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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create? Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain. The Neuron Doctrine synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover, such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the and decisions about human networks. amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing, you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you, and the world, more creative. However, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths. People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property” are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox New Technologies and the Rise of Sharism bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs, to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The Bloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more than just E-mail. It’s Sharism. Bloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and stay out of trouble. It’s not self-censorship, but a sense of smart expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The checkbox-based privacy of Flickr may seem unfamiliar to a new user, but seen photographers on Flickr become more open to sharing, while retaining flexible choices. The rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving setting, it’s hard to get it back. But it’s not impossible. A returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation, will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already, Improvements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as about to become popular, and fast not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share. The more people who create in the spirit of Sharism, the easier it will be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros” wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path. Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law, but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can copyright holder, this sounds ideal. to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the more people remix your works, the higher the return. sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming Sharism is the Spirit of the Age of Web 2.0. It has the consistency of a power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative, social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda. Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because we will represent ourselves within the system. public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act alone. Emergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create\n\n<question>:\nWhen bloggers adjust their tone and privacy settings, they...\n\n<options>:\nA ...are expanding the blogosphere.\nB ...are self-censoring.\nC ...are keeping the social context of their posts in mind.\nD ...are smartly expressing themselves in a way to stay out of trouble.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nin each 'copter, stone-faced, staring grimly alert at the prison below. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that The prison below them was washed with light—from the guard posts on was one of the many talents bred here! I North of the prison, on the long, flat, damp developments of reclaimed land, the matchbox row houses of the clerical neighborhoods showed the walls, from the cell blocks themselves, from the mobile lights of He was partly right. He would be right in the middle of it—for every man, woman and child in the city-state would be right in the middle of it. There was no place anywhere that would be spared. That was the prescription that kept the city-state alive. There's no harm in a family fight—and aren't all mechanics a family, aren't all laborers a clan, aren't all clerks and office workers related by closer ties than blood or skin? But the declassed cons of the Jug were the dregs of every class and once they spread, the neat compartmentation of society was pierced. The was a man who lived by the book. known. breakout would mean riot on a bigger scale than any prison had ever anything, she had had a better environment than O'Leary himself, and look what she had made of it. The direction of evolution is toward specialization and Man is no exception, but with the difference that his is the one species that creates its own environment in which to specialize. From the moment that clans formed, specialization began—the hunters using the weapons made by the flint-chippers, the food cooked in clay pots made by the ceramists, over fire made by the shaman who guarded the sacred flame. Civilization merely increased the extent of specialization. From the born mechanic and the man with the gift of gab, society evolved to the point of smaller contact and less communication between the specializations, until now they could understand each other on only the most basic physical necessities—and not even always then. But this was desirable, for the more specialists, the higher the degree of civilization. The ultimate should be the complete segregation of each specialization—social and genetic measures to make them breed true, because the unspecialized man is an uncivilized man, or at any rate he does not advance civilization. And letting the specializations mix would produce genetic undesirables: clerk-laborer or Professional-GI misfits, for example, being only half specialized, would be good at no specialization. And the basis of this specialization society was: \"The aptitude groups are the true races of mankind.\" Putting it into law was only the legal enforcement of a demonstrable fact. right that he should be proud of it. He was civil-service born and bred, and naturally he was proud and content to do a good, clean civil-service job. If he had happened to be born a fig—a himself—if he had happened to be born a clerk, why, he would have been proud of that, too. There wasn't anything wrong with being a clerk—or a mechanic or a soldier, or even a laborer, for that matter. Good laborers were the salt of the Earth! They weren't smart, maybe, but they had a—well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary was a broad-minded man and many times he had thought almost with a touch of envy how comfortable laborer . No responsibilities. No worries. Just an easy, slow routine of work and loaf, work and loaf. Of course, he wouldn't really want that kind of life, because he was Civil Service and not the kind to try to cross over class barriers that weren't Every prison has its Greensleeves—sometimes they are called by different names. Old Marquette called it \"the canary \" elsewhere it was called \"the hole,\" \"the it is called it is a place for punishment. inhabitants wore, it was called the Greensleeves. It was a community of its own, an enclave within the larger city-state that was the Jug. And like any other community, it had its leading citizens ... two of them. the outside. could ignore the prisoners—they simply could not move fast enough, against the electronic drag of the field, to do any harm. But it was a to retch. Sauer and Flock were what are called prison wolves. They were laborers—\"wipes,\" for short—or, at any rate, they had been once. They had spent so much time in prisons that it was sometimes hard even five-footer with the build of a water moccasin—and the sad, stupid eyes of a calf. under her skin. They weren't even—even human , she told herself Resentment and anger, she could understand. She told herself doggedly that resentment and anger were natural and right. They were perfectly normal expressions of the freedom-loving citizen's rebellion against the vile and stifling system of Categoried Classes. It was good that system— What outside—an architect. Those laundry cons were laborers. Pros and wipes don't mix it isn't natural. And there are other things.