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

<passage>:
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Charles turned over on his side to look at her. She lay quietly in the perfection, exquisitely shaped, and the rich promise of her body was exposed to his view. "Why?" he thought as he looked at her. "Why did it have to happen like this?" The whole thing was still like a dream to him, and as yet he couldn't decide whether it was a good or a bad dream. A year ago she had been unattainable, a face to conjure with in erotic dreams, far beyond his ken. A year ago she had been a public idol, the most popular actress of the day. And he had been a nobody, full of a nobody's idle hopes and schemes. And now he was lying in the bed next to hers in her swank Manhattan apartment in the most exclusive hotel in town. The unrealness of the situation overwhelmed him. His mind was a picture of confused thoughts. Meanings and answers to his questions slithered out of his reach. a mere statement of fact. A thought teased at him. Charles looked at the woman again and decided illumination quieted to a soft glow, wrapping her in a radiant halo. Charles smiled wanly and got up. He stood by the bed looking at her. "I could have fallen in love with you once. A year ago, perhaps, or longer. But not now. Not now." He turned away and walked to the window. "Now the world is dead. The whole world is dead." reddish-orange pallor hung from the sky. It had been very pleasant that afternoon. She had given of herself freely, warmly, and Charles had accepted. But then he had known that she would. It was not him, it was the circumstances. Under the circumstances, she would have given herself to any man— "Why did it have to be her—or me? Why should it have to happen to Charles picked up a heavy book end off the table and crashed it through flesh. Charles ignored it. Even smells had lost their customary " Maybe I'm not the last! " The thought struck him with suddenness, promisingly, edged with swelling comfort to fill his emptiness. were badly cut. He wrapped a handkerchief around them and forgot them. He had to know—he had to find out. and dangled from the edge of the bed like a crazy pendulum. Charles The lobby was littered with debris, human and otherwise. Charles "We were free. We seemed, almost, to have accomplished something. The world was running well. No wonder we called it the 'Proud Era.' Life was fun, just a bowl of cherries, until...." 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 several weeks. A month later the meat animals, the birds and the household pets began dropping as rapidly as the flies which had dropped earlier. in New York. And now.... "I've got to find out," Charles told himself. He meant it, of course, but in a sense he was afraid—afraid that his trip to the Bureau might human on earth. Compulsory registration and the classification of each individual by means of the discrete patterns of his brain waves had accomplished for 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 during the first month of their life. And again at the age of 10 each 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 room. The impression of intense activity, of organized confusion, of mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life. "So different now," he thought, surveying the room. "Now it's empty, so Charles walked to the master control panel. With newly acquired 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 one of them, a beautiful woman, had invited him up to her apartment, not because she liked him, but because.... 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 us, at least, met here to check the figures. There were lots of us alive then." Including the blond young woman who had died just this afternoon.... Charles stopped talking and forced his eyes upwards. Peripheral vision one . Charles was by himself, the last person alive in all of New York City. Two! His trembling stopped. He breathed again. "Of course. London was at least as populous as New York City before the One. Alone. Alone! Charles screamed. Why? animals, when he first asked the question: "Why?" But thinking about "why" didn't answer the question itself, Charles earth, me. The last. Why me? Average, that's what he was. Height: 5'11". Weight: 165. Age: 32. Status: Married, once upon a time. The Norm, with no significant departures, all down the line. Church member, but not a good one. Could that be it? Could the most normal be Charles sighed. "No," Charles said, standing up in the quiet of the spring evening. of millions of—No, I forgot. There aren't any more people, are there?" It was hard to realize, even now. "A hermit, alone—and I haven't even got a cave...." Charles stopped walking suddenly. No cave, he thought. No place to sleep out the long one, no place to rest while time came to change things around and make them for the better. No place to hide. And suddenly it was the most important thing in life to him to find his Charles was hungry. He got up and started for one of the restaurants near the park. Later on, when there was more time, he'd find a piece of granite and move it to the plot. He could spend his free time 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 He smiled. Strange, but now he wanted very much to go on living, alone or not. There were things he could do, ways to keep occupied. He wouldn't mind it so much. But he wanted more and more desperately with each passing second to retain his foothold on the tenuous path of physical existence. The tantalizing thought of "why" puzzled its way back into his mind. But it seemed less pressing now that he had almost come to the conclusion that he would live for a long time. Later, in a few days perhaps, he would think about it. In a little while he'd have plenty of opportunity for hunting down the answer. This seemed good to him, for Charles struggled to end his body's disorganized responses, to He was allotted ten minutes before the end. It could have been ten years or ten seconds, for now objective time meant nothing to him. It was not a matter of measuring seconds and minutes. It was a matter of forgetting time and measuring space. He concentrated on the grave Charles refused to think. Machines, especially half-broken machines, do sapped the last bit of his energy, corroding his nerves and dying muscles. Now he knew, and the knowing was the end of it. Charles screamed. another of its kind. "It is finished?" asked the second. "Yes. Just now. I am resting." "Beautiful," said the first. "It went according to the strictest semantic relationship following the purest mathematical principles. They made it easy for me." promenaded, and finally came to rest against a propped-up piece of metal (read the names: Whit, Whita, Whitacomb). It was not until the dusty morning sun stirred up the breezes that they fluttered down into the shallow hole beneath, unnoticed. The writing on

<question>:
Why was Charles in the actress's apartment?

<options>:
A She wanted to be with someone one last time.
B They were working on curing the plague.
C He thought he could find answers there.
D They had been living together.

<answer>:

A