As you may know, for many years here on TrekBBS, there has been a trend of collaborative Star Trek storytelling threads, not unlike the practice of friends sitting around a campfire and developing a story by going around the circle and having each person add a sentence. There is generally a simple set of guidelines for these story threads: each post is limited to a certain length, such as five or seven words, participants should not post twice in succession or too many times in a day, and the story should revolve around characters of the TV show or movie(s) of that particular forum. Intriguing results can come from such a shared "stream of consciousness" creative project, by virtue of sidestepping the more traditional narrative frameworks that writers typically adhere to in constructing prose fiction. Without strict conformity to a conventional three or five-act dramatic structure built upon a neat outline – with an easily discernible beginning, middle, and end – the free-flowing creativity of the participants can find expression in unexpected ways, although the overall product may be considered outside the usual bounds of lucidity and cohesiveness, according to conventional literary analysis. Generally, the narrative tends to take the form of a series of lighthearted, whimsical vignettes describing character-centered events or background information, with particular people or themes being explored for a time, until an unexpected development is introduced into the story. At times, certain voices are expressed more strongly, as particular participants have a greater and more frequent share in the creative process out of the sheer joy of shared storytelling. At other times, other participants lend a hand in shaping the narrative, adding their unique creative voices as well. With all of this in mind, on behalf of the denizens of the “Trek Movies I-X” forum right here on Trekbbs, it is with great pleasure and pride that I present to you an epic, century-spanning saga that features characters and settings from across the far-flung regions of the galaxy, as depicted over the first twenty-three years of Star Trek cinema. Minor editing and formatting have been applied to this chronicle for improved readability, grammar and punctuation, etc., while endeavoring to accurately convey the narrative as it was originally conceived. No substantial changes have been made to the actual content. This is roughly the first third of the story so far. It has taken some time to put all this together into something resembling coherence. I will try to post more of it in the upcoming week. I look forward to your feedback and critical literary analysis of this collaborative creative work. So anyway, without further ado, here is.... The Amazing Trek Movie-era Six-word Story: Pages 1 - 36! V'Ger and Khan met Shinzon at the gates of Sto'Vo'Kor where they plotted to steal Carl Spock's stash of Dilithium from Praxis. Gorkon and Lincoln sued the McDonald's franchise for its lousy TMP happy meals, but they tasted like they were made in Ferengi sweat shops. Captain Kirk used to work in one, but was fired for eating the McNuggets and hurling them at the first officer Spock. "It was... fun," he said as he opened his mouth sadly. "Your pain runs deep. Share those McNuggets with me Kirk," said Sybok. "But I need my McNuggets!" Kirk said while stuffing his mouth with whale food that he smuggled out of the cetacean institute in Sausalito, while Gillian wasn't looking. He was a little bit of a kleptomaniac back then, and so he always had extra things to nibble on when he felt a twinge. But today, he felt a need to right the wrongs of the past. He started by trying the Romulan Ale that Valeris had stashed and that Spock mindmelded out of her. Rumor had it that someone had made a Khan clone from the remnants of the Genesis incident, where he'd been blown off off of the toilet by a faulty drainage system; that infuriated him every time he had to go to Nimbus III to make a delivery of pizzas. The pizzas were hot, and his hands were cold; you do realize that to keep pizza hot he had to heat up his hands with phasers. Shinzon was still to be created. Khan was trying to come up with a scheme that would allow him to get even and then some with the people that were the cause of his great anger and desire for cruel revenge, not to mention the painful stinging sensation when he urinated that was caused by faulty wiring in his thick, enormous, genetically engineered toilet seat. Khan suspected foul play. The whale probe saw V'Ger and did a happy dance on the aforementioned toilet seat, when suddenly a Shark jumped up and bit his knob off. “OW-EEE!” cried Khan, "How many times do we have to swear to avenge ourselves upon those inferior." Kirk and his team who had saved the Earth more times than Khan had threatened it by saying that he would eat and drink everyday at mealtime until he was full. He had to go to the bathroom once in the Mutara nebula, just to say that he did. That was an experience he could tell his grandchildren and his dog, which liked to listen to all his old stories listen to him while he was telling all his old stories and dancing in the circle. "Good times," he remembered. "I always like it when someone would just tell me that they loved me long time, especially in an Asian theater," but that was a different because it implied that he didn't really care about the way they