Abecedarian
Summary: The alphabet according to three colonels. Or, everything makes sense if Marya is an alien. Or, may the English language have mercy on my soul.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hogan's Heroes.
Author's Note: For a while, I've wanted to write a 26 chapter story based on the "Word of the Day" from the Merriam Webster Dictionary app I have on my phone. For a long time, I had no idea what that story was supposed to be about, and then I randomly happened to see Konarciq's Crazy Picture Challenge, and suddenly the two ideas blended together with the single thought: "everything makes sense if Marya is an alien."
This led to picking out 26 of the pictures to match the 26 alphabet-inspired chapters, and as I'm sure you can all predict, the end result is completely absurd. Seriously. It took me several hours and a massive flowchart to mash a plot out of this thing, but in the end, the plot came together. Now it may not be the strongest plot in some places, but that was never the point of this story.
And now about the update schedule. The crazy picture challenge specifically says that the story is to be published in 2019. I started writing this in June, but then the SSSW challenge interrupted me, and then I quit my job, moved, and started grad school. As a result, this story has not actually been finished as of my typing this, but I have a lot of it, and I should be able to finish writing soon. At this point I have to post about one chapter a day to get through the alphabet before the end of the year, so I'm going to start posting anyway.
About the words selected: all were words of the day at some point, but if you look at the Merriam Webster website, you may not find them all listed. Merriam Webster deletes the old words after a while.
Thank you to anyone reading, and please remember that this story is not to be taken seriously in any way, shape, or form. I hope you enjoy!
A is for Audacious
"Very confident and daring: very bold and surprising or shocking"
Group Captain Rodney Crittendon whistled to himself merrily as he traipsed through the German countryside. It was lovely weather for an escape, and so far he had not run into any trouble. The only shame was that the boys at the camp he just escaped had not been able to come with him even though they had worked so hard towards helping him escape. They were nice chaps, really, but a little too self-sacrificing, even if he was their ranking officer. Perhaps they would succeed on their next escape.
But for now, all Rodney was concerned with was getting himself back to England and helping with the war effort. He briefly considered dropping in on Hogan and his boys on the way, as he was in the area, but they were always so busy with their own camp that he could not possibly bother them with helping the men from his camp. Or rather, he chuckled happily, his old camp.
As he neared Hammelburg, Rodney made sure to skirt around the town. It was really too pleasant of a night to spend with buildings on all sides, and he considered himself a good authority on the countryside in this area, having been here so many times before.
He wove through the trees, only stumbling a few times as he made his way west, and stopping every few minutes to look up at the stars as he imagined how much more beautiful they would be from home. At one point he glanced to his left and paused in amazement. Sometimes he simply did not understand Jerry, and watching those midnight farmers working in their field certainly did not help, but he shrugged off his confusion and made his way on.
Soon he came across a small dirt road, heading uphill and to the west, just the direction he needed to go. There was no one on the road, and he was confident that he could tell if anyone was coming, so he climbed onto the road and kept walking, the tune of his whistling keeping him company as he headed home.
About an hour later, Rodney found an old stump and sat down to take a break, noting with satisfaction that the road had grass growing on it the entire time he followed it. He was certain that he was quite safe now. He looked up at the twinkling stars again for a few minutes before turning his gaze to the empty field on the other side of the road.
The next moment, Rodney found himself giving the field a double-take. He could have sworn he saw a star twinkling in it, but that was impossible. There had been not a single firefly throughout his entire evening's stroll, and the stars were definitely confined to the sky. He stared hard at the field and saw nothing, but he was nothing if not persistent. If that field was twinkling, he would get to the bottom of it. His watch lasted for perhaps ten more minutes, but was rewarded at last.
He was still alone, so Rodney got up and moved carefully towards the place where he saw the twinkle, curiosity piqued and determination high. It was a good thing he was moving carefully, too, because the next thing Rodney knew, he had run into something that he could not see a moment before. But as soon as he ran into it, a brief vision of it flared into sight, and he stumbled backward as it turned invisible again. Cautiously, he put out his hand, and as soon as he touched the object, it came back into sight.
"By Jove," he murmured to himself as he took in the object. It seemed to be a large broad head arrow, big enough to hold a good-sized flat and wide enough to fill the field that he now saw was anything but empty. His gaze travelled along its reflective silver surface trying to take in the entire structure. It seemed to be slightly sunken into the earth, so he had a good visual of the top, and he could see the stars mirrored back at the sky. But among those twinkling stars shone one light, consistent now that the whole structure was visible, and it seemed to be shining right on top of a squarish section, about the size of a trap door.
Rodney crept closer to the light, making sure to run his hand along the structure as he went, and eventually found himself clambering on top of the thing for a better view. Soon he found himself reaching out and pulling open a latched, not as surprised as he thought he should be to find an actual trap door in the thing, and he did what any sensible man who found a mysteriously large and invisible arrowhead in the middle of enemy territory would do—he walked down the stairs inside it.
