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fandomweekly2026-01-25 02:30 pm
samuraiter) wrote in fandomweekly2026-01-25 02:30 pm
Entry tags:
[#288] Bennings (The Thing)
Theme Prompt: # 288 – Inconveniences
Title: Bennings
Fandom: The Thing (1982)
Rating / Warnings: R – No warnings apply.
Bonus: No
Word Count: 390
Summary: It is not Bennings, and yet it plots to be more.
* * * *
The alarm sounded, blaring through the base.
Bennings – the one that had become Bennings – hastened to don its clothes and complete the reshaping of its limbs, stumbling towards one of the doors as it struggled to force its arms through the sleeves, its hands not forming quickly enough for its needs.
Duplicating one of the small four-legged creatures had presented no problems. All instinct. A brain uncomplicated by more than a minimum of reason.
Humans had capabilities that it needed. But those capabilities required duplicating the brain, and the human brain presented a major inconvenience. It had to dedicate the majority of its resources to copying the brain, and that made it hard to copy the rest of the body. It had to take shortcuts, and that manifested in multiple imperfections, most notably the limbs, and the very low temperatures of the environment did not help.
Bennings staggered into the open and dropped to its knees, surrounded by the humans that Windows had summoned. If it had been transferring itself from a complete body, it may have been able to take Windows, too, but it had been required to improvise in transferring itself from the remains in the storage room to Bennings, and that had hampered it. Another inconvenience, but it had to take advantage of its circumstances.
"It isn't Bennings," a familiar voice said, and Bennings recognized that human. MacReady. That one presented the most pressing problem. He had self-awareness that the others lacked, and he had a determination to uncover any deception. He had to be either duplicated or eliminated, but Bennings needed the element of surprise, and, already discovered and surrounded, its limbs imperfect, it did not have that.
So Bennings looked at MacReady and vocalized its frustration, the sound emerging as a screech due to a voice box that, like its limbs, had not been perfectly formed.
It allowed the Bennings body to be destroyed, already strategizing for its next takeover, its consciousness tracking through the other humans it had already duplicated, looking for the knowledge it needed in those brains, hoping to use it against MacReady. It searched and searched through countless inconvenient neurons, hampered by the sheer number of them, by their complexity, by the constraints of temperature and time.
As the Bennings body disappeared into ash and smoke, the plan started taking shape ....
END.
Title: Bennings
Fandom: The Thing (1982)
Rating / Warnings: R – No warnings apply.
Bonus: No
Word Count: 390
Summary: It is not Bennings, and yet it plots to be more.
* * * *
The alarm sounded, blaring through the base.
Bennings – the one that had become Bennings – hastened to don its clothes and complete the reshaping of its limbs, stumbling towards one of the doors as it struggled to force its arms through the sleeves, its hands not forming quickly enough for its needs.
Duplicating one of the small four-legged creatures had presented no problems. All instinct. A brain uncomplicated by more than a minimum of reason.
Humans had capabilities that it needed. But those capabilities required duplicating the brain, and the human brain presented a major inconvenience. It had to dedicate the majority of its resources to copying the brain, and that made it hard to copy the rest of the body. It had to take shortcuts, and that manifested in multiple imperfections, most notably the limbs, and the very low temperatures of the environment did not help.
Bennings staggered into the open and dropped to its knees, surrounded by the humans that Windows had summoned. If it had been transferring itself from a complete body, it may have been able to take Windows, too, but it had been required to improvise in transferring itself from the remains in the storage room to Bennings, and that had hampered it. Another inconvenience, but it had to take advantage of its circumstances.
"It isn't Bennings," a familiar voice said, and Bennings recognized that human. MacReady. That one presented the most pressing problem. He had self-awareness that the others lacked, and he had a determination to uncover any deception. He had to be either duplicated or eliminated, but Bennings needed the element of surprise, and, already discovered and surrounded, its limbs imperfect, it did not have that.
So Bennings looked at MacReady and vocalized its frustration, the sound emerging as a screech due to a voice box that, like its limbs, had not been perfectly formed.
It allowed the Bennings body to be destroyed, already strategizing for its next takeover, its consciousness tracking through the other humans it had already duplicated, looking for the knowledge it needed in those brains, hoping to use it against MacReady. It searched and searched through countless inconvenient neurons, hampered by the sheer number of them, by their complexity, by the constraints of temperature and time.
As the Bennings body disappeared into ash and smoke, the plan started taking shape ....
END.