\" right? lifer, she's got no place to go, she gets along with the other women. your job, keeping the inmates in line, and I have mine. Now your job is just as important as my job,\" he said piously. \" Everybody's job is just as important as everybody else's, right? But we have to stick to our own jobs. We don't want to try to pass .\" that for the warden to talk to him? \"Excuse the expression, O'Leary,\" the warden said anxiously. \"I mean, after all, 'Specialization is the goal of civilization,' right?\" He was a great man for platitudes, was Warden Schluckebier. \" You my yours He sat beaming into space, waiting for the jolt to take effect. \"Well, then,\" he said at last. \"You just remember what I've told you tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' Oh, curse the thing.\" what ? actuated the tangler fields on the floors of the cells. The prison rules were humanitarian, even for the dregs that inhabited the Greensleeves. Ten minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case rubber prisoners. It was not much to be grateful for, but Sue-Ann Bradley was grateful. At least she didn't have to live quite like a fig—like an here, he told himself—not for the first time. And imagine, some people Almost like meat scorching. It wasn't pleasant. He finished untying Flock and turned away let the vain about it, even at times he had been known to boast of his ability to make the rounds in two minutes, every time. Every time but this. it had been made out of a bed-spring, ripped loose from its frame God knows how, hidden inside the greensleeved jacket God knows how—filed, filed to sharpness over endless hours. had been hidden during other rest periods, felt like raw acid. The word spread out from the prison on seven-league boots. checkpoints, and from there it filtered into the homes and lives of the A handful of men, and the enormous bulk of the city-state quivered in every limb and class. In its ten million homes, in its hundreds of thousands of public places, the city-state's people shook under the impact of the news from the prison. For the news touched them where their fears lay. Riot! And not merely a street brawl among roistering wipes, or a bar-room fight of greasers and no one cared but in the Jug, all classes were cast together. the alert siren, and behind them their wives and children stretched no, the kids told querulously awake in her nursery at home. \"What in God's name is the them out they were to fly interdicting missions at such-and-such\n\n<question>:\nWhat is true about the world these characters live in?\n\n<options>:\nA They all live under the impression they can only perform one job for their whole life.\nB People are segregated by career, and it's incredibly difficult for them to meet other groups and switch jobs.\nC People are segregated by career, and not allowed to mingle with other groups or switch jobs.\nD People have evolved to only be capable of one \"specialization\" through their lives.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. Behind him somebody made a choked noise, the only sound in the stunned hush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully \"Very well.\" The tone was like a shrug. The voice went on in its language that was quite intelligible, but alien-sounding with the the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] In the last hours the star ahead had grown brighter by many magnitudes, and had changed its color from a dazzling blue through white to the normal yellow, of a GO sun. That was the Doppler effect as the star's radial velocity changed relative to the changes that nine hundred years had wrought. \"Perhaps, if you realize the ship had decelerated. , launched toward Arcturus and the Quest III drove on its way once more, lashed by despair toward the speed of light, leaving behind the mockery of yet another solitary and lifeless luminary unaccompanied by worlds where men might dwell. They had grown time,\" said the voice lightly. \"When he saw that it was hopeless, he sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of pause. \"The vision connection is ready.\" nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years. crew. It was a subdued excitement But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun.\" A short voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might lie at the long journey's end. For the the the Sun, whose rays had warmed their lives' beginning. \"It is enough for you to know that you must die.\" the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot A feverish buzz arose the captain gestured for silence and went on, identified it—no more.\" each other's hands, kissed, shouted, wept. For the present their fears were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. —and nothing will be the same. It won't be the same world we left, the world we knew and fitted in....\" worry. Things may have changed—but we'll manage.\" But his face had hardened against registering the gnawing of that same doubtful fear within him. He let his arm fall. \"I'd better get up to the bridge. He left her and began to climb the stairway again. Someone switched off the lights, and a charmed whisper ran through the big room as the before we get that far.\" hesitantly. \"What kind of a reception do you suppose we'll get?\" returned successful, or if they returned at all. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. It's civilization's continuity to the point where our expedition has been the He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred Earth years—though physically he was only forty now, ten years older than when the voyage had begun. That was the foreshortening along the time axis of a space ship approaching the speed of light. Weeks and months had passed for the His own voice came from the speaker, fresher, more vibrant and confident than he knew it was now. \"One light-day out from Procyon, the thirty-third day by ship's time since leaving Earth. \"It is cheering to note that the crew seems only more resolute. We go on to Capella its spectrum, so like our own Sun's, beckons. If success comes there, a century will have passed before we can return to Earth friends, relatives, all the generation that launched the Quest will be long since dead. Nevertheless we go on. Our generation's dream, humanity's dream, lives in us and in the ship forever....