parted their hair and put on those really black wigs and so thick that you could use it to carpet your living room, but only if you liked that particular shade of pitch black, on the other hand the people who wanted that shade were busy trying to cook beans and bourbon, an explosive and a stink-bomb, all in one. Captain Decker was beaming aboard Enterprise and was nearly killed by a bean that McCoy had thrown toward a Gorn that invaded their privacy by peeking under the curtain of the women's shower room, which was one of the causes of a major fight on the bridge between Geordi and one of the Bolians. "That isn't something you often see," Klaa told Kruge. Dr. Soran's stopwatch was timing the different phases of his favourite Tom and Jerry cartoons so he would never miss any of them. If he left today for the Chrono metric intra nexus singularity that was some nasty thing to go inside of and so he had second thoughts about the whole thing. The first thing that troubled Sybok was the lack of people who could challenge him to race because he had a trick up his sleeve. He was going to pretend to run, while in fact he was actually walking really fast. Dar, Korrd, and St. John Talbot were wondering why their feet seemed to be glued to the wall because it was made of something that was imported for the humpback whale placenta juice fermented and served at the state dinner occurring once in a blue moon when the[y] actually saw a blue moon orbiting Vulcan just before Spock was finishing a book that was too interesting to put down before you read it to its conclusion. He found the ending a bit disappointing though, and it took him some time to learn to ride a skateboard for the fun of surprising his friends with an unexpected new skill that will impress the pants out of [them]. Klaa found riding a skateboard challenging. That was of course because it was something so different from what he experienced in every other era. Skateboards were different in those days, especially the color which was nothing the Klingon had ever ridden. His own 'ride' was a Klingon invention that resembled a slab of granite on wheels that looked like Fred Flintstone's car, and Klaa wasn't the most subtle of Klingon bastards, his mother was a female packled, the only woman, his father could pull as he was uglier than he was stupid and he was attracted to retarded women. He bought Klaa's mother for a small amount. Klaa wasn't happy about that, but he'd learned to live with his fathers questionable choices. Later he decided that he would become a pastry chef in the Galactic klingon empire, his words, so he did the next best thing, he tried to blow up Kirk's ship. He didn't like the way Kirk pronounced his name, with weird emphasis on the silence before the first hoarder of Flintstone memorabilia. "Mother, you have the best Dino collection ever!" The Enterprise was the only ship in the sector, again. Valkris licked a dime and shoved it up Chekov's nostril the same way Klingons always do when they get horny, especially their females. Chekov didn't understand this, so he mimicked licking currency and inserting it into orifices. He did it badly and it resulted in a diplomatic incident that it took six months to skilled diplomats such as Spock to fix. It was decided after this, that all Federation vessels would fire photon torpedoes, at any ship that wasn't respecting the rights of the Ferengi, because they had become the linchpin of the Federation's downfall. But the Ferengi were smarter back then than they ever realized because they didn't try to contact anyone before they went to their posts. This was the best of times, this was the worst of a generation of people without an ideal to guide themselves to the place where they should be at the end of their long journey. This is why the nexus seemed so pointless to Captain Kirk. He sought to learn why Valkris and Valeris' names didn't appear on Spock's list of people with names starting with "Val". Spock really had no emotional connection with anyone, at least not on the surface, but deep down those people knew that he cared about them, and that he was willing to share his nachos with them. And when you know how much Spock valued his food in general and his nachos in particular -- you just can't get good nachos on Ceti Alpha V. Enterprise A was well-known for its ability to look just like the first Enterprise, except with its name followed by another letter, and the nacelles, and a lot of stuff that made it look different. Scotty got mad. "Ah ye Borgas Frat!" he called someone that was there and looked frightened. Whenever Scotty went off in one of his bouts of anger he would seek out the nearest person to traverse the Great Barrier with and meet Sybok's buddy that claimed God really DOES need a starship to escape. Saavik said, "These quotes are not regulation Captain. Where are --" Then they left for Ceti Alpha V, where Captain Kirk marooned KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!! But, Khan was long gone so he said "Khaaaaaaaaaannnnan" again...and again.... They grilled Ceti Eels for dinner; they were quite lovely, but Spock does not eat animal flesh, so he had beans on toast instead. Just as the whale probe arrived Spock emitted a large gaseous anomaly. The probe went up his leg to analyse the anomaly, it was Something he got on spring break. "I got that too!" said Kirk. Valkris snuck up behind him with malevolent