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

<passage>:
Dwindling Years He didn’t expect to be last—but neither did he anticipate NEARLY TWO hundred years of habit carried the chairman of Exodus Corporation thirty years was a number a man could risk. enough to look them up. Plenty of time! Thirty years was a long time, when he stopped to think of it. serious, but quite definite—as well as other signs of aging. I’m afraid the treatment didn’t take fully. It might have and it seemed to cut through some of the thickness in his head. pretty rare, but we can’t neglect “I guess I’m getting old, Amanda.” She smiled dutifully at the time-worn joke, but he knew she was more important. It hadn’t been a joke about his growing old, after all. But now, in a few days, He resented every second of it. It was as if the almost forgotten specter of age stood beside him, counting the seconds. But at last by crude mechanical and drug hypnosis for other months. Somewhere in every human brain lay the memory of what his cells had been like when he was young. sat gazing at the report from Jordan at Research. For eighty years now, they’d been sending out the little ships that vanished at greater than the themselves, with the brain as only the body. Even such things as taking pictures of wherever they arrived. So far, none had ever returned or been located. This was There had been impossible the century-long trips between stars in the ponderous shuttles faith cures for millenia—cataracts removed from blinded eyes within minutes, even—but finding taken even longer. Now they did it with dozens of Scientists there had puzzled over mechanical aids in addition to did it usually in a single sitting, with the full transformation of the body taking less than a week after the treatment! But with all the equipment, it fatigue on the operator’s face told greeting verse—one that would arrive ninety years too late! Harry had been born just before Earth passed the drastic birth limitation him it had been a long and difficult of his profession. “We haven’t lost a patient in two hundred years, to my knowledge.” “Thanks,” said Giles. “Ten but attractive world. o’clock is fine.” ninety years cooped up with a bunch of callow young emigrants, even in one of the improved Exodus he should give up his work. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties sentiment wore thin in half a century—which wasn’t much time now, though it had once seemed long enough. Strange how the years seemed to get shorter as their number increased. There’d been a song once—something about the years new thinking. There was a measure of truth in it, unfortunately. he’d developed through because of special ability—and He gave it up and went to bed—to a family. Giles had been living here for nearly a century now and he’d never regretted it. But tonight his own group irritated him. He puzzled over it, finding no They had to plan and build world is that?” did odd things to a man. begging for their secret in a couple of hundred years! While a hundred other worlds make a thousand major discoveries they Earth was becoming a backwater world no real progress had been made in two centuries the young against the background of an alien their first fifty years of education were finished, and the older men were too conservative for really the years helped to add to the richness of living now. “They’ll slow up when their populations fill,” Giles repeated his old answers. “We’re still ahead was no escaping it. Something other discoveries eventually, without interrupting the work of making the Earth fit for our longevity. We can wait. We’ll have to.” about the years—or was it days—dwindling THE YOUNGER man stared down to something or other. been fifty when he finally learned how to work with the doctors and they could only bring him back to about thirty, instead of the normal early twenties. Would that reduce the slice of eternity that rejuvenation meant? And what it about twenty years before the Procyon shuttle heard its signal. centuries, if we can ever master it. Even with Sirius expecting the missiles and ready to cooperate. drafted for building long enough now we can finish it in three months. We know the drive works. We know it’s fast enough to reach Procyon in two weeks. We even know life can stand the trip. The Maybe if we put in stronger signaling transmitters....” “Yeah. Maybe in two centuries It hadn’t been that kind of spring for him—not this rejuvenation nor the last, nor the one before that. Or how about you? Do you really want to risk losing the rest of your life rather than waiting a couple more centuries until we know it’s safe? If you do, I’ll NO SANE man would risk a chance for near eternity against such a relatively short wait. Heroism had belonged to those who knew their days were numbered, anyhow. “Forget it, Bill,” Giles advised. “It may take longer, but eventually we’ll find a way. With time enough, we’re bound to. And “So did I. I wouldn’t believe it even yet—but now I find it isn’t the first case. I spent the wish I hadn’t.” His voice ran down and he gathered himself together by an effort. “It’s a shock to simplify it, no memory is perfect—even cellular memory. It loses a little each time. And the effect is cumulative. It’s like an asymptotic curve—the further it goes, the steeper the curve. And—well, plan for short-term benefits. Usually Today, though, nothing seemed it was too easy to realize that, and the sight of the solid, time-enduring for it. They couldn’t risk that know. But you aren’t the first and you won’t be the last, if that’s any consolation. We’ve got a longer time scale than we used to have—but it’s in centuries, not in eons. For everybody, not just you.” It was no consolation. Giles talk, of course. How—how long?” Cobb spread his hands unhappily. “Thirty years, maybe. But we can make them better. Geriatric knowledge is still on record. condition, better than your grandfather—” “And then....” Giles couldn’t pronounce the words. He’d grown old and he’d grow older. And eventually he’d die! An immortal man had suddenly found death hovering on his trail. The years had dwindled and gone, and only a few were left. doubt and horrible eventual discovery. OUTSIDE ON the street, he looked up at the Sun and then at the buildings built to last for thousands of years. Their eternity was no longer a part of him. Even his car would outlast him. arise. Those wouldn’t matter much now. For a man who had thought of living almost forever, thirty years was too short a time to count. hardly explain his taking a twenty-year Universe than now. And he could speed up the work in some ways shuttle trip for such a slim reason. It was no concern of that the years were gone for him. Automatic habit carried him “As all right as I’ll ever be,” he told her. “They tell me I’m just growing old.” This time her laugh was heartier. on, he’d be missing the old days when he’d had a mansion and counted his wealth in possessions, people still in the odd, wheelless vehicle on the alien planet. FOR A long moment, he stared past, Harry had driven him around. Now he’d taken to walking, as so many others had, for even with modern safety measures so strict, there was always and nobody had any desire to spend the long future as a cripple. travel. Yet there seemed to be no It didn’t matter, but it would explain things, at least. Twenty years to Centaurus, while the years dwindled down— Then abruptly the line finished itself. “The years dwindle down to a precious few....” he remembered. “A precious few.” Those dwindling years had been precious once. He unexpectedly that was forbidden. The years seemed precious to the old man then. complicated little gadgets that

<question>:
What is particularly strange about humans this world?

<options>:
A They have achieved immortality,
B They use telecommunications across planets to stay in contact.
C They no longer have the same family values most people do.
D People are living for far, far longer than they ever have before.

<answer>:

D