not Admiral, but it was a one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater." **

A dark shape was watching from far away. Q was having a ball. The chaos he was creating was hilarious to him. He snickered nastily as the train rolled into Albernathy. Time to add in the Mad Hatter... ***

And as the cyclone swept away Dorothy and her house, the lightning struck the graves of the three Dalton brothers and seemed to cling. Inside the graves, they began to move...

* You may or may not recall this famous line from Mad Magazine's The Adventures of Captain Klutz

** 1958 hit by Sheb Wooly

*** Q, the godlike entity from Star Trek: The Next Generation is a good explanation for all of the illogical combinations of characters and the Enterprise/City of New Orleans (Big Easy) train combination.