Shirl becomes disappointed with their impoverished lifestyle. Afterwards Shirl moves in with Andy and Sol. During this month they both live there in luxury. He ensures that she is permitted to stay in the apartment until the end of the month. While Andy investigates the murder, he becomes enamored of Shirl. Billy leaves the apartment but hides in the basement, and then later breaks back in for theft. He delivers his message to a rich racketeer named "Big Mike" and sees Shirl, Mike's concubine. His first delivery takes him into a semi-fortified apartment block, complete with the rare luxuries of air conditioning and running water for showers. One of the looters, Billy Chung, a desperately poor boy, grabs a box of soylent steaks which he sells to fund himself as a messenger-boy. Andy finds that the shop is under attack and being looted. Pandemonium starts when a nearby food shop has a sale on "soylent" (soy and lentil) steaks. When Andy queues for their continually reducing water ration he witnesses a public speech by the "Eldsters", people 65 years and older forcibly retired from work. Police detective Andy Rusch lives in half a room, sharing it with Sol, a retired engineer who has adapted a bicycle generator to power an old television set and a refrigerator. Make Room! Make Room! is set in an overpopulated New York City of 1999 (thirty-three years later than the time of writing).
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