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

<passage>:
"Phone Me in Central Park" By JAMES McCONNELL There should be an epitaph for every clutched tightly around the jagged edges of the window pane. In spite of the sharp pain that raced through his system, in spite of the bright, warm, red stream that trickled down his face, he knelt by the " Maybe I'm not the last! " The thought struck him with suddenness, promisingly, edged with ignored it. The street that led towards the Bureau of Vital Statistics was a mess of desolate carnage. Charles overlooked it. Shop fronts smashed, stores looted, gyro-cars wrecked, proud buildings defaced. unit of population, each section of town operating on perpetual, ever-lasting, automatic atomic piles. Two years ago the animals had started dying. Strangely enough the rats had gone first, to anybody's notice. Sales of poison dropped, scientific laboratories chained to a perpetual rodent-cycle began to complain bitterly. Then the lovers who hunted out and haunted the lonely lanes through the countryside began to remark that the locusts were late that year. The Southern states joyously reported that mosquito control was working to an unprecedented degree. The largest cotton crop ever was forecast and rumors from Mexico had it that no one had died from scorpion bite in several weeks. A month later the meat animals, the birds and the household pets the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals committed suicide. Within a year it was obvious to everyone that man was the only animal left on earth. The panic which had begun with the death of the animals was quieted somewhat by the fact that humans seemed immune to the pandemic. But the lakes full of dead fish caused a great stink and residents along the coasts began to move inland. Sales of perfumes and deodorants soared. Then just one year ago, the first human became infected with the strange malady. Within six months, half of the world's population was gone. Less than a month ago no more than a few thousand people remained in New York. And now.... give him an answer he didn't dare listen to. "But I've got to try." He walked on down the bloody street. Before the plague the Bureau of Vital Statistics had been one of man's crowning achievements. Housed as it was in a huge metallic globe of a building, it contained computers which kept exact account of every human on earth. Compulsory registration and the classification of each individual by means of the discrete patterns of his brain waves had accomplished for man what no ordinary census could have. The machine knew who was alive, who was dead, and where everybody was. Once a year the Bureau issued The Index, an exact accounting of Earth's four billion inhabitants. Four billion names and addresses, compressed into microprint, a tremendous achievement even for the "Proud Era." In all of his life, Charles had never once glanced at The Index. The average person had little necessity to do so since the Bureau information service would answer questions free of charge at any time. young man and walked into the main foyer. Passing behind once-guarded doors, he entered the giant computer room and paused in admiration. Only once, before the plague, had he seen the interior of this room. But he still remembered it and he still recalled the powerful emotional experience it had been those many years ago. All children had to have a brain-wave recording made by the Bureau child returned to the Bureau for a recheck. It was for this latter recording that Charles had come to the Bureau some twenty-two years before and a friendly guard had let him peep briefly into the computer mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life. "So different now," he thought, surveying the room. "Now it's empty, so empty." The machine seemed to reflect the stillness, the very deadness of the world. The silence became unbearable. Charles walked to the master control panel. With newly acquired dexterity he switched the computer screens on and watched them glow to life. All around the world sensitive receiving stations pulsed to activity, sending out searching fingers, hunting for elusive patterns of neutral energy, mapping and tabulating the results. The main computer screen dominated one wall of the room. Other smaller screens clustered around it. On these screens could be graphed the population of any and every part of the globe. An illuminated counter immediately above it would give the numerical strength of the area being sampled while the screen would show population density by Charles activated the switches that would flash a schematic map of New York on the screen. "There's bound to be somebody else left here. After all, there were at least twenty of us just a couple of days ago." And The main screen focused itself, the patterns shifting into a recognizable perceptual image. "Why, it was just yesterday (or was it the day before?) that ten of His eyes stabbed quickly for the counter above the screen. One. Charles was by himself, the last person alive in all of New York City. He began to tremble violently. The silence of the room began to press quickly in on him. His frantic fingers searched for the computer controls. plague. It's only logical that—" He stopped. For even as he spoke, the light winked out! The counter clicked again. free of bodies. "You've got about ten minutes warning," he said to himself. "I guess that most people wanted to die inside of something—inside of anything. Not out in the unprotected open." it? Had God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, spared his life, saved him, singled him out because he was most nearly a saint, most nearly Chance. That was it! The laws of probability, the bell-shaped curve, normal distribution, rectilinear regression. More people per square Somehow, though, since things were ready and it didn't make too much difference, it seemed to Charles that he'd probably have a long time to wait. "Maybe it's just a disease, and I'm immune. I was immune to smallpox. The vaccination never took. That's probably it." He smiled. Strange, but now he wanted very much to go on living, The tremor turned to a shake before he reached the far curb, and the first burst of wild pain came as he laid his shoulder against the door to the restaurant. This was the way the plague began, but—His mind quickly repressed the idea. It couldn't be the plague. He was immune! Another burst of pulsating, shattering pain crashed through his body, tearing down the defenses of his mind, putting an end of his thoughts stomach protested, he vomited. It made no difference. Charles refused to think. Machines, especially half-broken machines, do not think they only work. Sweating, straining, bleeding, retching, he pushed himself towards his goal, trying to add one final touch of grace Instantly the thought struck him with paralyzing devastation. The answer to it all poked its face out from the recesses of his mind and sapped the last bit of his energy, corroding his nerves and dying last man's anguished cry at the unreasonableness of it all. Charles screamed. The large, invisible, ovular being that hung suspended over the Empire State Building rested from its exertion. Soon it was approached by "Oh, this?" replied the first. "It's a higher neural order compendium the Things here made up. It's what I used." "You can't take it with you, you know. They don't allow souvenirs." fluttered down into the shallow hole beneath, unnoticed. The writing on the metal, until then partially obscured by the papers, became legible: HERE LIES THE BODY OF THE LAST MAN ON EARTH—

<question>:
What is the Bureau of Vital Statistics and what is its purpose?

<options>:
A It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer keeps track of all humans, monitoring their health, their lifespan, and where they are on Earth.
B It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer monitors whether certain countries are more susceptible to alien invasion.
C It holds a computer whose design is thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement. The computer keeps track of what is happening on nearby planets.
D It holds a computer that keeps track of how many people are currently infected by the plague—a technology thought to be humanity’s greatest achievement.

<answer>:

A