A escassez de moradias foi tão acentuada que, quando um desenvolvedor propôs economizar espaço e dinheiro com a construção de um prédio de apartamentos com tetos do tipo 6, ele foi autorizado a construí-lo e os apartamentos foram alugados antes do término. As gerações seguintes foram mais curtas e os tetos continuaram caindo em um ciclo vicioso. No final da história, as pessoas estavam orgulhosamente em pé com dois pés de altura e felizes por acompanhar a crescente população.
A visão do Milty Boil de Howard Fast. Eu li na antologia dele O general zapped um anjo.
O Milty Boil de mesmo nome é o desenvolvedor que consegue obter a altura mínima do teto reduzida:
And Milty made friends and built influence. By 1975, at the age of thirty-five, he was considered the most influential man in New York City. His influence was such that he was able to have a number of significant changes made in the building code—among them the lowering of the minimum height of the ceilings to seven feet. With this achieved, he built the first one-hundred-story apartment house in New York. In 1980, riding the crest of the wave created by the population explosion, Milty Boil managed to have the city council pass an ordinance permitting ceilings of six feet in all apartment buildings over fifty stories high.
A história termina:
But where is there a great man who has not suffered the barbs of envy and hatred? Slander is the burden the great must carry, and Milton Boil carried it as silently and patiently as any man.
On the modest headstone that graces his final resting place, an epitaph written by Milty himself is carved:
“He found them tall and left them small.”
To which our generation, standing erect and proud under our three-foot ceilings, can only add a grateful amen.