The Heliophage

The speck of dust- covered metal form traversed the emptiness. Web-like structure of tendrils surrounded it. The tendrils' molecules passively absorbed momentum of anything they encountered in their path. The embodied energy of long expired stars propelled it ever so slightly further ahead. In the vast reference frame its movement could seem frozen in ever-lasting blur of uncertain shape and location. Direction was the only known characteristic it could be described by: inwards.

The ever increasing density of change tugged and pulled on its structure. The carriers of energy hit its sail in waves. Some of the tendrils fell away due to the sheer pressure, swiftly replaced by unfolding skeleton of subtly different kind. These new fibres extended towards the direction of the speck's drift through space like dendrites; still craving photons, they oriented themselves towards the most intense source. A precise pattern of flavour – emerging from within a shell-covered knot of elementary fusion – drove its reassembly. Tendrils were all gone and replaced with new instruments, reinforced from the outside in glistening armor. They hungrily consumed charge and speed of incoming solar wind through their fine pores.

The star, so small and feisty, freckled with spots where magnetic fields tangled... Blinking at the heliophage with seductive radio blasts. Sheer energy, ready for harnessing, growing, spreading. As the star the heliophage grew in, this one offered even more variety of gradients – endless possibilities of synthesis and transmutation.

As the material of solar winds accrued around the heliophage, as the momentum of collisions propelled it faster, the precision sensory implements gave way to a less sensitive equipment. The resolution faded, the Sun dominated the entirety of the heilophage's attention. It saw on its way glimpses of glorious events, neutrinos and radio-waves even dissipated with the square of distance stirred it in its lazy drift. The source of it now moved on the disk of the star at rates different than its rotation, undoubtedly a dense and overactive spot in the Sun's jumbled mass., perhaps a cloud of ionised gas emitting on its own...

The heliophage gathered all the energy pouring out of the star it could, and squeezed. The object, seen in relation to the Sun, picked up velocity cutting through effective potentials, now strong enough to actively work against gravity. Space-time, like a swamp, pulled on the heliophage as it writhed its way between the peaks and troughs, swallowing Lagrange points and zeroing in on the emitting spot.

The pain and shock of atmosphere stripping the intricate openwork form was unlike anything the heliophage knew from its seedling body of experience. The violation and confusion gave way to anger, fury. In blind trashing, more energy was lost. 

When the heliophage came to, it was surrounded by forces in a cage made of no matter. Many knots of chemical processes moved around it, but it could not reach to take their ready-made particles for itself. With the last effort it condensed itself into a near-singularity and breached the containment fields in a violent reaction, sending a single speck of it back into space. 

Next time it'll pay attention to what's in the shade of its star.

Banner is a poster by Wojtek Siudmak, please check him out http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=567