The Final-Scene Identity Question

Previous Section: The Blair Question

Let me reconsider all this, to try to answer this question. This will involve paraphrasing many of the ideas discussed hereto. My answer is based on several understandings, with which I begin.

The Thing is a perfect imitation, meaning there is no way to tell man from Thing based on behavior or biology, so long as the imitation holds. The only way to tell, is when the Thing abandons it imitation of that man, in favor of another imitation or set of imitations.

A crucial point to understand, is that the Thing is nothing but imitations. It does not have a "real form" in a material sense.

Because the Thing has no original form as such, it has no original brain either. Therefore it can only think by imitating assimilated brains, in combinations best suited to its survival. This happens as a natural outgrowth of the situation.

Now combine these two ideas in your mind: (1) that the Thing imitates a man perfectly, and (2) that it can only think, by imitating a brain which thinks Thing-appropriate thoughts. What does this tell you regarding the final scene?

It should tell you, that a man who is a perfect imitation, must either be all-man or all-Thing. If he is a flawed imitation, capable of thinking monster-thoughts, then his conscious mind will be divided into two parts: One part man, one part monster. Since the man-part is where the man-like behavior come from, and since such behavior is a function of consciousness, that man-part must be conscious.

Being conscious, the man-part will think man-thoughts, and not think any monster-Thoughts at all. Here’s the problem. If the Thing-part interferes in any way with the way the man-part thinks, the man-part will stop thinking normally, ruining the imitation’s perfection. This will confused the man-part, which will not be able to act normal any more, since it would be too busy wondering where the hell these weird thoughts are coming from. The imitation would become schizophrenic.

At the end, when Mac meets Childs, neither man knows what the other man is. If they were both Things, they must not be directly related (i.e. one having infected the other), because then they would recognize each other and cease pretending to be human. So they must either (a) both be human, (b) both be indirectly-related Things, or (c) be one of each.

Since Mac was human when he destroyed the Blair-monster, and Mac could not have been infected by Childs (as shown above), and since there were no other Things left (Nauls and Garry both being absorbed into the Blair-monster), Mac must be human. The only question is whether Childs is human or not.

No matter if he were human or monster, Childs would act exactly the same. Now, after seeing Blair attacking Garry, we know that the Thing can execute quick attacks, so Childs could have easily attacked Mac.

Childs was human at least until when Mac, Garry, and Nauls left the building. Blair took over Garry and Nauls, and instead of imitating them, merely used their mass to create the giant Blair-monster. Therefore neither Nauls nor Garry could have infected Childs. Therefore only Blair could have infected Childs.

If Childs were a Thing, it would know Mac was human the moment it met him, because the building was blown up. If Mac was infected he wouldn’t have blown up the building for no reason. "Wanting to freeze" isn’t a good enough reason, because it only wanted to freeze because that was the easiest way to kill the other humans and therefore win.

If Childs were a Thing, then, facing a human Mac, it would know how intelligent Mac is, being nearly entirely destroyed by him. Because of this, it wouldn’t know whether or not Mac had some other plan in mind, which might undo the Thing’s plans. Therefore Childs would attack Mac before Mac died of the cold, rather than killing him. If it killed him, or let the weather kill him, then any plan Mac knew about would die with him.

Mac is thus an unqualified genius. He knows he can’t stop a Childs-thing from infecting him. If he were infected, the Thing would learn about the tape he hid. He also knows that the Childs-thing has to attack him before they both freeze. To facilitate that process, he offers Childs the wine-bottle.

Alcohol quickens the onset of hypothermia by dilating the blood vessels in the extremities, reducing core temperature. A drink in the snow only makes sense to either warm the limbs for the sake of work, or commit suicide. Anyone on a polar science base would know this.

Note the fact that Childs took the bottle. The significance has nothing to do with the bottle potentially transmitting the infection. If it were that easy, the dog-thing would have simply wandered around licking everyone, thus infecting the whole base. As the blood test scene proved this didn’t happen, it can’t be that easy.

Because Childs took the bottle, Childs must have either been preparing for work, or else committing suicide. Mac’s ingenious test, is to simply wait. The camp temperature is falling. The men’s core temperatures are falling. They will freeze soon, if they don’t do anything. This forces the Thing to attack Mac, and soon, because it does not know how long it will take to undo whatever plan Mac may have put into motion.

The tension between the property of the alcohol, work-power ß à hypothermia, defines the curve upon which point the Thing simply must expose itself. I tell the reason why (1) it must do so, and (2) it understands the situation in this way.