intent and that is at that time that someone recognized her as the one with the whales. He was wrong of course but it aroused suspicions and soon she was actually recognized, someone was then able to stop her before she had enough time to do some serious damage to Kirk's head. So, they all managed to restrain her before she could kill herself, which to be the Almighty. It didn't go as well as they'd've hoped that it would. That's because it was a bad day to die but a great day to fly especially for those lucky enough to own a kite. But kites weren't too expensive for the wealthy members of the Federation Council. They always managed to get a more than adequate kite for their needs which weren't as great as they pretended but neither were the trilithium weapons that detonated before they hit a target worthy of setting off their detonators, and that was a big flaw that most people couldn't get past. Kirk felt that his job entailed lots of responsibilities, but not so many that it would discourage someone like him, though maybe it would a lesser person. Some people just can't handle great responsibilities and aren't willing to undergo daily chest waxing. The latter being by far the harder to achieve, since people by habit were fond of their pilosity. When the people were ready to shave their own hair, then they would be bald and beautiful like the amazing bald Klingon that almost destroyed Enterprise. He almost destroyed the Enterprise by quoting so much Shakespeare that the warp nacelles turned blue and the disco light on the bridge started to blink as people were dancing joyously in the light with passion. The people then liked to dance a lot, in fact they had a different dance for each event of their lives, like a new coat. Khan was still pissed at Kirk, in spite of the heartfelt apology that had been sent to flatulence, that complimented his tooth decay, Which was nothing compared to the loss of reason that accompanied the drunkenness of a night on the moon, where the cow had just delivered a package from the mail. "Wow, I knew cows were smart but I didn't know alien cows were being employed by governments to control the population, on a planet so far away that if you went there as fast as the fastest starship could travel, it would still take years to get anywhere even close to the point where you would be confident that you might actually make it to the planet itself without dying before you would meet anyone that might tell you where the hell it was that you and your ship were wandering around without sense of any idea of what it was they were searching in this vast area of space. People sometimes never found their way back no matter how hard they tried and no amount of technology would change that. Worf whipped out his gigantic Phaser and shot a large hole Phaser and shot a large hole in his pants. "Oh my goodness!" He said with extreme delight and he did it again because he was dreaming, and when people dream they do the most bizarre things. Worf woke up and decided that he would stop eating Deanna's cooking because that was a cause of many deaths among the crew. Some though, had been revived, thanks to smelling salts and a healthy libido associated with the displaying of large neon signs and even larger posters of their blown out faces and their bulbous butts, which were so ugly that even the gorn had to love them. The butts were their favorite food next to birthday candles. They loved them when they were made of bee's wax and Targ droppings, which were hard as a rock. They used them to scratch glass, and to break the spirit of the dissenters of the new testament that was part of the things that they didn't enjoy reading when a battle was about to be lost by them and their minions. The minions were even worse as they didn't have the presence of mind to build their own houses like any member of the dominion. That was in their contract when they were hired - at least they thought it was - and so, lest they'd be punished or not punished, which was OK. In other words, they automatically complied with whatever the writers had said. The writers of the constitution of the newly formed alliance between the Vulcans and the Andorians was almost ten times as long as the draft resolution proposed for the two solar systems who came in contact only after the Klingon Empire left but only because they were defeated at the last Intergalactic Targ Hunt, sponsored by the great Noh-jay consortium that had business dealing throughout the entire alpha quadrant and made important decisions regarding the distribution of all the wealth and how the merchandises were not going to be under Ferengi control, for example, they remained neutral – at least they said they did – about whether they liked the species or not and if contracts would be complied to or if someone broke the rules, would you condemn them? I know I wouldn't necessarily, depending on whether or not The Brotherhood was able to pull together and come up with something really worthwhile, get enough votes for the Klingons to be outvoted in everything they tried to do. The Klingons tried to eat what they found on the hull of the ship, but they lost their teeth on the Sugar Planet, whose inhabitants were quite knowledgeable of the problems related to improper dental hygiene, something the Klingons never really cared about. However, they were Galactic champs at push ups. The Klingons only liked to play