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// It Came From the Cargo Bay! 
// Story: Purple Point: His Life in Space 
// by Alden MacManx 
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What it was, nobody knows. From the cargo hold it came, sparked to life by who knows what combination of magic, speed, or plain dumb luck. It wasn’t much at first, just a little spot of Stygian blackness that oozed out of a crate labeled ‘organic chemicals’. It did not have desires or intelligence then, just a need. A need to feed. A real need to feed. So, it sought its food.

It crept through the darkness of the hold, seeking the source of the compulsion that drove it on, a thin sliver of light that seeped into the hold from under the door to passageway Six. Sliding under the door, it first recoiled from the light and warmth, but soon felt a supply of something wonderful moving closer and closer, so, the little dot of blackness paused there, waiting, ready to pounce at what it desired.

A crewpony walked to the cargo hold door, not suspecting that any trouble was near. As she opened the door, the little blot of black leaped onto the pony’s back left hoof, eagerly sensing food, which was the life essence, the vitality, of the pony. The pony went into the hold, intent on finding what she was looking for, a new flat panel display link to replace the one she broke when she had tripped over a table leg in the lab. Finding it, she headed back to work, not knowing she had a passenger.

It fought to assimilate the boundless energy of the earth pony, not giving in to its hunger, but limiting its draw, so it can feed longer. As it fed, the black blot grew from a pinpoint to about the size of a pen tip. As it grew, its awareness grew as well. It felt like it had a good thing going, so it decided not to rock the boat and feast slowly.

The mare finished her work in the lab, yawning some. She felt more tired than usual, but attributed that to a vigorous workout before shift. Deciding to go for some dinner, she put up her lab work and headed to the mess deck for a healthy meal of spun greens and peppers before yawning hugely and heading for bed.

The blot, on the other hoof, felt the presence of the other ponies on the mess decks and thought that it had arrived in Paradise, all the food surrounding it making it a very happy little blot indeed. Sliding off the mare’s hoof, it slid around under the table, choosing whom to feast from next. Picking a griffin, it slid up and hid in its fur, soaking up energy, growing larger still, from a pen tip to an eraser in size, increasing its draw on the griffin, which had more to give than the pony.

The griffin yawned, feeling very tired suddenly. He got up and stumbled out of the mess decks, heading for an early bed time. The blot, sensing that its host was about to leave, slipped off the griffin before he left the room and slithered to a corner, to think, which was becoming easier as it grew bigger.

Soon all that was left in the room was the duty cook, ready to turn in himself after another day of pleasing the crew with his delicacies. As he puttered about, setting up the midnight meal (for those who wanted it) the blot slid onto his hoof, going inside the hoof to rest and feed. This pony did have a lot of vitality, and so, the blot started feeding from him. That led to the blot growing to the size of a hoof ball, sliding out of the cook’s hoof and on into the ventilator. The cook slept deeply that night, deep enough to be late for breakfast the next morning, to the consternation of the crew.

The blot roamed the ship through the ventilators, visiting each waking crewman to feed off their vitality, growing larger with each feed, its morphic structure allowing it to ooze through tight spaces. A few days of this had the blot the size of a buck ball, and the crew noticing their increasing lethargy. The Captain called the crew together to have them find out what is causing the increasing fatigue before every crew member falls asleep, never to wake again.

The crew scattered to their posts, thinking about the problem. It was the sensor operator that discovered the intruder, noticing a void in life readings aboard the ship. The sensor operator decided to chase down the void he detected, tracing it to the ventilation system on the crew quarters deck. Poking around with his portable sensor, he soon located the anomaly. Using the light from his horn, he looked in. The blot, sensing the power and magic use, leaped to the source of the delicious energy, landing on the unicorn’s horn and feasting, spreading out to cover the sensor tech with its blackness, absorbing the life energy, leaving the poor unicorn passed out in the passageway, barely alive.

Gathering its newly found wits, the blot formed itself into the shape of the unicorn, but not his color, remaining blacker than black can be. It walked around, searching for more food. One by one, the waking crew encountered the blot, and getting absorbed by it, increasing its power to take, take, take!

Soon, most of the crew was asleep, dropped where they were when they met the blot. One of the last left alive was the brave and resolute Engineer’s mate, whom all this time was working on a complicated repair of the hot tub in the ship’s spa, turning the air around him purple with his frustration over how difficult it was to repair the temperature regulator to make it work right!

The blot sensed the engineer at work, as one of the last that it had yet to feed on. The ones he ignored were asleep, and not radiating power, but this one, was shining like a beacon to the blot. He had escaped detection by being in the spa, which was aft, while the blot was around the crew’s quarters, forward. Eternally hungry, the blot made its way aft.

Frustrated, the Engineer took a break from his labors, stopping to make a pot of coffee in the spa, HIS way, which to all others on the ship was like chewing on coffee-flavored tar. As the pot filled with the thick brew, the door to the spa slid open, to reveal the unicorn-shaped blotch of darkness.

“You are mine…” the blot breathed, it being powerful enough by now to have a voice.

“What in Tartarus are you?” the Engineer asked.

“Hungry… crave food… you radiate it… I am coming for you…” the thing breathed as it approached the Engineer, who sprinted to the far side of the spa.

“Good buddy, you may catch me, but, brother let me tell you, it’s gonna be after a fight!” The Engineer shouted as he found a defensible position, in a corner by where he was working.

“A fight you can only lose…”

“Do you wanna bet?”

“My life against yours!”

“Deal!” the engineer cried as the thing approached. Using his telekinesis, the Engineer levitated the pot of fresh coffee up and over the thing, dumping the whole pot onto the black unicorn shape.

The black unicorn let out a howl as the coffee burned through its mass. “No! Not that! I can’t take it!” it screamed. “Water… and it burns!”

“Nice to know,” the Engineer said as he lifted the thing with his telekinesis and dumped it into the big hot tub. The thing howled, bubbling and boiling in the tub as the water seared its negativity with positive effects.

 “Good riddance to bad stuff, thing,” the Engineer snarled as he watched the thing bubbled its life away, smoke rising from its dissolving corpse. “I don’t know where in Tartarus you came from, but I hope you like the return trip.”

He then called for the duty janitor to come clean up the mess in the tub, but no one answered. “Spa to Engineering Control, wake up!” No reply. “Spa to Bridge.” Silence. “Spa to Captain.”

After still more silence, he snorted. “Typical, leaving me to get everything done…”



The crowd at the Nightmare Night festivities applauded as Purple Point concluded his story. “Nicely done, Point!” Willow, the host of the festivities, called out.

“Not something I like to do normally, but Ixia threatened to throw me in the hot tub if I didn’t do SOMETHING for tonight,” he said, looking at the crowd. “I’m sure she would get plenty of help doing so!”

After the laughter subsided, Kale Robe shouted, “I knew your coffee was toxic, Point!”

“Only to those not immune to that weak pisswater you call coffee, Kale!” Point fired back with a smile.

Ixia called out as he was leaving the stage, “Too bad it was just a story.”

Purple Point stopped at the edge of the stage. Using his telekinesis, he pulled a small vial of something pitch black from a pocket. Holding it high, he smiled evilly at the audience. “Who said anything about it being JUST a story?” he snickered as the lights went out in the mess hall, his maniacal laughter echoing through the pitch-black space, followed by the sound of the vial breaking and something rushing out…