Philosophical musings brought on by The Thing, and a gentle reminder

I'm a big fan of John Carpenter's 1982 classic horror/science fiction film, The Thing--and if you haven't seen it you really need to. It hasn't aged a day--there won't be any scenes where you'll feel like it's a film that's around thirty years old.

I dug the 2011 prequel, too.

The basic premise is the discovery of a spaceship that crashed in Antartica a couple hundred thousand years ago. It's buried under several feet of ice. Eventually it's found by a team of Norwegian scientists who also find the occupant frozen a few feet away. They take this creature back to their compound to thaw it out and take a look.

Unfortuantely, it ain't dead.

What this Thing does is mimic other creatures. This is how it feeds. What it prefers to do is grap hold of something or someone and swallow them, sort of running them through it's digestive system until it spits out a creature that is an exact duplicate, but is actually a Thing in and of itself.

Thing is (pun unintended this time), a few cells will also do it. It'll just take longer. They'll work like a virus, grabbing ahold of individual cells, injecting them with its own DNA which will take over that cell, making it into an exact duplicate but which will then seek out other cells, etc., etc., until the host is composed entirely of the alien cells. Since the duplicate cells are indistinguishable from alien cells, the body's immune system wouldn't attack them.

So, even if you were only slightly infected, eventually you would become a Thing.

In the films people who were infected acted just like they always did--until they sprouted tentacles and started killing their comrades, that is. Until that happened no-one was sure who was infected and who wasn't--its mimicry was that good. Which sort of leads me to think that it has access to memories and the personality of the host.

My wondering is this: supposed I get infected with a few cells without even knowing it and these things run wild, eventually replacing all of my cells with alien cells. But apparently my memories and the things that make me me are intact. So, would I know that I was no longer me? Would I in fact no longer be me? If all of my cells have been replaced by identical alien cells but I still look and act like I always do, how would I know?

There's actually a scene in the Carpenter film that I believe uses this. One of the scientists has chest pains and passes out--he had a heart attack. During attempts to revive him, it's discovered that he's actually a Thing. I really thing the guy didn't even know it.

Anyways, this is the type of stuff I wonder about sometimes. There's a story in there somewhere, I just know it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And yes, I'm aware of Democritus's speculation about the boat that is completely rebuilt and that this is sort of the same thing. Doesn't mean it isn't an interesting question.

Now, to the reminder portion. If you're in the US, mark your calendar to watch tomorrow night's episode of Two And A Half Men, guest starring my beautiful and talented little goddaughter, Talyan Wright.  Her character name is Ava, and she's seven, soon to be eight years old. America is about to have a new sweetheart.

I know you'll be watching!