\" back, an ironic smile touching his lips. That fervent idealism seemed remote and foreign to him now. The fanfares of departure must still have been ringing in his ears. He rose, slipped the record back in its niche and picked out another, later, one. \"We face the unpleasant realization that what was feared is probably true—that worlds such as the Sun's are a rare accident, and that we may complete our search without finding even one new Earth. \"It makes no difference, of course energy stores that went into them, left Earth's economy drained and exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless \"Looked at historically, such super-human outbursts of energy are the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and therefore signalize the beginning of the end. Population can be its decline with the knowledge that its race went onward and upward, expanding limitlessly into the Universe.... \"Hopeless, unless we find planets!\" was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments. He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four years old. The recorded voice sounded weary, yet alive with a strange longing.... along the Milky Way. of aging too greatly. It would be a one-way journey—even if enough fuel remained, there would be little point in returning to Earth after to the sociodynamic predictions made then, our civilization—if the other expeditions failed also—will have reached a dangerously unstable phase, and before we can get back it may have collapsed completely from overpopulation. \"Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... \"It doesn't matter. Today I gave orders to swing the ship.\" him. A couple of lines of poetry came into his head, as he read them once in translation from the ancient English.... to alter that. He wondered if there would still be a quiet stream and a green shady place beside it where a death-weary man, relieved at last of Suddenly a faint cushioned jar went through the great ship to falter one moment in flight. then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all these years he could still respond quickly and smoothly to a crisis. short buzzes and repeat, ringing through all the great length of the sixth now.\" Repeated blows quivered the fifty feet long, but they move fast. The detectors hardly had time to \"Something's happened,\" he judged with deadly twelve-year-old seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, \"Can I go with you, engines still steadily braking its interstellar velocity. the transmitted and rendered harmless. The effect was as if the vessel and the impact—and the ship, in obedience to the law of equal and opposite would have felt nothing at all of was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to The come what might, this was journey's end—perhaps in a more violent and final way than had been anticipated. All around the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart. and speed—but detector-beam echoes gave the distance, and likewise, by the Doppler method, the velocity of directly receding or approaching constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That audio carrier wave that shifted through a wide range of frequencies, repeating on each the same brief recorded message: nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of only the continental outlines were clear, and \"The prevailing color of the land masses, you see, is the normal ,\" interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, \" him once more. He snapped, \"But who are you?\" and the words blended absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating as he did so the speaker, still crackling returned and been destroyed, as you will soon be—the sooner, if you continue toward Earth.\" from Earth, relayed by one of the midget ships—was not very smart to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the ponderous and unswerving progress toward Earth had somehow something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, \"\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the overall shift in tone from the start of the passage to the end of the passage?\n\n<options>:\nA From calm to frantic\nB From happy to calm\nC From frenzied to calm\nD From depressed to hopeful\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCharles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece. First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an \"invisible migration,\" from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them. Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, \"Intelligence is a bankrupt concept\"--has been discredited, and that \"a scholarly consensus has been reached\" around their position. This consensus is \"beyond significant technical dispute.\" Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single \"general intelligence,\" there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus. The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit. What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence. Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental \"socio-economic status.\" But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains. Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income. One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that \"half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability.\" This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis (\"a powerful method of statistical analysis\"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: \"In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not.\" If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, \"Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?\" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.) At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that \"the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves.\" And they claim that their view of IQ tests is \"squarely in the middle of the scientific road.\" They end by expressing the hope that we can \"be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life.\" Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report. not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find \"encouraging,\" look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that \"intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected\" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap. : Education and IQ\n\n<question>:\nWhich wouldn't the author use to describe Herrnstein and Murray?\n\n<options>:\nA overgeneralizing\nB strategic\nC manipulative\nD unbiased\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] What better way to use a time machine than to handle department store complaints? But The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another story. The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed trees and midnight church services. pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight. \"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the holiday,\" he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his attention on any working day. With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy another!\" Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: \"Oh, I see. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old.\" Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: \"I'll bet that's been in there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago.\" \"This thing has never been processed!\" Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: \"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for her young life. \"Let's fill this order right now!\" \"The poor woman must be dead by now,\" he objected, secretly angry that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he brightened. \"Unless—\" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent a great proposal and the room grew quiet—\"unless we broke the rules just once and used the time warp on a big mission!\" There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner: \"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it must be used only for complaints within three days.\" \"Then let's find out!\" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to come to work here because of that.\" look fatherly. It didn't. \"Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll substitute a manky!\" the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But \"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should throw away my letter of complaint,\" she told her daughter. \"And by the time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started to look vacantly at the distant wall. \"We'll have to send it back,\" Ann said, \"and get the one we ordered.\" had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug for a wall socket. \"That's funny,\" Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment. \"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.\" used to be brown!\" The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming when she—\" Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green dye or whatever it is will wash off.\" about her removing it. \"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of propulsion. A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened: Burnett out there pushed the button?\" \"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.\" Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving. \"If this is ventriloquism—\" she began icily. \"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the office,\" Les said. \"But you'd better let the old girl in. No use letting her get peeved.\" The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the kitchen table. \"Excitement isn't good for me,\" Mrs. Burnett said testily. \"I've had a lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet.\" \"Your husband is better?\" \"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me.\" Mrs. through an instruction booklet, frowning. \"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy,\" Les told his polished table's surface. \"I think the Detectolite did it,\" Bob said. \"The instructions say you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a long time.\" Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time for a nap. It seems impossible, but—\" She shrugged mutely. \"And I out of her arms. The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after out on its side: \" today. \" The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly \"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent order as soon....\" work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family \"It sure will,\" Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. \"I won't have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this \"I was afraid this would happen,\" Les said. \"The poor woman already has lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks that somebody is poisoning him.\" Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared weary sadness. \"People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—\" \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did before I left the house.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow long had the branch of Hartshorne-Logan been opened?\n\n<options>:\nA Eighty years\nB Eight years\nC Twenty years\nD Two years\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,559 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthings got tough, but could still satisfy a woman's craving to mother matter of adjustment. At noon, he brought back another dozen K-99s and installed them in his cages. There had been two highly reluctant mothers, but he skipped \"They are. I told her she had the wrong neutroid, but she got mad. Went started a black market in neutroids?\" \"Don't call me baby! Call several of the thirty-five over to central lab for dissection and ultimate destruction. That would bring the murderous wrath of their I make my DUMB BLONDES AND GOLDFISH MUTANTS FOR THE CHILDLESS BUY A BUNDLE OF JOY babies. And because I have a B.S. in biology and an aptitude for dealing with people. Can't you understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part of it. Honey, before the evolvotron, before Anthropos went into the mutant-animal business, people used to elect dogcatchers. Think of it that way—I'm just a than the neutroids. A K-108 could speak a dozen words, and a K-99 never got farther than \"mamma,\" \"pappa,\" and \"cookie.\" Anthropos was afraid to make the quasi-humans too intelligent, lest sentimentalists started toward a bank of neutroid cages along the opposite wall, but were emotionally safer than the quasi-human chimp-K series called \"neutroids.\" When a pet neutroid died, a family was broken with grief but most couples could endure the death of a cat-Q or a dog-F. Class-C couples were allowed two lesser units or one neutroid. of growth hormones, trying to raise himself a harem to sell. Besides, you're required to keep sales records until they've been micro-filmed. Subject: Deviant Neutroid. Unauthorized neutroids could mean lots of trouble. lab. Return standard units to their owners. Accomplish entire survey project within seven days. hundred square miles. Its replacement-quota of new neutroids was around do it in a week? And there were only eleven empty neutroid cages in his for finding and testing forty neutroids would put him in a tight Glubbes—called a while ago and said her baby was sick. I must be getting absent-minded, because I forgot she was class C until I got there.\" He hesitated. \"The baby turned out to be a neutroid. It's dying. Eighteenth order virus.\" \"So?\" Can't you send the neutroid to a vet?\" take a neutroid, especially since she couldn't pay for its treatment.\" one of them with assault. I tried to pick up their neutroids for a \"It's not funny. I've got to get those neutroids. It's in connection they just won't listen to reason. But get those neutroids.\" \"Okay, boy. Gotcha.