Not just because of the anticonfluential ending we all at least should have known was coming but also because of all the addicts who find that they have lost pieces of themselves--whole years, in fact, for Gately--that's why the novel cannot include that missing year.
Wallace doesn't leave us hanging though. We know that Hal's alive, and there's plenty of information given that we can piece together.
Hal ends up in the hospital after the whole A.F.R. incident at E.T.A., probably because John Wayne dosed him with DMZ as a way of getting him moved. He's then "captured," so to speak, or securely interrogated under the guise of psychiatric care, by the Quebocois. This is perhaps where he meets Don Gately, and the two are then forced by John Wayne to go to the Concavity/Convexity to dig up the Master (though perhaps not *forced*, as Gately dreams that they're running out of time to *save* the world, which means either that Wayne's lying to them, or that *this* Master is perhaps the vaguely referenced anti-Entertainment [i.e., the antidote], and Wayne's working as a triple agent).
Whatever the case--"Too late," Hal mouths, ominously--he winds up back at E.T.A., better at tennis than ever, though apparently heading to college rather than the Show.
Here's another theory I haven't yet seen:
Hal is in the Concavity/Convexity, exposed to that annular fusion. Isn't it possible that this toxin-removing process either totally empties Hal *OR* has the opposite effect, and accelerates the mold that he ate way back when (which would explain the "something I ate" line and constant references *to* the ergot)?
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