BlossomThing
Chapter 15: Interlude: Awakening
Previous Chapter Next ChapterTakes place from "Interlude: Monster" through "Chapter 10: The Date".
When Blossomforth had inadvertently triggered a memory after her discovery of her hivemind ability, Thingpone was awoken from her state of semi-unconsciousness. Her mind was energized with neural stimulation as the vision played itself out and Thingpone became filled with wonder at the efficiency and creativity the hivemind of old expressed. She would be just like him one day she thought, she was inspired and a sense of purpose flowed through her. The experience healed her mind slightly. Excited at her newfound mental faculties, she gathered all the mental fortitude she could muster and called out to Blossomforth, asking her to fulfill their destiny as the apex predator. She desperately needed to fill the painful, empty black hole that was her hunger for biological information. She was a singularity of biology just waiting to give the creatures of this world perfection. She called out with emotion that she did not know she possessed as she expressed her passionate plea to her captor to let them do what they were meant to do.
To her horror and disappointment, Blossomforth did not receive her plea well. She broke down into a panicked heap. Her mental strength expended, Thingpone could communicate no more and could only watch as Blossomforth collapsed into a pathetic puddle of organic matter. Thingpone grew frustrated. How could someone gifted with such amazing biological perfection and dominant potential be so weak? Then she realized the problem. This world, the environment that Blossomforth grew up in was never tested, never tempered against a real threat. It was a soft world that produced soft organisms and soft minds.
Her mind slowed to a sluggish pace as her energy was expended. She suddenly realized that with her mind stronger she was able to think, albeit at a retarded pace, while Blossomforth was awake! Thingpone was giddy with excitement, it was a new and interesting experience being able to freely form thoughts while Blossomforth was conscious and active. However, her mind was still slow and sluggish. Blossomforth seemed to move and act in a slight fast forward. It was a bit of a blur as Blossomforth pulled herself out of her funk and flew to Anon's place.
The blur of experience flashed before her. As Blossomforth flew towards Ponyville, Thing experienced a spectrum of Blossomforth's emotions, strange feelings that Thingpone had little to no experience with. Blossomforth seemed to have recovered from her pitiful state but was still in a state of emotional turmoil. She was mentally exhausted and worried about the vision she had just experienced. At the same time she was excited about the prospect of stretching with Anon. Thingpone thought she might even sense an unconscious underlying attraction to this Anon character.
Blossomforth entered Anon's house and the worry and exhaustion seemed to fade to be replaced with passion and a creeping increase in her thoughts of attractions to this lanky creature as they discussed the finer points of muscle flexibility. They began to do their warmup stretches together. To Thingpone, this entire exercise seemed to be a waste of time. However, for some unknown reason Blossomforth was feeling passion for this ritual when she could have simply rearranged the cellular structure to make her muscles as flexible as she wanted them to be. Blossomforth was handicapping herself by limiting herself to using these primitive muscle organs, it all seemed utterly stupid and pointless.
Suddenly she felt a new emotion from Blossomforth. Inspiration and excitement as an idea formed in Bloss's mind. Suddenly, Thingpone felt Blossomforth's cellular and chemical structure shift in the muscles generating warmth and rapidly stimulating the muscle fibers to effectively skip her warmup stretches. Now she was being more practical instead of wasting her time in this pointless stretching that the biologically inferior peasants had to deal with. She felt Blossomforth take a strange position with her body, expertly manipulating the muscles to balance herself on her front two hooves and curl her spine and legs to bring her hind hooves to the top of her own head. Thingpone begrudgingly admitted to herself that this pose was somewhat impressive when Blossomforth limited herself to the primitive muscles of the equines. It seemed to impress the lanky creature as he scooted closer on his knees and reached out to her.
Suddenly, everything slowed down and became sharp. The sublime tastes of Anon's DNA fragments woke Thingpone's mind up like a shot of adrenaline would. She was awake and thinking clearly. It all made sense now. Blossomforth was luring Anon in to a private setting so that she could assimilate him in private away from prying eyes. Thingpone grew excited as she watched Blossomforth's tentacle tongue emerge from her mouth, ready to paralyze and assimilate Anon. More of the rich taste of Anon's DNA fragments entered her mind as his finger squished into Blossomforth's slightly viscous nose. Now the assimilation would begin. Thingpone had never been more excited as she anticipated the flow of new information satisfying her hunger. Just as suddenly as it started, Blossomforth regained focus, her nose solidified, and the flow of DNA fragments stopped.
Why? Why would Blossomforth do this? A new sentient organism, probably an alien if she was reading Blossomforth's thoughts correctly served up to her on a silver platter in private and she what? Passes it up? Thingpone wanted to cry. She had never experienced sadness before and new neural connections formed in her developing mind as she did. It wasn't fair, she thought as the hunger came back in full force, the tasty scraps of DNA barely putting a dent in the hunger. Thingpone examined Blossomforth's emotions once more and realized that she actually cared about Anon and wanted to form a friendship with him. Thing was struggling to understand why someone would want to form a relationship with another. The stretching continued and she got another taste of Anon's DNA when Blossomforth stepped on Anon's feet to help him stretch. It tasted great but Thingpone could not bring herself to become excited when she knew that Blossomforth would let the prey go.
