Blossomfoth was experiencing deep sleep in the middle of the night. It was times like this when Thingpone experienced something close to what might be called consciousness. It was a novel feeling, one that she rarely experienced. Thing was missing a lot of essential neural architecture that was taken over by Blossomforth, the dominant consciousness. For now, however while Blossomforth was in the deepest of sleeps Thingpone was able to form basic logical thought with some effort. She was slowly improving as time passed. Slowly learning in her retarded state similar to how an infant would.

It was an odd relationship she had with Blossomforth. They influenced each other’s thoughts and actions. Thingpone’s instincts usually wormed their way into Blossomforth’s actions causing her to impulsively do things. Her cold, calculating, logical, emotionless nature sometimes leaked into Blossomforth’s thoughts and personality. Thingpone was sure that Blossomforth was aware of these strange thoughts and instincts leaking into her mind. Blossomforth also effectively utilized the undamaged part of her neural architecture that effectively controlled their shared body and telepathy.

However, this relationship was a two way street. Thingpone was sure that if she had landed in Equestria undamaged, all of the world’s organic matter would be under her control by now. Surprisingly, she was glad that she was not in the driver’s seat. While Thingpone was mostly emotionless in nature there were a few things left in her that were essential to maximize her effectiveness in adaptability, survivability and strategic action. Things like logical thought, curiosity, and problem solving adaptability were all left to enhance her effectiveness. This caused her to be curious when alien emotions leaked into her mind. She was able to learn the meaning of these new emotions and at least comprehend Blossomforth’s reasoning for not immediately consuming everything she came in contact with. Her inquisitive nature caused her to examine these emotions. It changed her. Thingpone was now able to feel the emotions the tiniest bit. It was an utterly alien experience. If she had been able to take control in the beginning she probably would have never experienced these odd pony emotions.

Thingpone had learned almost everything she knew from Blossomforth’s thoughts and experiences and they effected her. She gave herself a pony name ‘Thingpone’ and referred to herself as a female. Although she was still mostly a cold, logical entity her mind had undoubtedly adopted pony thought processes to fill in the missing parts of her mind. It was such a confusing and turbulent time for Thing. At least she had completed her programmed duty of surviving her race. She needed to concentrate, she needed answers. There was a hint of something her ancestors left her, a kind of memory or history for posterity. A way to describe it would be similar a pony’s business strategy, a kind of secret sauce or strategy for success. So she got an idea from Blossomforth’s experiences, Thingpone attempted to meditate and her ancestors’ history slowly opened to her in a trance…

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Thing focused on the one constant thing in her life, her hunger. Her hunger for organic data was a bottomless insatiable pit stemming from an instinct ingrained in her very genes that permeated her entire being. It seemed like she was always hungry, it was part of her nature. She was the product of billions of years of honed genetic efficiency. Her genetic code echoed the ghosts of her biological past. Millions of years of brutal natural selection and eventually sentient genetic engineering to make her the apex predator of her entire galaxy. Her biology was perfected to such a degree that if even a few cells escaped to a new world, those cells would multiply and eventually harvest the world's best genetic information by assimilating and categorizing all life on that planet and integrating it into herself to make herself more efficient, adaptable, stronger, and closer to perfection.

Thingpone started as just another tentacle in her galaxy’s juggernaut. Her race was space faring and absolutely dominated the galaxy, harvesting living worlds for biological information. Each "seed" would be rigidly programmed and sent to a planet to assimilate, multiply, harvest all biological life for genetic information. The seed would start small, assimilating everything in its path and gathering organic material to multiply, eventually acting like a massive hive with central telepathic coordination and parallel thought processes. The hive would continue growing and multiplying until all life was homogenized into the hive. Once all life was assimilated, the hive would use its massive telepathic neural network to process and compress all of the valuable biological information on the planet into a database to be transported back into the central collective. Once this was done, the hive would create an organic space ship to send a new seed to the next planet. Once this was done the rest of the hive would terraform the planet into a favorable environment for primitive life to appear and promptly self destruct.

The central collective was rigidly and absolutely empathy free and thus sent seeds to worlds that were ruthless and empathy free. These seeds would immediately discard the consciousness of anything they assimilated in favor of the genetic information. They would snuff out the independent consciousnesses and life of a world in a few years or decades with machine-like efficiency.

The collective routinely harvested billions of worlds which meant that on very rare occasions a seed would fail in some way. Because of this, an inspector would be sent every few years to monitor the seed's progress in assimilating the world. The inspector was essentially an enormous organic ship. If the seed ever failed in some way, the space faring inspector would immediately split half of itself to report back to the central collective. The other half would either attempt to finish the seed's job or simply destroy the planet from orbit using nuclear fission and fusion. If the seed was normal, the inspector would collect copies of the genetic information to be sent back to the central collective located at the center of the galaxy.

The collective had a unique way of harvesting the galaxy. The galaxy was a circular disk and the billions of planets that were currently being harvested if shown on a galactic map would form a spiral arm that stretched from the center of the galaxy all the way to the galaxy’s edge. The seeds would travel from world to world leaving them devoid of life but fertile, traveling around the galaxy in a circular motion, slowly moving the arm in a counter-clockwise rotation around the galaxy. The inspectors would methodically collect copies of harvested information from the seeds to be sent to the central collective and in return installed genetic upgrades into the new seed inside the newly built organic space ship fresh from the central collective to improve the new seed's efficiency with the latest biological technology.

