When the pod takes over

Best not to know...

I checked out the story on wikipedia, and it said that in the novel, the original bodies turned to dust.

And how did the college girlfriend turn? I thought a pod had to be nearby?

In the novel -- where things can often be explained more precisely -- it's said the pod duplicates the person by drawing out the life force, which includes all the energies that bind the body's component cells together and causes them to interact, leaving the source matter to crumble away to a kind of desiccated unconnected dust. It happens during sleep because that's when the life patterns are at their lowest ebb and are simplest and most accessible.

The novel's version of the scene where Miles and Becky are surprised by the pod people in Miles' surgery demonstrates it very well. In the novel, they're locked in Miles' office, with two ready-to-hatch pods placed outside the door, ready to clone them when they fall asleep. But Miles fools the pods by taking the two human skeletons he was given as a present by his dad when he graduated from med school, and placing them closer to the pods than Miles and Becky. He seals the deal by scattering some of his and Becky's blood over the skeletons. The pods pick up on the connective life force still present in the bones (which are still organic matter), and spend themselves on duplicating the skeletons instead. The bones are described as turning grey and dry, and crumbling away, as their life force is taken from them.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

I think the original bodies just wither away when they are replaced by pods.

I've been chasing grace/ But grace ain't easy to find