The lathe of heaven, chapter 11
This mess. Going back a few steps back, a few dreams back to when Heather was Heather and not a pale version of herself. The Heather who was George's wife wasn't the Heather of before, and though he misses her, it's better to see her now in all her vibrancy of character, than nowhere at all but in his overlapping memories.
It's sweet, he wants to be in her life again, and like movies where characters lose their memory, he knows her, and will try again, to be in her life.
He sounds more serene. I don't know if his dreams really stopped coming true. He's not as stressed about it anyway. And what happened when he slept where the alien led him and he said the alien words? The world didn't change, and dreaming was pleasant. Did the aliens help? The aliens seem to help him continuously to find calm and understanding, through what's lost and caught in translation.
Haber ends up in an asylum, after pursuing his dreams too far. Everyone is terrified of him, the person who made this chaos happen.
It doesn't feel like the story is...resolved, but I don't think it essentially needs to? Things will change again some way, endlessly. I'm happy George is somewhat at peace, though. He deserves it.
I don't know what else to say, I'm really curious what others have to say about the end or the story in general.
Haber pushed the world into a nightmare and George dialed it back to a...realistic? Logical, nightmare. Mess of a world, but with connections that keep the world together. In that way, people can move forward, and move the world with them. Hm.