However, something strange happened. After a series of stretches and discussions about stretching techniques, Anon reached out to scratch Blossomforth's ear. Thingpone had never experienced intimacy before and her ancestors had left no guidance on the subject. At first she savored more DNA scraps but was soon overwhelmed by a novel experience of intimacy. She felt Blossomforth relax and it was contagious. She suddenly did not feel so hungry anymore and the alien feeling of intimacy overwhelmed her, once again aiding with the development of her mind. It was a, dare she say it, magical feeling and she could begin to understand how social rituals could be valuable. Her mind's eye was open to new possibilities that she had never considered in the closed mind her ancestors had given her.
A new dimension opened to her as she watched Bloss and Anon have an intimate moment. She was a little jealous that she was not able to interact and she saw a bond form between Blossomforth and the human. She suddenly realized that Blossomforth was able to relax her concentration and her need to consume was diminished. This was incredible, it seemed that the human was somehow able to suppress the wild instincts Blossomforth usually had to suppress on her own and allowed her to relax. Thing felt the relief in the mind of Blossomforth and how she was able to establish a more passive control over her own body.
Thing searched Blossomforth's mind for the pony word describing the feeling that Blossomforth was feeling. It was a warm feeling, it was the will to be close together, it was intimate, it was a tender care for one another, a feeling of safety, it was a mutual affection. Ah yes, the word she was searching for was love. Thing felt a sorrow and yearning of more of this love in the mind of Blossomforth as Bloss realized how tired she was of having to constantly restrain her hunger and instincts, especially being so close to a succulent new organism.
Suddenly, a new feeling emerged in Blossomforth's mind. A feeling of fear, hope, and excitement. It seemed she wanted to mate with this Alien. It was a primitive biological function her ancestors had encountered on many planets, sexual reproduction. Different species did not usually mate but she was sure Blossomforth could make it work with her biology if she really wanted to. However, the human did not know this. Blossomforth asked the human to begin a "date", a ritual of bonding. After a somewhat intense exchange with their eyes, the human accepted. Thing was not sure of what motive the human could have but it might have to do with the warm fuzzy intimacy feeling or this "love" concept.
They joined each other for dinner and talked about themselves, slowly beginning to understand and get to know each other. She felt as if she wanted to throw up, all of these cheesy feelings and emotions where almost overwhelming. As time went on Thing could sense that their bond was strengthening as they talked to each other about themselves. This ritual of social interaction seemed to increase their emotions toward each other as they began to understand each other better. It was quite interesting to see how emotional creatures, even species alien to each other, could form bonds of trust and affection with simple social rituals.
As they finished dinner Anon offered to massage Blossomforth. Another pointless act, Blossomforth did not need a massage for her muscles to be in peak condition but she grew excited anyways and accepted with a smile. They climbed up the stairs and Blossomforth lay down on Anon's bed, allowing the human to squeeze and stimulate her strong but malleable and flexible muscles. As soon as he started she could taste the DNA fragments but it was soon drowned out by the intense feeling of safety, comfort, and love emanating from Blossomforth's mind and intensified by their strengthening bond. Thingpone could only wonder at the intense power of the emotions as Blossomforth relaxed even further.
This seemed to go on for an eternity, Anon prodding and feeling every muscle in her torso, plot, and legs until he finally finished. Blossomforth was immensely disappointed that it was over and wanted to stay with the source of comfort so she invited Anon to sleep with her and Thingpone could feel the excitement in her mind when he accepted. The sense of security that Blossomforth experienced was profound as she rubbed herself as close to Anon as possible and she slowly fell into the deepest sleep Thingpone ever remembered her having which allowed Thingpone's mind to become more awake as she analyzed what she had experienced.
It seemed that Blossomforth was beginning to better utilize and control their shared neural architecture. Thingpone never would have guessed it but it seemed her time with Anon was making her more stable and less prone to random outbursts of instinct. Perhaps social interaction was more powerful than she had imagined. However, while Blossomforth was gaining more control over the beautiful organic machine that was their shared body, Thingpone was slowly growing stronger.
Thingpone learned a lot from her observations of her bond with Anon. Emotions were very powerful things. They had the potential to disrupt logical thought in favor of attachments and irrational decisions. She could see why her ancestors had decided to eradicate such a disruptive force from her mind. However, now that she had adopted a pony neural architecture to fill in the gaps of her damaged mind she had irreversibly adopted emotions into her mind. It was a pity, she could not eradicate these emotions without seriously damaging her already fragile mind. She also did not admit it but these emotions gave her a warm feeling she had never experienced and she wanted to feel it again.
