Thing (alien)
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The Thing is the name given to the shapeshifting alien in the classic science fiction novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. The origins of the Thing are unknown, although the protagonists of the story surmise that its race originated on a hotter planet than Earth, circling a bluer sun than Sol.
The natural form of a Thing is an 85 pound (38.6 kilogram) creature with three red eyes, a fanged mouth, four tentacle-like arms, and seven-tentacled hands. However, a Thing has complete control of its protoplasm, and is capable of quickly assuming the form of any creature it has ever devoured or absorbed within the limits of its mass. In addition, it can quickly recover from grave injuries and adapt its physiology to survive in a wide variety of atmospheric conditions. A Thing can be frozen solid for millions of years, yet reanimate once thawed.
In addition to its physical abilities, a Thing is telepathic. It can read minds and also broadcast thoughts which manifest as nightmares to humans. A Thing possesses the ability to hypnotically lull its prey into a helpless state so as to easily absorb it. However, this hypnotic ability apparently cannot be used on more than one person or animal at a time.
A Thing reproduces by absorbing other life forms. For example, when a Thing attacks a human, it quickly digests him cell by cell, and duplicates the form of the digested cells so as to create a perfect copy of its victim. Once the process is complete, the original Thing remains along with a perfect copy of the human. The copy will retain the memories and personality of its original, making it very difficult to determine if a human has been duplicated. The copy also retains all of the knowledge and abilities of the original Thing, and in turn can attack and absorb victims of its own. A single Thing can literally absorb the ecosystem of an entire planet in a matter of months through this method of geometric reproduction. However, a Thing can only duplicate living organisms. Once dead, a man or animal is useless to a Thing (except perhaps as food).
Fragments of a Thing (i.e. pieces of flesh or drops of blood) will behave as independent creatures. It is unclear how large a Thing fragment must be to retain the intelligence and memories of its race, but even small quantities of blood will scream in pain or crawl away from danger. This behavior can be used to determine the true nature of a duplicated victim by taking a blood sample and exposing it to a heated wire or some similar hazard.
A Thing is extremely intelligent by human standards, and has vast scientific knowledge that it can quickly apply to create sophisticated tools and weapons from relatively primitive resources. For example, a Thing creates a nuclear reactor and anti-gravity harness within a week using materials in a pre-World War II Antarctic research station. A Thing's memories and knowledge do not reside in its brain alone, as it can rapidly heal from massive head and brain injuries with no loss of mental faculties. It is assumed that a sufficiently large chunk of a Thing is capable of growing into a full-sized being with all of the memories and knowledge of its parent creature. Care must be taken to destroy every single fragment and drop of blood, since any creature ingesting such a fragment could be converted into a full-fledged Thing.
Individual Things are completely selfish beings, and will act to preserve their own lives and identities even if it results in the deaths of other Things. In "Who Goes There?", the duplicated members of the Antarctic research station behave exactly like their originals, even assisting in the detection and destruction of other Things, until they are revealed as Things themselves.
