ET- Reaching Elliot

E.T. slid the other way across the floor, his mind a net of anguish and regret. How had he dared fly in the face of the unknown? There were unwritten rules and he had broken them all. A telepathic surge went out from his brow, containing all that he knew from the collected centuries. It formed a telepathic replicant of tremendous vitality, his last gift to Elliott.

  Elliott stood in the shadows of the dance floor, watching the couples doing their thing under the rainbow light. It was Friday night and the community recreation hall was filled. And Julie was dancing with Snork Johnson.
...

  E.T’s replicant came through the ceiling, finally on target and streaking toward Elliott’s head. It landed, smoothly, merging with Elliott’s energic aura, then blending still more deeply, into his innermost nature. Elliott felt a faint ripple pass through him, and flicked his Ping-Pong paddle, sailing the ball back at Lance with a table-edge hit that sent the ball over Lance’s paddle and bounced it off his forehead, between the eyes.

  The replicant sank deeper into Elliott, down into the most delicate parts of his personality; there the replicant saw a vague and shadowy form, burdened with sadness; it was part of Elliott, the part that weighed him down, that destroyed his poise, and made him wander lonely.

  The replicant entered the shadowy form, and dissolved it at the center, scattering its cloudy nucleus. The shadow lightened, then dissolved, and within it was a beautiful sphere of blue, a tiny replica of the Earth carried in each Earth soul. It shone with wondrous beauty, and E.T’s replicant circled around it, again and again, scattering the mists of sadness that had enveloped it. And when the beautiful blue ball was shining, the little replicant dove inside it, and curled up there, and radiated the rest of his charge into this core of Elliott’s form, this gem at the center of the human condition.

  Outwardly, Elliott blinked, and tossed his paddle down. He walked across the rec hall to the steps and went up them. He moved onto the dance floor, and crossed over to Snork Johnson and Julie. Snork saw him and turned. “Get lost, shortstop,” said Snork with a sneer, as he spun away.

  Elliott stepped between him and Julie. “I’m cutting in,” he said.

  Snork curled his lip up, a superior remark beginning, dripping with elite sarcasm. And then his eyes met Elliott’s, and what he saw there dissolved the words in his mouth and turned them into a stammer, decorated with spit bubbles.

  Because Elliott’s eyes were filled with an uncanny presence, quite beyond anything Snork Johnson had ever seen. He’d just been out-classed in confidence, and he knew it. He turned and paddled away, wondering what had happened.

  And Elliott turned to Julie.

  “Hi,” he said, as the next record came on over the speakers, a soft slow tune, which led them into each other’s arms.

  “Gee,” she said, “you’re a smooth dancer, Elliott.”

  His body was loose, his movements easy and graceful. He felt he’d blended with the night of rainbow lights—and he knew something, very small and elusive, something he couldn’t speak of. But it was intrinsically his, and he realized he could never lose it.

  Within him, hidden beyond Elliott’s powers of comprehension, the replicant glowed, slowly emanating the charge of E.T.’s last gift, after which there could be no others. For E.T. was doomed, his ship shattering apart in the void. But here, within Elliott’s heart at least, were all the memories, the stored wisdoms, the power of E.T.’s love. And slowly the replicant faded, and slowly it died.

- E.T. The Book of the Green Planet, chapter 21