This harvesting arm rotated around the galaxy, continuously harvesting the life information from the planets. The rotation completed at a rate of one rotation per 300 million years which was enough time for a new unique apex predator to appear in the fertile world previously left behind. In this way her race could continuously perfect its own biology and numbers, becoming hopelessly more biologically advanced and numerous than the life they harvested.

Even if the prey had somehow formed a civilization in 300 million years and produced technology, even a small infection from a seed would quickly devour most of the prey's race even if they were somewhat technologically advanced. In the 300 million years the indigenous race had to evolve, they had no hope of evolving their biology enough to combat the ancient harvesters. Even if they managed to somehow avoid initial infection, other seeds would be sent to quell and assimilate the planet.

For billions of years this cycle progressed, continuously improving the race's biology until they were so advanced they resembled eldritch abominations, effortlessly dominating inferior life forms.

However, something changed.

The collective never bothered to venture outside the galaxy because the distances were so great that control would be almost impossible and might even end up being a one way trip because of how the universe was expanding. However, over the course of millions of years a foreign galaxy was slowly making its way closer in a collision course, which meant that colonization would eventually be viable.

Little did the collective know that within this galaxy was another advanced biological race that was also harvesting its own galaxy.

The resulting clash of alien galactic apex predators was incredibly dramatic and desperate, leading to the destruction of billions of worlds over millions of years. It was in this time that Thing was created as a seed. Normal self destruct protocols among other inhibitors were removed and Thingpone was given a biological record with all of the most essential and valuable genetic information to make her dominate wherever she may go. Like a tree that shoots out all of its seeds in a forest fire, the collective shot out trillions of seeds similar to Thing to distant galaxies in the slim hope that one of them might make it to a distant living world isolated from the self destructive war between galactic apex predators.

Almost a billion and a half years later, almost all of the seeds were traveling though the dead space between galaxies, dormant and without hope. Solar sails had sped these seeds to the edge of the speed of light. Due to the laws of relativity, time slowed. Instead of a billion years, only one million years had passed from their reference frame. Many were incinerated in suns, sucked up by black holes or dead due to the toll of time. Only one seed would run into a suitable planet by chance in a galaxy far, far, away. The seed was severely damaged due to the sheer amount of time that had passed in dormancy. The dormant state was meant to preserve the seed indefinitely especially because it was so cold in space, but more than a million years in dormancy took its toll. This seed was damaged to the point where many of its protocols simply did not work. The seed could not form its own consciousness, that part of the seed was broken beyond repair in dormancy. Usually this would result in self-termination but concern for the survival of the species caused this protocol to be disabled. When the seed impacted the planet it desperately needed sustenance and useful DNA to survive the new environment. The seed was operating purely by programming and possessed no intelligence. The programming told the seed to assimilate the first sapient thing it encountered so it complied. Without intelligent consciousness and limited surviving programming the seed was forced to go by the most basic of instincts and adopted what was available which happened to be the consciousness of Blossomforth. This process was similar to how the first eukaryotic cell engulfed a mitochondria, forming a mutualistic relationship which became the basis of all life in Equestria. Without adopting Blossomforth’s neural architecture the seed would have been brain dead and would not have survived. Suddenly this galaxy had a new apex predator. Incomprehensibly advanced and terrifyingly deadly, the life form was billions of years ahead of anything the galaxy had ever seen. The entire galaxy was her oyster and ultimately at her mercy. This advanced life form went by two names, Thingpone and Blossomforth.

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Thingpone had never felt so awake. Surely the value this meditation practice she learned from Blossomforth could not be overstated. The memories stimulated her retarded mind, healing it slightly. She was also giddy with excitement and purpose. This planet was full of soft, tender, juicy life forms ripe for the picking and rich with biological diversity. According to the information her ancestors left her, the planets of her home galaxy were full of life forms tempered with competitive natural selection that came with interstellar travel. Judging by the richness of biology on this planet it was a virgin world. It had never been taken over by a harvesting race which meant that interstellar travel might not even exist in this galaxy yet! During her travel here, she was programmed to wake every couple million years to record her location. This galaxy was extremely isolated meaning the probability of outside interference was minute, she would be able to grow and dominate the galaxy without difficulty or resistance! Thingpone envisioned a new galactic empire to last a trillion years!

Thingpone suddenly remembered that she had developed emotions. If she cleared her mind she could even feel her weak conscience nagging at the back of her mind like nails screeching on chalkboard. She would have to reconcile her new emotions and empathy with her driving purpose of consolidating all life. She would also have to convince Blossomforth to work with her. It would be difficult but the stakes were high. There was control of an entire galactic empire within her reach. All she had to do was reach out and grab it. This was her destiny, she would realize it.

Suddenly, she felt Blossomforth exiting deep sleep into a REM sleep and her mind darkened and her thoughts slowed. No matter, she had time in this soft docile world. She would get through to Blossomforth eventually and together they would dominate countless worlds.

I hope that this chapter was not too jarring of a delve into the realm of science fiction, but when you have an idea that just easily flows onto paper you have to go with it. I think this chapter was valuable to develop Thingpone as a character, exposing her motivations, and add some depth and background in the form of some science fiction.

I put the term 'Interlude' instead of the usual chapter in order to hopefully warn readers that this chapter will be different.

I could say more but I want to hear your thoughts and opinions! Do you think this was a good chapter? I want to know! Your interest, even a small single sentence comment can drive me to write more.