the role of chumps. Klingons were very peculiar about a great many things, like dancing in fields of fire and running on burning coal. Khan was making new plans involving the death of Kirk in some wild miniskirt and heels, which shows how bizarre Khan's thinking was and how strange he could be when the craziness hit him in the head. "I cannot fathom why" said Sulu as he opened the book that he had been reading as he guided the ship through a dangerous region of space, known by all the starship pilots and their cousins as the bizarro zone that was part of the galaxy and more precisely, a part close. "Disruptions happening more frequently now, Sir," and they happen all the time too. The people were getting restless and they were getting high from the fumes. A Priest, a Rabbi, and St. John Talbot walked into a klingon ambush. They all died horribly. Talbot secretly escaped, disguised as Gorkon, he was planning a revenge, a devastating one. Kirk wasn't about to let an opportunity to fight the Klingons pass him by so he ordered that they searched for the closest Klingon, Chang.
(continued in this post due to 25,000-character limit in individual posts) "I have so wanted to play Scrabble with you, Captain Kirk." But he was drunk and talking to a dubious glamour photo of Kirk's younger self, when he still looked like he was younger instead of like TJ Hooker. Chang drank a whole bottle of blood wine while staring daringly at Kirk, who didn't know why he was trying to pay his bills. He demanded that he'd be allowed to cash a check instead of having to find a bank that was open this far from Nimbus III. Suddenly the Sona was no longer steamy but instead kind of soapy, with suds that kind of soapy, with suds that liked to think about eating potato crisps all day while watching holonovels. But that wasn't the whole story. They started feeling the heat of the blast of solar radiation that emanated from their sun as it gave them all the healthy glow of people spending a great deal of money trying to find a perfect spot to lie under the stars and count them by size and brightness, an exercise that always frustrated the new engineer that didn't know how to tell them that they were not intelligent or even worse than that. Khan was a dentist, and he used his skills to remove the teeth of his enemies and to make their breath minty fresh and then beating the hell out of anyone who didn't want fresh breath. He would then feed them stale French desserts that he acquired from the French connection, a group dedicated to spreading outdated pâtisserie to all the world and, poison the people and make a mockery of the people who wore big hats, also known as The Secret Order of – "I cast a round shadow", they met secretly at a place that was in the Nexus, where Picard's shadow took permanent residency as Guinan's did before, where she helped Picard regain his senses, and then sought Kirk's help. Kirk refused and left before anyone could catch up with him. He was fast! He and Antonia ran off to Wonderland, the land where everything is free with a coupon and a handshake, they have cotton candy everywhere, even in Kirk's toupee. Antonia hugged herself because she doesn't like anybody, except Jim, coming too close to her lovely lady lumps, she was not very happy with the whole situation but thought Kirk's toupee was on backward because he looked weird. So, she told him discreetly to readjust it. Kirk misunderstood and it led to a regrettable action on his part that resulted in him trying to adjust her toupee which had been a well hidden secret. That created a permanent rift between them and their pets. Their pets were getting too big for all the extra food they were getting from the vegetarians because they didn't eat vegetables and that means they were slowly starving, and unable to get into their new designer jeans that were so tight that even the air inside them couldn't fit, so they were completely empty of air which tried finding someone who could let some air inside by using his really long straw that was attached on the side of Riker's head where, mysteriously, a hole opened up and a jack in a box popped open. There nothing as frightening as seeing something popping up of someone's toaster. Klaa was hungry now, so he ate the toaster. It took three Klingon dentists two hours to dislodge the fragments of metal from his mouth. "What devilment are you trying to do here? Are you trying to kill me? Get your instruments back in their case and leave me before I become angry and bite your heads off, literally!" He thought about that for a second and said, "I could eat a head of lettuce, and then another one." Klaa was the inventor of Klingon roller hockey, and the contestants were fighting to the death, klingon-style. "That'll be on Federation Nightly News," said Chekov, with his usual acerbic attitude. He was always going on a tangent, that led him sometimes into a storage closet, where he would find all sorts of material possessions and cute, cuddly kittens to use for cleaning up the corridors by licking them day and night for two or three weeks or until their tongues felt like sand paper, which often gave him a satisfied feeling that his work was worth nothing to the rest of the Academy classmates that he met a few times after graduation to have a few drinks and talk about the old days when they all tried to get transferred to one end of the quadrant just to see if the