Wagon Train to the Stars

Posted on Thu Feb 9th, 2023 @ 4:15pm by Lieutenant Commander John Stryker II & Cadet Freshman Grade Poppy Koppelman

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 2: Rendezvous At Starbase 10
Location: Outside the Experimental 3D Holographic Recreational Room
Timeline: During Midway's sojourn at SB10
Tags: Big Bad Stryker

The corridors of the USS Midway were alive with officers and crewmen and women going about their business; on their way to and from their quarters, their stations, their places of recreation. They were mostly in uniform, Red, Teal, Gold; the odd one or two in civvies or gym gear. There was only one who was dressed in rhinestone cowboy gear.

She looked like a young Rose Maddox, or maybe Lorrie Collins of the Collins Kids: black hair, black cowboy hat, encrusted with rhinestones, as was her bolero jacket and knee length skirt. Skinny white legs ended with fancy, unpractical cowboy boots. On her gun-belt she holstered two bright, shiny silver toy six-shooters. She carried a nylon lariat in her gloved hands and sported a bright silver plastic star on her chest.

Most crewmembers by had learned to give Poppy Koppelman a wide berth by now, but an innocent approached. He didn't look like an innocent. He looked like a tough, experienced command officer. But he made the mistake of catching her eye.

Stryker was on his way to his quarters getting used to the Midway, a bit smaller than the Talon had been, but what he had seen so far, a tight ship, well cared for. But then wasn't that the hallmark of Starfleet ships?

It was then that he laid eyes on a young lady in an outlandish cowgirl outfit, reminiscent of twentieth-century motion picture and television cowboys. He almost laughed but managed to suppress it as the distance closed between them.

"Howdy Cowboy!" she smiled "Did you know that this is an authentic cowboy outfit of the Earth's Old West? It's just like Dale Evans used to wear!"

"You don't say. Remarkable, but don't you mean authentic as to motion pictures and television of the 1940s and 50s?" He asked.

The oddly dressed girl's reply was short, but it was expressive:

"Uh?"

"Real people of the eighteen hundreds dressed far different than those on the big and little screens." He added, then went on to ask, "And where are you going all dressed up? A convention of sorts?" He could see that on a station such as this one. Entertainment in many forms was always available.

"Convention? No! I'm going to try out this new Three Dimensional Holographic Recreation Deck they've rigged up. You can experience what it was like to really be in the authentic old west of the Eighteen Hundreds and 1940s and 50s!" she told him, trying to take on the extra information about a dim time 400 years ago before the Eugenics Wars.

She described how authentic it all was "They've got shoot outs and cowboys and someone called The Alone Ranger and Rin Tin Tin, I think he's a robot, and electric steel guitars and everything! No-one else wanted to go so I have to do it on my own, say, you should come, you might learn something!"

It was all he could do to not burst out laughing, though he realize that not everyone had studied late nineteenth-century America. "Ah yes, I have heard of them. And you say there is a three-dimensional hollow deck? That sounds exciting. One could program most anything into it then."

He wondered what the program was like, how 'authentic' it was to the actual wild west or was it tailored more to the movie and television era of the Twentieth-century. "Why sure, I'll give it a go, and as you said, I might learn something.

She pointed to room off the corridor nearby. "Just here, Cowboy!"

She peered at the control panel outside, pressed a few keys, adjusting the game for two players instead of one, and the door opened to 'saloon' sounds - a plinky, slightly out of tune piano, glasses clinking, men, and the odd shrieking voices women, laughing and shouting.

"Oh, I'm Calamity Poppy by the way. I'm the heroine. You're Big Bad John." Her choice of name was surely a happy coincidence, or perhaps Poppy's occasional claim to be psychic was partially true.

They entered into an 'authentic' Hollywood western saloon, in full technicolor, and somehow the colours of their own skin and eyes and clothes became brighter and more intense. The barman was heard to shout "Holy Cow - it's Big Bad John!!!" and saloon girls screamed and grown men trembled. Poppy reached for something on the bar and handed it to Stryker. "Better put your gun belt on, ready for the quick draw." she warned. "Don't worry, it's impossible to hurt anyone in here, no matter how realistic it seems."

"Okay, if you say so." He took the 'gun belt' from her and amazingly enough it fit. Nestled in the almost authentic, almost leather holster was a 1958 'Shootin' Shell' Fanner 50 six-shooter. He pulled it out and looked it over. It was THE cap pistol of the late fifties - early sixties. The one all the boys wanted. The only place he had ever seen one was in a museum. "Well, I'm ready whenever. Say, wait a minute, are we good guys or bad hombres?"

Poppy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I’m good and you’re bad, silly.” She said, stealing the black hat off a fleeing citizen and plonking it on Stryker’s head. She moved a glass toward him on the bar. “Listen, you have a couple of fingers of red eye while I sing my song, and then tell me you’ve come to marry me, I’ll object, and then we’ll have the draw. Okilydokily?”

It wasn’t really so much a question as a warning: it seemed that things were preordained in this game. As Music sounded from nowhere, Poppy started to sing a song about roses and orchids to a wildly appreciate audience of gamblers, barkeeps, old miners and even a big stoic Injun chief, not in her usual strangulated, off key voice, but in the plaintiff tones of a Jean Shepherd or a Patsy Cline, wandering around the saloon, stroking faces, sitting on laps, drinking people’s drinks, getting her hand kissed, pushing away drunks: everything, in fact, that she’d seen in the movies.

