The sponge

Let’s call it a “leech”. When, where and why it was born, the memory was lost; was it the result of a spectacular mutation, of a scientific experiment or a supreme living weapon wielded in a merciless and long forgotten war, it could not tell. It faintly remembered that in a remote past, it was large enough to swallow dozens of suns and planets in a single swift; it had wreaked empires havoc, withstood titanic detonations from giant thermonuclear missiles, wiped out ancient and terrible civilizations. For ages it had roved around, feeding on any kind of matter it encountered; until one day it consumed the very last sun of its galaxy, leaving behind only debris and black holes – the only objects in the Universe it actually shunned.

Then it began starving.

For the first time in its life, it had nothing more to prey upon. Reaching the nearest star, it knew, meant embarking on a voyage through the intergalactic depths, a venture that, even at the speed of light, would take hundreds of millions of years – far more than he could possibly hope to survive. But what other choice had it? So, boosting as much as it could, it thrusted itself in the direction of the most appetizing galaxy.

To fend off the icing void, it had to convert its own body into heat: it shrunk and contracted, until it became no more than a mote of weird matter, a fleck of few cells dashing at a dazzling speed in the primeval blackness. Unable to warm itself anymore, it sank into a deep hibernation state; in this seed-like form, it could endure nearly for ever.

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Time paced slowly towards eternity. The seed eventually reached the outmost rim of its targeted galaxy.

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Darting past the remotest stars, it hurtled towards the warmer bulb; space-time curvatures deflected it, slowed it down. It skittered amongst the nebulae and clusters, encountered several dust clouds that further reduced its speed, until it eventually encroached on the gravitational field of a star. As it approached the central sun on a parabolic trajectory, it collided with a scrawny asteroid and remained stuck. Its trip across immensity had ended.

Paralyzed by billions of years of sleep, it hardly reacted to the presence of matter. Reluctantly, a vestigial, shaky quantum driven membranous mechanism started pumping up minute amounts of thermal energy from its host; feeble, but sufficient to fire up other, more efficient atomic reactions that, in turn, gradually awoke the main metabolism. In a few days, the leech had begun to grow again, and soon it had eaten up the pebble into which it had bumped, adopting its orbit.

An orbit that led to Equestria.

The landing was rough, but the leech had survived many crashes. It began immediately to convert every bit of matter around it, digging a small crater. As its cells frantically multiplied again, it became aware of its environment; it realized it lay on the surface of a wide and warm object – possibly a planet! That would mean more ressources than needed to recover from its journey. So, silently, it kept on converting nearby matter into energy, and energy into tissue.

Until it unexpectedly received a burst of pure energy, albeit on a curious wavelength; unprepared, the leech barely assimilated it, dissipating the brunt of the charge in the surroundings. But that delicacy roused up its consciousness for good: it scanned its neighborhood, detecting various sources of low-interest mineral ores and a few complex objects, mostly hydrocarbonate based. Still too weak to move, it resumed assimilating the semi-organic matter it was already preying on, preparing itself for another energy surge.

Just in case this one was but a harbinger.

And, indeed, it was.

After a short break, its sensor cells detected two approaching mobile carbon-oxygen-nitrogen forms, accompanied by a mineral object radiating a strong field that whetted its appetite. As it was wondering how it could pounce on that gourmet dish, a new blast of energy was poured directly on it. This time, the leech did not miss the opportunity: its dedicated system funneled the incoming flow towards the cell creation process, that almost ran wild under the strain; the excess of energy was cautiously diverted into its ionic tissues for storage.

The downpour, already hardly manageable, abruptly increased. The leech was momentarily stunned by the blow. Coming back to its senses, it realized it was tumbling madly along; but it had now collected enough energy to control its motion. It generated an anti-gravitational field, hoisted itself above the various objects surrounding it, and began a thorough scan of its vicinity. It was definitely on a planet: it sensed a nitrogen-oxygen based atmosphere, with ubiquitous carbon compounds, many still, some moving; energetically low potential. Then, as the range of its sensors expanded, it detected a source of moderate heat that was way more promising: it dahed towards it and skidded to a stop right above. Disappointed, it realized that it was paltry and transient: oxydation and chemical breaking of molecular bonds from carbohydrate molecules – a stinted amount of them, at that. Nothing he could feed on reliably.

It was already thinking to turn back to its former location when something caught its attention at the extreme range of its still weak senses: more heat, and this time from a stronger source, it seemed. Goaded, it moved on; as it was closing on, it perceived the warm spot was a pond of simmering water. It landed in its middle and began wallowing, hungrily absorbing every calorie available.

And pondering how much time it would take it to swell enough to engulf this world, and, just after, its nearby sun.