Stories of Ourselves: "Billennium" by J.G. Ballard

In an overpopulated, futuristic city, people are forced to live in tiny cubicles. The unexpected discovery of an uninhabited space causes profound changes in the lives of two men.

Here are links to our lists for the short stories in Stories of Ourselves:
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Signalman, The Happy Prince, The Yellow Wall Paper, The Son’s Veto, The Open Boat, The Moving Finger, The Door in the Wall, Sredni Vashtar, How It Happened, Her First Ball, The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection, The Fly in the Ointment, The Custody of the Pumpkin, An Englishman’s Home, The Phoenix, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Prison, The Destructors, Meteor, Billenium, The Lemon Orchard, The People Before, The Enemy, Five-Twenty, A Horse and Two Goats, Report on the Threatened City, The Rain Horse, Ming’s Biggest Prey, The Village Saint, Secrets, The Stoat, Games at Twilight, The Taste of Watermelon, Journey (Patricia Grace), The Bath, My Greatest Ambition, To Da-duh, in Memoriam, Of White Hairs and Cricket, Elephant, Sandpiper, Journey (Shirley Geok-Lin Um), The Third and Final Continent, Tyres, At Hiruharama, Real Time, On Her Knees, The Contest
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. cubicle
    small area set off by walls for special use
    All day long, and often into the early hours of the morning, the tramp of feet sounded up and down the stairs outside Ward’s cubicle.
  2. alcove
    a small recess opening off a large room or garden
    Built into a narrow alcove in a bend of the staircase between the fourth and fifth floors, its plywood walls flexed and creaked with every footstep like the timbers of a rotting windmill.
  3. abut
    lie adjacent to another or share a boundary
    For the people in the houses abutting the stadium the noise must have been unbearable.
  4. ceaseless
    uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
    Two months earlier, before he came to live on the staircase, he had shared a room with seven others on the ground floor of a house in 755th Street, and the ceaseless press of people jostling past the window had reduced him to a state of exhaustion.
  5. clamor
    loud and persistent outcry from many people
    The street was always full, an endless clamour of voices and shuffling feet.
  6. queue
    a line of people or vehicles waiting for something
    By 6.30, when he woke, hurrying to take his place in the bathroom queue, the crowds already jammed it from sidewalk to sidewalk, the din punctuated every half minute by the roar of the elevated trains running over the shops on the opposite side of the road.
  7. statutory
    relating to or created by regulations
    The cubicle was slightly more than four and a half square metres in floor area, half a square metre over the statutory maximum for a single person, the carpenters having taken advantage, illegally, of a recess beside a nearby chimney breast.
  8. recess
    a small dent or hollow in a surface
    The cubicle was slightly more than four and a half square metres in floor area, half a square metre over the statutory maximum for a single person, the carpenters having taken advantage, illegally, of a recess beside a nearby chimney breast.
  9. categorical
    not modified or restricted by reservations
    Ward shook his head categorically.
  10. unscrupulous
    without principles
    Manipulating the ceiling was a favourite trick of unscrupulous landlords – most assessments of area were made upon the ceiling, out of convenience, and by tilting back the plywood partitions the rated area of a cubicle could be either increased, for the benefit of a prospective tenant (many married couples were thus bamboozled into taking a single cubicle), or decreased temporarily on the visits of the housing inspectors.
  11. bamboozle
    conceal one's true motives from
    Manipulating the ceiling was a favourite trick of unscrupulous landlords – most assessments of area were made upon the ceiling, out of convenience, and by tilting back the plywood partitions the rated area of a cubicle could be either increased, for the benefit of a prospective tenant (many married couples were thus bamboozled into taking a single cubicle), or decreased temporarily on the visits of the housing inspectors.
  12. tacit
    implied by or inferred from actions or statements
    Someone timid of his rights could be literally squeezed out of existence – in fact, the advertisement ‘quiet clientele’ was usually a tacit invitation to this sort of piracy.
  13. plumb
    exactly vertical
    ‘The wall does tilt a little,’ Ward admitted. ‘Actually, it’s about four degrees out – I used a plumb-line. But there’s still plenty of room on the stairs for people to get by.’
  14. thoroughfare
    a public road from one place to another