Mutara array worked as well as expected by the Captain, who wanted the dinner to include red herrings, he never really liked them but he wanted people to think he did so his friends over at headquarters would get a good laugh out of the joke he made. He knew it wasn't a very good asked Scotty to pull his finger, and Scotty said he was too old for that, but he did it anyway because he wanted it to be over with. Problem was..it was never over with. Scotty knew that as well as the number of licks it took to reach the center of Uhura's. Meanwhile, Kirk was giving orders to the bridge crew. He wanted to get to their destination as fast as humanly possible, that destination being Uhura's Andorian friend's planet, that is Andoria. Lursa, Sybok, Shinzon, Kruge, and Gorkon, walked into a bar, the bartender shouted, "No humans allowed!" The bartender then pulled his phaser and Carol, Marcus, Saavik, and Ambassador Sarek shot back and the bartender was dead. Then they all suddenly died too. Kirk just got word, that Gorkon wasn't about to eat cake because it['s] dead. They faked his death for political purposes. Gorkon had acquired some respect for Kirk and his men, so he, Spock, Klaa, Valeris, Kruge, and Sulu trusted Kirk with the secret of his methods of attracting the opposite sex because they were need to create a new textbook for the students who were learning to construct a meaningful relationship without using matchmaking websites. By then they were totally addicted to the new lemon lime cheesecake that the drug given to them by the lemon lime cheesecakes. "What's in there?" "Something forbidden in the federation" was the standard response when nobody really knew the answer. People were used to solving their own problems by reasoning with each other, but there was fear that eventually something really bad would happen and nobody would know what to do about it and that was the way things were at that time. "Why don't we change things?" asked Uhura. "Because it would be dangerous." Danger was Scotty's middle name. Scotty almost died, like a thousand other before him, but what made his near death experiences special was that he was momentarily on another planet eating gagh, which he hated almost as much as he hated drinking plain water. "I bathe in that!!!" Starbases were the places to be prudent about what you do with your time ,as you may need time to find all the places where you need to spend time. "I just need a drink," said Scotty. He was thinking and that was the first thing that popped into his head; that he was thirsty. Scotty was a simple man. Suddenly, everyone lurched to the right as an object was being thrown across the room. It was Scotty's left shoe, and it barely missed the auto destruct button, newly installed right after they installed the ashtrays in sickbay, so McCoy's butts wouldn't fall into the control panels causing Scotty to curse "Borgas Frat!" Scotty was in a really foul mood that day because he had just discovered that he wouldn't get the two week vacations he was planning on spending on Earth among the sheep in the Scottish highlands and the bats in the Andes. Anyway, that explains why he was able to realize that Vulcans were a huge pain in the ass. Vulcans always dismissed the idea that they were in any way bothersome to other people, they ascribed any negative comment they got from Romulans, who hated them because they looked like them but were very uncool and better at playing Scrabble. Romulans had an obsession about Scrabble, regardless of how bad their spelling was. They would drive the other species crazy with their constant talking about the game of scrabble and their certainty that they were the best at it. Spock had just detected a signal with a strange repeating pattern that he had never seen before, yet seemed familiar, in an odd way, he tried to find a match in the computer, but he wasn't having any luck, so he tried things that were only similar to the signal, in some day only, and when he couldn't come up with a solution, he realized it was not because there was no solution, but because Vulcans for all their enormous intellectual might, lack an essential element, intuition. Vulcans were almost incapable of speculating on how an outcome would be. Instead, they needed guidelines, clear sets of instructions. But, Spock's logic was flawless, so he realized that his best shot at solving the mystery of that signal was to find someone with a powerful intuitive sense and submit his current conundrum to that oracle of intuitiveness with some gravy . Fortunately for Spock, he knew how to find that person. Vulcans might not have been intuitive; they had, however, studied the phenomenon and come up with a series of tests to determine the likelihood that gravy and classical songs about the buttocks, that were an infallible way to find the type of individual he needed to maybe solve the enigma of the bizarre signal that Spock was having so much trouble analyzing the data that it was necessary for someone with genuine intuitive skills to make the gravy, and that was something that Spock valued above all. He still needed that person with highly developed intuitive skills to help him sort out that odd quirk now and again, but his most important job was to solve the problem of taking the Enterprise to its annual refit before the warranty expired and the Federation was forced to pay for the whole ship. To be continued...