The Hydrant
The Hydrant, or Fred to his (few) friends, was an irritable but hyper-competent robot and the steadfast assistant of the dog-like alien ambassador Talbot Molossus. Though aware of the obvious joke about a dog and a fire hydrant, both considered it highly offensive whenever people brought it up in their presence. Jenny Over-There thought the Hydrant sounded somewhat like Gilbert Gottfried. (PROSE: Open Sourcing) Part of Molossus's fondness for the Hydrant derived from him being “one of the few things he kept from his homeworld”. (PROSE: Good Crieff: The Tribulations of the Scottish Division (2024 reedit))
Talbot was one of the candidates invited to a job interview at the Wales M.F.S. office in one universe by the Man in Grey. The interview saw some friction regarding the aforementioned fire-hydrant jokes, as well as him insisting on not being separated from Fred even though candidates were supposed to be evaluated individually; in frustration, Talbot ended up tossing the Hydrant out the window, to the surprise of the onlookers, who were not aware of quite how indestructible the Hydrant really was. In the end, Talbot and Fred still ended up on the final roster of people whom the Man in Grey vetted to staff the new M.F.S. office in Scotland, alongside 0000-8888888 and Doctor Know-It-All. (PROSE: Open Sourcing)
Lacking any powers actually enabling him to answer people's questions, Fred limited himself to a supportive role, helping Talbot, now the team leader, keep his cool despite the others' shenanigans. On one occasion, he was the one who managed to find Doctor Know after he failed to show up to work, retrieving him from the coffee shop down the road. (PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division)
Behind the scenes
The Hydrant was created on November 19th, 2013 by Rob Whelehan as an open-source character. He had his own variant of the Paragraph:
| The character of The Hydrant is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving The Hydrant, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed. |
| —Rob Whelehan |
Notably, the original open-source bios for the Hydrant and Talbot depicted the Hydrant as a work of Earth technology, built for Talbot by human scientists as a robot guide to help him navigate terrestrial society — in contrast to the backstory given for the 925th Universe version of the character in the 2024 reedit of PROSE: Good Crieff - The Tribulations of the Scottish Division, where it is instead revealed that part of the 925th Universe's Talbot's fondness for the Hydrant derives from him being one of the things he has left of his homeworld.