    Apart from a few hours before dawn when only the sidewalks were crowded, every thoroughfare was always packed with a shuffling mob of pedestrians, perforce ignoring the countless ‘Keep Left’ signs suspended over their heads, wrestling past each other on their way to home and office, their clothes dusty and shapeless.
  15. allocation
    a share set aside for a specific purpose
    ‘I hear they may reduce the allocation to three and a half metres.’
  16. makeshift
    done or made using whatever is available
    Corridors were wide enough to be chopped up into single cubicles, and the air was stale and dead, cardboard walls hung with damp laundry and makeshift larders.
  17. larder
    a small storeroom for storing foods or wines
    Corridors were wide enough to be chopped up into single cubicles, and the air was stale and dead, cardboard walls hung with damp laundry and makeshift larders.
  18. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    Each of the five rooms on the floors contained a dozen tenants, their voices reverberating through the partitions.
  19. throng
    a large gathering of people
    It was only thirty yards away, but the throng moving down the street swept past like a river at full tide, crossing them from right to left.
  20. municipal
    of or relating to the government of a district
    Brought up from the age of ten in a municipal hostel, he had gradually lost touch with his father and mother, who lived on the east side of the city and had been unable, or unwilling, to make the journey to see him.
  21. hostel
    inexpensive supervised lodging
    Brought up from the age of ten in a municipal hostel, he had gradually lost touch with his father and mother, who lived on the east side of the city and had been unable, or unwilling, to make the journey to see him.
  22. claustrophobia
    a morbid fear of being closed in a confined space
    For the last ten years these had been classified information, partly because they were felt to be inaccurate, but chiefly because it was feared they might set off a mass attack of claustrophobia.
  23. incentive
    a positive motivational influence
    Fifty years ago short-sighted nationalism and industrial expansion put a premium on a rising population curve, and even now the hidden incentive is to have a large family so that you can gain a little privacy.
  24. morose
    showing a brooding ill humor
    The manager leaned against the flimsy door, damp cigar butt revolving around his mouth, an expression of morose boredom on his unshaven face.
  25. nominal
    existing in name only
    ‘It’s a nominal five,’ he told Ward. ‘New regulation, just came out. Anything over four five is a double now.’
  26. derelict
    worn and broken down by hard use
    Temporarily, he and Rossiter teamed up to rent a double cubicle in a semi-derelict house a hundred yards from the library.
  27. infirm
    lacking bodily or muscular strength or vitality
    Many of the tenants were old and infirm, sitting about listlessly in their narrow cubicles, wheedling at each other back to back through the thin partitions.
  28. listless
    marked by low spirits; showing no enthusiasm
    Many of the tenants were old and infirm, sitting about listlessly in their narrow cubicles, wheedling at each other back to back through the thin partitions.
  29. foray
    an initial attempt
    Then, picking an afternoon when the house was half empty and the manager asleep in his basement office, they made their first foray into the room, Ward going in alone while Rossiter kept guard in the cubicle.
  30. nave
    the central area of a church
    Towering over them, it reminded Ward of the microfilms of Gothic cathedrals, with their massive organ lofts crossing vast naves.
  31. subsidiary
    functioning in a supporting capacity
    Besides, the aunt’s subsidiary partition was attached to it and she resented the continuous upsets.
  32. dormer
    a gabled extension built out from a sloping roof
    Above, the fanlight let out through a dormer window, its lights indistinguishable from the hundred other bulbs in the windows of the house.
  33. upholstery
    covering on a piece of furniture
    They had smuggled the two armchairs back to the furniture shop as they took up too much space. The bed, anyway, was more comfortable. He had never become completely used to the soft upholstery.
  34. partition
    a vertical structure that divides or separates
    Divided by their partitions, the five beds were in line along the rear wall, facing the mahogany wardrobe.
  35. encroach
    advance beyond the usual limit
    He looked up when Rossiter was engaged and saw that the dividing line he had marked in pencil was hidden by the encroaching partition.
Created on Thu Mar 08 09:45:27 EST 2018 (updated Fri Mar 23 15:38:03 EDT 2018)

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