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【完形填空】Cloze: The Tower and the Wax
Lin Wei stepped out of the elevator on the 27th floor, carrying a bucket of molten wax. The security guard, Chen Bo, glanced at him and said, "Ten minutes. Then the lights (1) off for the night."
Lin had been climbing this tower since 2018, first as a cleaner, then as a maintenance worker. The building was once a symbol of the city's ambition. It had 68 floors and was finished in 2016 to (2) every other office block in the district.
From the observation deck, you could see the river merge with the sky, a sight that once amazed foreign visitors. Now the glass was grimy, and the escalators frequently (3).
The tower's popularity had peaked in 2019, when 4.2 million people rode the lifts. By last year, the figure had dropped to 1.8 million. Inflation, remote work, and a vague but prevalent fear of enclosed spaces had (4) their work.
The building was not derelict. It was simply lagging (5) newer, shinier towers across the river—a 92-storey complex with a rooftop pool and a vertical garden that seemed to attract the young and the opulent alike.
"You shouldn't bother with the wax tonight," the guard said. "The inspectors came yesterday. They said the whole east wing has a damp problem. Something about the ventilation."
Lin set the bucket down. The east wing was where the servers lived—1,200 of them, humming in the dark. Their heat was supposed to be recycled, an integral part of the building's green certification. But the system had been amended three times to (6) costs.
Now the heat just rose, and the condensation dripped. "They'll fix it," Lin said. But he did not believe that. He had watched the building (7) for two years.
The management company had changed hands twice. The last owner, a mainland conglomerate, had squeezed the maintenance budget by 40 per cent in 2023. Lin's own wage had been cut by 15 per cent, then frozen. He had a spouse and a daughter in a town 300 kilometres west, where the air was cleaner but the jobs were (8).
He walked to the north window and looked down. At street level, a night market was setting up. The smoke from grills rose in thin columns. The sound of a vendor shouting prices floated up, faint and incongruous (9) the tower's silence.
Lin thought about his daughter, who was 11 and had never seen the sea. He had promised her an excursion to the coast last summer; he had cancelled it to take extra shifts. The money went instead to his mother's nutritional supplements. She had been diagnosed with a respiratory condition—not unusual in a city where the air quality index often exceeded 150. The tower's own ventilation system was supposed to filter pollutants, but the filters were six months overdue for replacement. Lin had reported it. Nothing happened.
"Do you ever think about quitting?" Chen Bo asked. He had come to stand beside Lin. The two men were the only ones left on the floor. Below, the city spread out like a circuit board, lights flickering on.
"Every day," Lin said. "But I have no aptitude for anything else. I left school at 16. I can clean, I can fix, I can carry. That's it."
Chen Bo nodded. "My son is a programmer. He works from home. He says the building is obsolete. He says the future is in software, not concrete." He paused. "But somebody has to keep the concrete (10)."
By 9:45 the lights on the 27th floor dimmed automatically. Lin gathered his bucket and walked to the service lift. On the way down, the lift stopped at the 14th floor. The doors opened on a dark corridor. No one was there. The lift closed again. Lin checked his phone. A message from his wife: "The school called. Our daughter needs new shoes. Size 36." He typed back: "I'll send money Friday." Then he put the phone away.
The lift reached the ground floor. Lin stepped out into the lobby, where a single security camera watched him. The night market was in full swing now. The smell of grilled meat and exhaust fumes mixed together. He walked past the vendors, past the new tower's glossy billboard—"Live Above It All"—and turned down a side street. His bicycle was where he had left it, chained to a pole. The chain was rusty. He knelt to unlock it. A dog barked somewhere. The city kept humming, indifferent, hungry, awake. Lin mounted the bicycle and began to pedal. Ten minutes later, he was just another figure in the traffic, invisible, moving slowly against the current.
Choices
(1) A. went B. go C. will go D. have gone
(2) A. outgrow B. outnumber C. outsell D. outlive
(3) A. were jamming B. jammed C. had jammed D. jamming
(4) A. done B. made C. taken D. got
(5) A. behind B. after C. beyond D. before
(6) A. raise B. count C. cut D. share
(7) A. deteriorate B. deteriorating C. to deteriorate D. deteriorated
(8) A. less B. fewer C. few D. little
(9) A. for B. against C. from D. with
(10) A. stood B. standing C. stand D. to stand