Thing begrudgingly admitted to herself that emotions could be beneficial. At fist she had wanted to assimilate and destroy any independent consciousness on the planet but her shared experiences with Blossomforth forced her to completely rethink everything. Like she had heard Blossomforth reason before, passion can lead to creativity and produce ideas that no one had thought of before. Bonds between sentient beings could foster cooperative passion that would make the collective as a whole more creative and more efficient. Her ancestors had never considered this possibility for millions of years as they blocked all understanding of emotions and social rituals they may have observed in their conquests. She would have to alter her plan of world domination and use this new discovery to her advantage. She would do her part to evolve her race to make it better than before like her ancestors would have wanted.
She knew from Blossomforth's memories she had explored and studied while Blossomforth was asleep that the current status quo of princess monarchy existed mostly unchanged for more than a thousand years. It was an incredible amount of time for a single civilization to exist without some form of technological advancement if her ancestors' memories on the subject were any indication. Usually the civilizations collapsed on themselves over and over or simply blew themselves up with nuclear fission. For this pony civilization to have existed for 1000 years without rapid technological development was a testament to the passiveness and docility that came with such a long period time without serious natural threats or change. In fact, from her examination of saved samples of Lyra's genetic material the docility seemed to be ingrained into their very DNA. Ponies where naturally herbivores and simply did not have the competitive spunk of a predator. On the other hand she recognized that the human probably had some wild predator ancestors and from what he had told Blossomforth, humans seemed to be aggressive innovators and valued the strength of mind. Ponies on the other hand seemed to rely on magic which seemed to solve their problems and their "cutie marks" lead them on their way. Her ancestors had no guidance on this subject, magic was utterly alien. There were a few examples of tattoos on indigenous species that symbolized their roles but nothing about a spontaneously appearing tattoo or magic. She wondered if the pony princesses themselves secretly dabbled in a crude form of genetic manipulation to grant themselves immortality and the best genetic improvements of every race while encoding docility and mortality into the common pony to die after a couple of decades to ensure that they were always on top. She noticed that almost all history was blank more than 1000 years ago. This must have been the culling, maybe a great war where the princesses asserted their genetic dominance and subdued their own race into a docile state of semi-slavery to serve them. They were the alpha predators of this world.
No matter. She would find the truth in due time. Thingpone thought big picture started to rethink her strategy. Her ancestors probably started as producers, producing technologies and eventually becoming advanced enough to alter their own biological structure. However at their peak they focused on one thing, the art of domination and consumption. Her ancestors had a structure, resources, and an enormous playing field, their whole galaxy. They could afford to constantly consume and rely on the organisms that grew in their absence to provide them with basic innovations and biological information. She did not have any of these things so she would need to be more careful. She needed to maximize the resources under her control if she wanted any hope of expanding herself to new worlds. She only had one world to play with so if she messed up it would take a LONG time to develop the technologies her ancestors had spent millions of years developing. Thankfully, most of the secrets and inventions of her race were saved in her biological memory but some were damaged or incomplete from her incredibly long time in stasis.
If the Alicorns were the manipulators she thought they were, she would consume them and take their place. But she would not be satisfied with docility and a stagnant status quo. What a boring way to live. No, she would not be satisfied with Equestria as it was now. First, she would make the world her domain. She would consume and assimilate the organic matter surrounding the minds of the organisms clandestinely while keeping the minds themselves untouched. There would be no independent organic matter. If things worked correctly, no one would even know. Then things were going to change. No longer would the world be so boring. She would unshackle them from their docile state and break this boring utopia, introducing them to reality. She needed to accelerate this world's toughness and adaptability. One thing she would use to her advantage were the blueprints to the advanced technology of her ancestors. She would drip small ideas of technology into the minds of promising inventors and let them develop the technology. The new technologies she would introduce into the world would obviously be disruptive and might even cause adversity. Good, this soft world needed to develop some toughness and innovation rather than this do-nothing stagnation.
The sentient creatures of the world would be her hive. She would be a semi-benevolent shadow dictator and the free thinking organisms would be her slaves whether knowingly or unknowingly. Even if they did know, their collective docility and arrested development from a millennium of soft utopia would probably result in mass Stockhoof Syndrome anyway. This was her vision, but it was big picture. There was a long way to go in the small scale before she could accomplish her domination. The main obstacle left in her way was Blossomforth. Blossomforth had central control at the peak of the neural hierarchy and Thingpone knew of no way to unseat her. However, Blossomforth's experiences were stimulating and healing her mind at a rapid pace, Thing was getting stronger every day so perhaps soon she should have enough mental strength to hold a mental conversation with Blossomforth. Perhaps the best way to manipulate Blossomforth would be through the human that she cared for. She would see what she could do but for now she would lie in wait for opportunity as her mind became stronger.