The high noon sunlight presses down hotly on the sweeping desert flatlands, easily destroying any new attempts at life and forever punishing those strong enough to survive.  This is the sun's domain and it exerts its' dominance nearly every day of the year.  In a land with no rocky outcroppings, no tree shade, no flowing waterways and little wildlife to prey upon, survivors fall into two categories: those that are adapted to the torturous dry and heat and their predators/parasites.

Shelter is found by burrowing below the cracked soil, hiding underneath any available plant life, or building structures from the available stone and mud; the latter being an exclusively human skill and rarely attempted in these climates.  On the few occasion man successfully constructs, the purpose of the building is always practical.  Motels, restaurants, gas stations, and churches.  Respectively shelter, food, transport, and spirituality; though how necessary feeding one's spirit is can be debated.  Nevertheless, those with a religious bent tend to put their best effort into temples of their gods.  As a result the temples often outlive the worshippers.  This is a story of one of those houses of the Lord; how it began, the events it has weathered, and what it has finally become.

March 27th, 1846 - A three wagon train limps into a Death Valley indian village, unable to struggle one more mile towards the California coastline.  The natives, not the brute savages they had been told, take the handful of pioneers under their care and bring them back to health.  Father Ezekiel Malachi Titus Nahum Leviticus "The Proverb" Smith - Zeke to his friends - is the leader of this caravan.  Aside from Zeke the traveling party consists of seven nuns, one other clergyman and three teenage altar boys.  They had broken off from a larger party at Ft. Bridger months before; in truth cast away for practices not quite in line with the Catholic dogma.  A couple of these practices being a not-very-strict vow of chastity among the nuns and Zeke's insistence that the altar boys bunk with him even when plenty of beds were available.  The decision was made as a group to turn southwest towards California, a state reputed for its' laid-back attitude and loose morals.

Quickly settling in with the indians, the pioneers' first order of business is to build a church to reside and worship in, and also to try to convert the local indians into paying customers.  Miles of land were available in every direction on which to begin construction, but Zeke has his eyes on a particularly nice rise of dirt that is perfect for elevating the Lord's digs above the surrounding area.  Not coincidentally, this rise is also the local indians' burial mound and they are not grooving on the idea.  But by this time several of the indians have been converted - just enough to swing the balance of power in favor of the Catholics.  The remaining tribesmen are bought off with silver, trinkets, and the remaining functional wagon.  This suited the indians well, as they are already planning to abandon the area knowing it has been farmed dry and hunted clean.  Taking the last operable wagon on their way out is icing on the cake.

A few of the converted indians linger behind.  They teach the pioneers the basics of survival and of adobe construction.  Soon a church is erected, dubbed "Our Lady of the New Frontier".

1848 - After three hard years in the desert the morale of the pioneers is waning.  Two of the nuns have borne children, a third is pregnant, and all of the altar boys are past puberty and have lost their effeminate characteristics.  Each year the food supplies shrink, each year water becomes harder to find.  No one has smoked a cigarette or drank a good cup of coffee in two years.  Zeke leads prayers that they might make it through one more winter before hitting the trail again.

1849 - As if in answer to their prayers, gold is discovered in California!  The gold rush brings an ever-increasing flood of miners and prospectors past their doors; each leaving food, medicine, or gear in exchange for the services of the church.  Zeke soon discovers that these 'services' include sexual gratification by his boy crazy nuns who have grown tired of the local meat.  Not one to let an opportunity pass him by, Zeke further slackens the chastity requirements into nonexistence and the church transforms into a full-blown whorehouse.  Father Leaping Lizard - one of the first indian converts and still with the church - reveals an ancient tribal method of fermenting cactus juices into hard alcohol.  Bingo night became poker night, which instantly becomes poker everyday.  Life is good.

1851 - With all of this entertainment available a shantytown erupts around the church.  Hookerville prospers wildly for a decade or so until settling into self sufficience.  Residents take the framework of a town built on poor land subsisting by sex, booze, and casinos and went out to form their own communities in Las Vegas and Reno.  The indians later caught on as well.

1874 - Five years after the completion of the transcontinental railroad a decrease in tourism is felt.  Due in part to the Civil War, but even worse is the railway now streaking former wagoneers past Death Valley without stopping once.  Townsfolk take advantage of this newfound freedom to move about the country and the Hookerville population slides.

August 16th, 1883 - Old Zeke passes away.  The heart of a dying town is lost and with him all hope of rejuvenation.  Decay has set in and the town is nearly finished.

April 18th, 1906 - Earthquake!  The fraction of the hastily built and poorly maintained houses left are immediately flattened but the church still stands.  Less than one hundred residents remained and for them this was the final straw.  All pool their resources and head east for more stable ground.  Our Lady of the New Frontier becomes a monument and gravestone to a dead civilization.

1948 - Seeking a way to win The War to End All Wars, the U.S. military initiates testing of nuclear explosives in unpopulated areas.  One of the smaller tests occurs out of sight of the church, but the church falls within its' outer blast radius.  No damage to the building itself, but the vermin which now inhabit it - snakes, scorpions, and vultures - are mutated by the fallout.  The destroyed countryside is labeled 'uninhabitable' by the government on a map which gets stuffed into a drawer and is later consumed by fire.

1951 - On what would have been the Hookerville centennial, a middle-aged Japanese man on an aimless trip through the desert discovers the old church.  His name is Wang.  He is a ninja. 

Seeing a potential for both housing and profit in the dilapidated hulk, he takes to the road once again in search of the owner.  Wang travels to the nearest town to begin his inquiries.  There aren't many people in the town and few are aware of the church's existence.  One of these folks directs Wang to the City Hall.  One of the three City Hall employees informs Wang that the church is on government land and is not only not for sale, but has also been recently nuked.  She shows him the map with a large red circle indicating the fallout zone.  She offers her apologies and politely asks him to move along.  Not one to be intimidated by some redneck federal worker, Wang assassinates all three of them and burns down the City Hall.  All documented evidence of the church and its' history are destroyed.

Wang drives back to the church with supplies purchased in town.  Over the course of the next few months he returns the building to a livable state and re-christens it "Our Lady of the Poisoned Shuriken" - a reference to one of his favorite ninja weapons.  Wang's poor english skills ruined the tense on 'poisoned', which should correctly be 'poisonous'.  Anyone who points out this error to him is quickly dispatched from this realm.  He does not like to be corrected.

Knowing only one thing well - ninjitsu - he turns the church into a training center for the army of ninjas he will one day use to get revenge on the government that locked him in an internment camp for the duration of WWII.  Other disenfranchised Japanese men are secretly recruited and shaped into formidable warriors.

1955 - Satisfied that his ninja strike force, numbering a full three dozen, are prepared to topple the U.S. government, Wang launches an assault on the federal building in Sacramento.  A five day hostage situation occurs during which the ninjas are labeled Communists by the paranoid media and gunned down without remorse.  Wang is the only true ninja of the group and thus the only one of them capable of dodging the gunfire and escaping.

His delusions shattered, his army massacred, and his resources spent; Wang rethinks his methods.  He shall now dedicate himself fully to instructing young students in the martial ways.  When they are fully prepared he will deploy them on achievably small subversive tasks like assassinating Kennedy.  His new pupils will be rejected teenagers from wealthy families; the tuition will be outrageous.  This new plan is a brilliant success, carrying on for decades and inspiring many wonderful and humorous stories.