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solspoppa.livejournal.comTitle: Genie in a Bottle
Author: William Parsons
Fandoms: The Lathe of Heaven, The Terminator, The Rat Patrol, The Matrix, Quantum Leap, X-Men
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This story does not proceed from either the 1979 PBS production The Lathe of Heaven or the 2002 A&E Television Network production Lathe of Heaven, but rather from the original novel The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin on which those two films, the former outstanding and the latter not so much so, are based.
Characters: George Orr, Terminator, The Rat Patrol, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich, Admiral Al Calavicci, the X-Men, Professor Charles Xavier
Summary: George, a disenfranchised youth of the grossly-overpopulated year 2047, keeps changing the world--literally--to mirror his own dark, aching heart. Each time he has an "effective" dream, he awakens to discover he has all the memories of a life different from the one he still remembers from the day before. As these "lifepaths" pile up, he finds himself in World-War-II North Africa, encounters the Terminator from those decades-old movies he found in that little shoppe, thwarts Skynet's plan to circumvent the "inconvenience" of Judgement Day, dips into the numbing fantasy of the Matrix, leaps into the Waiting Room at Project Quantum Leap in the midst of the Age of Apocalypse to be greeted by the telling irony of the still-smiling and still-jovial Al the Guide, and finally emerges in a world in which the X-Men are the subjects of headlines, not comic-book titles. George, having been a teenager, a soldier, a fetus, and a middle-aged man, learns that one man can throw the shroud of sadness and hatred over the entire world or he can rip that shroud away and bathe that same world in the light of love and friendship. Sure, the latter may be harder and take more sacrifice, but better to face one's fears than to allow them to drive you headlong into nothingness.
Warnings: The Ratties and Herr Hauptmann Dietrich die (nobly, though, and for the greater good).
"This is how the world ends./Not with a bang, but a whimper." T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
George Orr is a dreamer.
George's dreams come true.
George can change the world.
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