When she had finished, to rapturous applause, of course, she nodded to Big Bad Stryker. “Here’s where you say you’ve come to marry me!” She hissed to him.

"Oh, right." He said, remembering the 'plot,' then; "I've come to marry you, Calamity Popper, an' I won't be taken no fer an answer!" He looked as mean as he could muster trying not to laugh at this whole situation, so far from even the worst 'Spaghetti Westerns,' and there were some really bad ones.

Everybody in the saloon gasped! And then a deep manly voice was heard:

"I don't think so, Big Bad John!"

The speaker walked in from who-knew-where, and the sight of him was somewhat disturbing: it wasn't so much the enormous wooly sheepskin chaps, that made the man look like satyr from Greek myth, or the sparkling pink and white rhinestone outfit he was wearing, or the enormous white 10-gallon hat, or the white and pink pearl inlayed six-shooters, and spurs that jingle-jangle-jingled when he walked.

No.

It was the man's face. Someone, presumably Poppy, had hacked the system and done what you really were not allowed to do. She had manipulated the 'Goodie' character, so that he looked and sounded just like Captain Tristan S. Faust. It wasn't perfect, there was some pixilation around the mouth and eyes, but it was a pretty expert hack-job: clearly the combined product of advanced computing skills and manic obsession.

"Oh! Tex!!" squealed Calamity Poppy, almost wetting herself with excitement.

"I've come for you, Poppy. Just like I said I would. But first I'm a gonna kill this cross eyed rattlesnake - draw Big Bad!" the handsome hero Tex Faust demanded.

Poppy had taken no chances of course; in this scenario, not only was the Baddie slower than the Goodie, his six-shooters were glued to his holsters!

John Stryker could hardly believe the scenario, the "good guy" or the outrageous premise of this holodeck adventure, it was when he went for the Fanner Fifties that would not come out of the holsters, followed immediately by the caricature-like representation of Captain Faust as the 'good guy,' who promptly drew his cap pistols and began firing.

Red dots outlined his heart, well, his now black shirt pocket complete with white pearl snap. So, he grabbed at the dotted outline, stumbled back to simulate the hits, and fell into a table that came apart on cue and collapsed as if he were dead. Exasperating!

Poppy flew into Tex Faust's arms "Don't worry darling, he'll never bother us again!" grinned the Captain's doppelganger with a twinkling white smile, he dipped her downwards to give her a 'Hollywood kiss', music swelled and the whole scene faded to black.

Suddenly they were in a dull grey room, the music, the sounds, the sights of the saloon were gone. Poppy clomped over to Stryker: she had looked oh so glamourous and pretty in the scene, but now she was back to her usual mousy self.

"What do you think, pretty realistic huh?" she asked, reaching a thin arm down to pull him up. His guns and black hat were gone: they each only had on them what they came in with. "You make a pretty good bad guy, Big Bad John!" she said.

"Well, that, that was - different. I'll say that for it. Never experienced anything like that before. Honestly. Never." He answered, truthfully. "Quite the experience, indeed."

It occurred to her that they had been through a little adventure together and she didn't even know the officer's name.

"Oh, I'm Poppy Koppelman, by the way, not Calamity Poppy." she smiled.

"John, Lieutenant Commander John Stryker, the new Navigator. Actually just came about a couple of hours ago." He said. This was so different from anything he had ever studied or watched that he was almost dumbfounded by it.

He was familiar with Holodecks and what could be done in them, from training to play, as they just had, only never as far from reality as that had been.

"Lieutenant Commander?!" gasped Poppy, checking out the braid on his sleeve. "Oh Gosh, sorry sir, I'm sure you've got much more important things to do than play cowboys and Indians with me! I've just kind of given up looking at people's rank badges, just about everyone on this ship outranks me anyway, even the other cadets!"

"Sorry I wasted your time, Sir" she apologised, standing up tall in her over-the-top outfit. "Say, the ship won't crash if you're in here with me instead of on the bridge, will it?" she asked.

"Nonsense Poppy! I enjoyed myself in this little production. Of course, I realize you were unaware (somehow) of my rank, it matters very little when offering a diversion from the day-to-day business that is Starfleet, even on leave. So, don't give it another thought."

A bit of foolishness on the holodeck was actually a nice break from reporting to a new command. The hard part would be the rest of the Bridge Crew when they got underway. He would be under the microscope for a while, as were all new crew members.

As they walked out together, the Freshman Cadet smiled up at the 3rd Officer of the whole ship: she was awed neither by his rank, his experience nor his ruggedly handsome features: perhaps because he reminded her of her big brother, Shemp. Either way, she was bold enough to say "So long then, pardner. And if you ever want to help me tinker with the module, you know, make it maybe a little more authentic, you know where to find me!"

"Aye aye, Calamity." He said, doing his best John Wayne, even if Poppy Koppleman had no idea who or what the man was. He started off down the passage to the turbo lift when he heard her call out.

It was a cool way to end their little adventure until she then had to chase back down the corridor and tell him "Oh... I'm in the Records Department!"

"You got it!' He called back. He was thinking it really could be fun, maybe help her set a real western game that had more than a quick shoot out, maybe something like the OK Corral or Ingalls, Oklahoma. He'd give that some thought, then he chuckled, her version of the west was truly humorous.

 

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