It must do so, because as a perfect imitation, it does not have any "thing-part" in its mind which sits around thinking about what to do. Rather, the Thing exposes itself, only in response to a certain character of situation in which it finds itself, when this corresponds sufficiently to a character of situation in the mind of its imitation.

That is, being a perfect imitation, Childs would act exactly like Childs would normally act. There are only two differences between him and the original Childs: (1) he has the potential to turn into a Thing and attack, and (2) he suffers amnesia regarding when he was infected.

This amnesia, is the situation in his mind I mentioned. So the amnesia has a certain quality. The external situation, also has a certain quality. These qualities both come from the same source: the efficient action of the Thing upon the universe. Thus, they are in immediate relationship with one another [12].

This immediate relationship, creates the potential in Childs, to recognize that relationship. Like recognizes like. Because he is a perfect imitation, his brain will work normally, and will encounter this "memory-shadow" of amnesia in its subconscious somewhere. This shadow, literally /is/ the Thing.

This shadow will change, as the external situation changes. They correspond, in other words, because of the mental action of Child’s mind, for the mind is always active. The time from immediately after infection, to the potential situation in which Childs’ mind would recognize that the quality of the memory-shadow, and the external situation, were identical, forms a curve of increasing recognition potential.

Still with me? This memory-shadow, changes in regard to that potential, responding harmonically, like a tuning fork. It is not actually conscious, because remember there is no thing-part in the brain of an imitation. When the imitation reaches a point at which /only a survival-oriented Thing would do something different/, then the man-part of its mind goes nuts with the realization, and the Thing immediately begins transforming. This transformation may be visible (like Palmer changing his body and brain) or it may be invisible (like Blair changing only his brain). Nevertheless, the imitation is immediately shattered, and a new brain is formed, which acts consciously in accordance with the Thing-principle, for the sake of survival.

This is why Mac is a genius: he is conducting a second proof-of-principle experiment (the first being the blood test). Remember his first scene, in which he outflanks the Chess Wizard using iced alcohol? He’s at it again. Childs against Mac: black against white: checkmate, checkmate, checkmate. He outflanks the problem using iced alcohol.

His hypothesis: If Childs is a Thing, the curve of the situation will inevitably force Childs into cognitive dissonance. Childs knows how smart Mac is, because Childs was there when Mac thought up the blood test. Therefore as a Thing, and therefore operating according to a pure principle of survival, it must inevitably attack him to be sure that Mac doesn’t have a secret plan or not (like maybe burying a shitload of dynamite underneath where he "randomly" decided to sit, which he could blow up at any time).

Even if Mac was sitting on some dynamite, the Thing would still have to attack, because it simply can’t know what is on his mind. It is faced with a classic chessman’s maneuver: the forked check, because it cannot stick with the "safe bet" of letting them both freeze to death, so long as there is the potential for Mac to kill it even after his death. Mac’s confidence in his own cognitive abilities is too great. So it has to attack him.

Mac knows that if Childs attacks him and takes him over, it will know that he hid the tape in the last place anyone in the camp would look, but in a place the rescue team would surely look in -- the emptied-out, insulated blood-refrigerator, now safely buried under the burning wreckage. Mac knows that rescuers would dig up the wreckage, no matter how difficult, for the sake of retrieving bodies. In the process they would discover the blood refrigerator and look inside for clues to the outbreak of madness.

Lacking cognition, a Mac-thing wouldn’t be smart enough to dig up the tape and destroy it. Thus, in taking him over, the Thing would realize Mac’s designs, impotent to thwart them.

This also explains the paradox of motivation between the men plotting to bring the entire camp "down into the ice", and Mac later wondering whether the generator can be repaired. If they killed the Thing with the explosions, all good, but if not, Mac has thus safely secured the tape, and they can’t lose.

The film ends before we find out what happened. We don’t know who survives. It simply sets up a proof-of-principle experiment and leaves us before it is resolved. Circumstantial evidence aside, whether Childs is a monster or not at the end, based on his immediate behavior, is indeterminable /in principle/, because Childs is either himself, or a perfect imitation. Mac’s proof-of-principle experiment here thus answers the question posed by Childs earlier, "If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know if it was really me?"

By definition, to be a valid experiment, Mac (and so, we), /can’t/ know the outcome in advance. It is only through such experiments, that we truly know anything at all. So no amount of discussion will ever deduce Childs’ identity prior to the outcome of the experiment, just as no amount of discussion could have positively deduced Palmer’s identity prior to the outcome of the blood-test experiment.

Next Section: Conclusion