ET- Tele-Replicant

  El-li-ott, he said softly to himself, and a telepathic wave went out from between his brows, pierced the roof of the gourd, and then streaked on its way.

  He’d taken the obligatory navigational courses for telepathic senders, but had cut most of the classes in order to continue his more interesting botanical researches, and go swimming in the nephrite streams. Therefore, his thought-wave entered the space-time vector two degrees off course, the result being his little telepathic replicant arrived on Earth in the middle of a shopping mall, specifically on the fast food counter, and the tiny telepathic replicant, in every way resembling E.T., landed in the mustard bowl. He climbed out, and was struck by a plastic tray, which knocked him down the counter into the cash register. It opened with a bang behind him and sent him flying into the ice cream blender.

  As he was whirling around in the cream, the little tele-replicant got the feeling that someone he knew was near.

  In fact, Elliott’s mother, Mary, was seated at the counter on her lunch hour, wondering: “Why am I about to eat a hamburger, two hot dogs, a double order of french fries, a milk shake, and a cupcake covered with dyed candy sprinkles?”
...

  She looked into her milk shake and saw, fleetingly, a little wrinkled being, floating in the foam.

  I’m hallucinating.

  What did they put in this relish? She looked at the trailing edge of her hamburger.

  Then she looked down at her cupcake, where the tiny candy sprinkles were arranging themselves and spelling M A R Y.
...

  She laid the cupcake back on her tray, upside-down. Whatever it said, it was only another sign of the divorced, early middle-aged woman wishing for a call from someone. Even a cupcake.

  She turned and saw Elliott coming down the hallway of the mall. How unfortunate that he was going to see his own mother stuffing herself with the very foods she tried to pretend she never ate. Oh well, that was the mother business—to be always caught offguard, humiliated, and finally disgraced.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Pigging out?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Mom, did you see any friends of mine around? I just had the funniest feeling that somebody I knew was here.”

  “Sorry, Elliott, I haven’t seen anyone.”

- E.T. The Book of the Green Planet, chapter 3