Rodney was not sure what to expect, but he certainly did not think he would find luxuriant living quarters in the thing, complete with large windows and more light-up buttons than he had ever seen in his life. "Oh my," he said quietly, "it seems Jerry has found a new type of invisible basement." Even as he said it, he knew that it was absurd so that not even that Hogan chap would try tricking the enemy with this sort of a ruse, but he knew what he had seen and what he had not seen, and honestly he wondered if the Stalag XIII boys' favorite guard had been here too. It certainly would explain a lot about him, Rodney mused to himself.
"May I help you?" Rodney whirled around in a battle stance as soon as he heard the words, trying not to let his foot twist in the ornate rug underfoot. He could have sworn the man standing in front of him had not been there before.
"Wot? Who are you?"
"I am the HMSS Tubby III, private exploration and camping craft. It seems my owner is not here right now, but I expect her back shortly. May I get you anything while you wait?"
"See here," Rodney said, trying to pull himself together like any good British Group Captain should, "what's all this nonsense about 'HMSS' and you having an owner now? Slavery is illegal, don't you know?"
"The term 'HMSS' stands for 'High Mileage Star Ship' and is the standard term used to tell potential buyers that a star ship can be expected to last on long trips without breaking down. I am the holographic interface for the HMSS Tubby III. I am not a person and so am not enslaved."
"I say," Rodney said, not really sure how else to respond. He wanted to ask what several of those other terms meant but figured they would just be explained using other words he did not know. Instead he began wandering around the room, looking at various things and wondering how Jerry built it all and why they put it in an abandoned field.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a sight that he did not quite understand how he had missed until now. On a pedestal against one wall was the single largest diamond he had ever laid eyes on. He could scarcely believe the size of the thing and walked over to get a better look.
Rodney Crittendon had never considered himself a man to succumb to the lures of jewels, and he certainly had never been one to engage in grand theft, but as he gazed at the diamond he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jerry should not have anything that marvelous in their possession. This was something that belonged in England.
There was a small pair of extendable pincers lying on the pedestal, and Rodney picked them up, seeing that they were obviously used to touch the diamond. He slipped them on his hand and reached out to the diamond.
"I cannot allow you to take my power source offline without my owner's direct permission," the man who claimed not to be a person said suddenly, but he did not reach out to stop Rodney, so the Group Captain decided to ignore him and pick up the diamond. The only problem was that it would not move. Rodney bent close to the pedestal to examine it, but the diamond did not appear to be attached to it, so he straightened up and tried again.
The diamond still would not budge, and by now Rodney was becoming quite miffed over this whole affair, but he was not ready to give up, so he tried again, this time with his full strength. To his surprise, the extendable pincers started bending out of shape, and he was soon left holding a useless arc of metal, his efforts useless except for proving his own strength to him.
"Well, blast it," he said quietly, "I suppose there's only one way about this then." Against his better judgement, Rodney reached out and grasped the diamond with his bare hand. But the moment his hand closed around it, and just as he started to pull it towards himself, the diamond let out a bright flash and a loud bang. The next thing Rodney knew, he was on his back across the room, his hand in ruins and the floor between him and the pedestal covered in small, glittering shards of diamond.
"You should not have done that," the other man told him mildly. "HMSS power sources are temperamental and tend to explode when not handled with a mollifying material. There is enough power left for basic ship functions, such as life support and communication, but a new power source must be located before any interstellar trips are made."
Rodney blinked up at him, hearing the word "interstellar" and finally recognizing this for what it was. He wondered how he could have been so foolish as to not recognize a "star ship" as being from one of those H.G. Wells novels, but then again, he had always been more of a bardolater himself. But his attention turned back to his hand, and he began realizing just how much it hurt.
"I say," he began, his voice surprisingly weak to his own ears. "My hand is just about done for."
"That can be corrected," the star ship told him, and Rodney realized with surprise how easily he was accepting this all. The star ship motioned for Rodney to move through a couple of doorways, and he soon found himself in a small white room with a doctor's table in it. "Put your hand there."
Rodney did as he was told, and as he watched, his ruined hand began reforming into the old hand he knew so well. "I say," he finally managed once more before sitting back and deciding he must be in shock.
"Updating local language bank," he heard the star ship say, "'I say' added to vocabulary database as an all-purpose exclamation of surprise."
Rodney felt like he should say something about that, but he was too overwhelmed at the moment. He barely noticed the lights around him dimming as he leaned into the chair back and fell asleep, hoping that it was all a dream.
Unfortunately for Group Captain Rodney Crittendon, when he awoke again, he was still on a broken star ship in the middle of Germany, and he realized that he would probably need a spot of help with this one after all.