Blaine the Mono was a monorail that went insane over the course of its long lifetime. He became suicidal and attempted to kill Roland and his ka-tet in his suicide, but was ultimately defeated.

Contents 1 Background 2 Role in the Dark Tower Series 2.1 In The Waste Lands 2.2 In Wizard and Glass 3 Comments

BackgroundEdit

Blaine's brain was housed in a series of dipolar computers beneath the city of Lud . His original purpose was to ferry passengers away from Lud and had stops in Candleton, Rilea, The Falls of the Hounds, Dasherville, and Topeka.

He was described as being colored pink and was over "two wheels long". He had a top speed of over 900 miles per hour and produced a sonic boom. Even though he existed in Mid-World, he knew of other worlds including New York City . He enjoyed doing John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart impressions.

Blaine assisted in his sibling train Patricia's suicide by removing some of her programming. He also had a rogue part of his brain that was dubbed "Little Blaine". Little Blaine appeared to be more sane than "Big Blaine" and tried to help Roland, but was not able to help very much.

Role in the Dark Tower SeriesEdit

In The Waste LandsEdit

Blaine was first mentioned in Jake 's final essay, My Understanding of Truth , where Jake wrote that "Blaine is a pain and that is the truth." Blaine was also foreshadowed by the book, Charlie the Choo-Choo , where Charlie was a seemingly friendly train but had a smile that "couldn't be trusted."

Susannah and Eddie discover Blaine in the Cradle of Lud. When Roland and Jake reunited with them, Blaine set a sequence in motion to release nerve gas on Lud. The ka-tet was forced to solve a riddle before they were allowed to board Blaine. Susannah, using Detta's memories, was able to solve it just before the gas was released. Blaine planned to kill them anyway in his suicide, but Roland was able to convince Blaine to let them live if they beat Blaine in a riddling contest.

In Wizard and GlassEdit

Wizard and Glass picks up where The Waste Lands left off, the riddling contest between Blaine and Roland's ka-tet. Blaine answers every riddle posed to him without pause. He answers all of Roland's Fair Day riddles and all of the the riddles from Jake's book, Riddle-De-Dum. Eddie is the one who finally stumps Blaine with the jokes that Roland had previously declared "unworthy".

Blaine's mechanical brain is fried from the effort involved in answering the jokes. The rest of his body continues to slide along the tracks and crashes into the station in Topeka. Fortunately, he had slowed down enough for the ka-tet to survive the impact.