Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
panel. That was the gimmick that controlled the course of the missile. ... pulled the little red switch toward him. anteroom, and stepped into the housing of the enormous mechanism. This machine, the pride and the hope of 2089, was something almost If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even before the Blight, it would never have been discovered that he and his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout. And if that had not been discovered, the ruling powers of Earth, more the half-pail of dried apricots he received each and every payday. facing the black market kings of the world and awaiting their final the far side of the room and was approaching him with a sealed metal cylinder in one hand. "Yes, sir," one of the technicians standing by the time machine said respectfully. "The experiment with an atomic warhead guided missile that resulted in the Blight was conducted on this site on April 18, 1976." He glanced proudly at the unemotional men on the couches, very much like a small boy after completing a recitation before visiting "Ah, yes, the red switch. He pulls the little red switch toward him. originally planned." The Secretary-General of the United Nations beamed. "Thus preventing the Blight, making it nonexistent, as it were, producing a present-day world in which the Blight never occurred. That is correct, is it not, gentlemen?" he asked, turning anxiously again. None of the half-dozen men on couches deigned to answer him. And least they were the color of the surrounding cloth. than a chicken guard. His clothes were fully as ragged, fully as in his stomach was no doubt almost as great. where Alben stood in the entrance of the time machine and handed the sealed metal cylinder to him. "This is the precaution the scientists "You've explained enough facts." Levney turned to the man inside the to build the tiny time machine in the secret lab under the helicopter Leisurely, he unzipped the richly embroidered garment that, as the father of two children, he was privileged to wear, and wriggled into the housing of the complex little mechanism. This was hardly the and now he barely wasted a glance on the thumb-size translucent coils If his great-grandfather had not volunteered for the earliest time-travel experiments way back in the nineteen-seventies, back even before the Epidemic, it would never have been discovered that he and his seed possessed a great deal of immunity to extra-temporal blackout. And if that had not been discovered, the Albins would not have become been reluctantly selected by his two co-workers as the one to carry the Albin and Honek watched him stuff several sheets of paper into a small metal box which he closed without locking. where he lay contorted inside the time machine. He watched Skeat coming toward him with the box. "Take it easy, Mac," Bob Skeat said as he handed the metal box to the reason for the metal box—trying to cover one more explosive Albin turned it around curiously. "How?" happen than just deflecting the missile so that it will explode in the Brazilian jungle instead of the Pacific Ocean." "Sure. I know. If it explodes in the jungle, the Epidemic doesn't mean. The Epidemic doesn't occur, but something else does. A new world, a different 2089, an alternate time sequence. It'll be a world in which humanity has a better chance to survive, but it'll be one with problems It's in that box." "What do I do with it—hand it to the guy from the alternate 2089?" The small fat man exasperatedly hit the side of the time machine with the time machine, disappear. The problem is how to keep that manuscript "Well, all you do, if I have this figured right, is shove the metal box containing the manuscript out into the surrounding temporal medium All around the time machine, there was a heavy gray murk in which Carefully, carefully, like a man handling a strange bomb made on a He picked up the sealed metal cylinder, walked to the entrance of the time machine and tossed it into the gray murk. A solid object floating cold!—and pulled it inside. A small metal box. Funny. What was it doing out there? Curiously, he opened it, hoping to find something valuable. Nothing but a few complicated words, like a letter from one bookworm scientist to another. warning about. The missile with its deadly warhead exploded in the mumps virus that several of the men in the fleet were incubating at the time, having caught it from the children of the fishing town, among whom a minor epidemic was raging. The fleet returned to its home town, which promptly came down with the new kind of mumps. Dr. Llewellyn Shapiro, the only physician in town, was the first man to note that, while the symptoms of this disease were terrible. Most people were completely sterilized by it. The rest were rendered much less capable of fathering or bearing offspring. Shapiro's Mumps spread over the entire planet in the next few decades. It leaped across every quarantine erected to its dismay that its generative powers had been permanently and fundamentally impaired. Something had happened to the germ plasm. A large percentage of individuals were born sterile, and, of those who were not, one child was usually the most that could be expected, a two-child parent being being was now a much-prized, highly guarded rarity. new calamity. Not that another calamity would be needed. Since the end of the Epidemic, the birth rate had been moving further and further behind the death rate. In another century.... That was why a desperate and secret attempt to alter the past was being He walked to the rear dials and began the process of materializing at All around the time machine, there was a soupy gray murk in which register until it rolled to rest against the notch that indicated the He picked up the small metal box, twisted around to face the opening of the time machine and dropped it into the gray murk. A solid object out—it was cold , as cold as they had figured—and pulled the object inside. A sealed metal cylinder. Strange. What was it doing out there? Anxiously, he opened it, not daring to believe he'd find a document inside. Yes, that was exactly what it was, he saw excitedly. He began handsome compensation for the damage. But there had been more damage than anyone knew at the time. A plant virus, similar to the tobacco mosaic, had mutated under the impact of radioactivity. Five years later, it burst out of the jungle and completely wiped out every last rice plant on Earth. Japan and a large part of Asia became semi-deserts inhabited by a few struggling nomads. Then the virus adjusted to wheat and corn—and famine howled in every street of the planet. All attempts by botanists to control the Blight failed because of the swiftness of its onslaught. And after it had fed, it hit again at a new plant and another and another. Most of the world's non-human mammals had been slaughtered for food long before they could starve to death. Many insects, too, before they horrifying geometric progression. Recently, it had been observed, plankton—the tiny organism on which most of the sea's ecology was pretty much dissolved. Pathetic attempts at rationing still continued, but black markets became the only markets, and black marketeers the barons of life. Starvation took the hindmost, and only the most agile economically lived in comparative comfort. Law and order were had only by those who could afford to pay for them and children of impoverished families were sold on the open market for a bit of food. But the Blight was still adjusting to new plants and the food supply kept shrinking. In another century.... That was why the planet's powerful individuals had been persuaded to instrument panel. The switch that controlled the course of the missile. world, from the document in the sealed metal cylinder. The black

<question>:
What was inside the metal box?

<options>:
A The story of a war
B The story of the epidemic
C The story of how to avoid the blight
D The story of the blight

<answer>:

B