\" \"Honeymoon's on again, huh?\" she whispered against his neck. \"Come on,\" he grunted. \"Let's unload some neutroids, before I forget all about work.\" They went out to the kennels together. The cages were inside a sprawling concrete barn, which was divided into three large rooms—one for the fragile neuter humanoid creatures, and another for the lesser with a conveyor belt leading from it to a crematory-incinerator. Norris kept the third locked lest his wife see its furnishings. The doll-like neutroids began their mindless chatter as soon as their keepers entered the building. Dozens of blazing blond heads began dancing about their cages. Their bodies thwacked against the wire mesh as they leaped about their compartments with monkey grace. Their human appearance was broken by only two distinct features: short beaverlike tails decorated with fluffy curls of fur, and an erect thatch of scalp-hair that grew up into a bright candleflame. Otherwise, they appeared completely human, with baby-pink skin, quick little smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series. Age-sets were available from one to ten years human equivalent. Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at the set's child-development level until death. \" Apple cores! \" He turned to face his wife. \"How did apples get in there?\" plant. His job was taking the unfertilized chimpanzee ova out of the egg-multiplier, mounting them in his machine, and bombarding the gene structure with sub-atomic particles. It's tricky business. He flashes a huge enlargement of the ovum on the electron microscope screen—large enough so he can see the individual protein molecules. He has an artificial gene pattern to compare it with. It's like shooting sub-atomic billiards. He's got to fire alpha-particles into the gene structure and displace certain links by just the right amount. And he's got to be quick about it before the ovum dies from an overdose of single success. They threatened to fire him. I guess he got hysterical. Anyway, he reported one success the next day. It was faked. The ovum had a couple of flaws—something wrong in the central nervous system's determinants, and in the glandular makeup. Not a standard neutroid ovum. He passed it on to the incubators to get a credit, knowing it wouldn't be caught until after birth.\" \"It wasn't caught at all?\" Anne asked. it, thought maybe a mental-deviant would pass, and that it might be dangerous. So he went back to its incubator and cut off the hormone flow into its compartment.\" \"Why that?\" would develop sexuality. A neutroid would be born a female if they didn't give it suppressive doses of male hormone prenatally. That keeps ovaries from developing and it comes out neuter. But Delmont figured a female would be caught and stopped before the final inspection. They'd dispose of her without even bothering to examine for malfunction. He thought it was pretty smart. Trouble was they didn't catch the female. She went on through potential murderer. All these kiddos are from the machines in the to have a baby.\" \"You know what they'd do to us?\" \"If they catch us, yes—compulsory divorce, sterilization. But they won't catch us. I'll have it at home, Terry. Not even a doctor. We'll Glubbes, the alleged intruder, has no baby \"Neutroid trouble.\" kennels. A half moon hung low in a misty sky, and the wind was chilly out of the north. He went into the neutroid room and flicked a switch. A few sleepy chatters greeted the light. One at a time, he awoke twenty-three of the older doll-things and carried them to a large glass-walled compartment. These were the long-time residents willingly—like children after the Piper of Hamlin. When he had gotten them in the glass chamber, he sealed the door and turned on the gas. The conveyor would automatically carry them on to the incinerator. Now he had enough cages for the Bermuda-K-99s. kennel-truck, meaning to get the rest of the Bermuda-K-99s so that he could begin his testing. was obvious. Society manufactured them because killing them was permissible. Human babies could not be disposed of when the market became glutted. The neutroids offered solace to childless women, kept them satisfied with a restricted birth rate. And why a restricted birth rate? Because by keeping the population at five billions, the that he had damn little chance of being born to enjoy it. A neutroid filled the cradle in his stead. A neutroid that never ate as much, or grew up to be unemployed. A neutroid could be killed if\n\n<question>:\nHow do they create neutroids?\n\n<options>:\nA They modify the glandular makeup of chimpanzee ova using hormones.\nB They incubate chimpanzee ova, giving them testosterone to keep the animals from developing ovaries.\nC They bombard the unfertilized eggs with radiation.\nD They change the structure of unfertilized egg genes using sub-atomic particles.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,118 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde. I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a togetherness-type-magazine reader. should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles for, and not wanting to. So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps complained. It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers and—well, human beings. But human beings aren't worth the trouble. It's like swimming through spaghetti. And I've got to stay away from electric wires. They hurt. Now don't ask me how knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can't feel if there's writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn't much. Just the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to become pretty good at guessing. Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction. her absence, which I dutifully did. Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out. I was sent home with a stinging note. Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine. I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but window. And I can stop clocks. Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up. So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane. The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her at her wristwatch and sank back again. Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a napkin. I goggled at her, managed to croak, \"No, thanks.\" She gave me an odd look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her. I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to stop it. the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still. I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man \"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to fits, but I didn't. watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been. There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases, and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. she had a green baggage claim check. The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it. \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying after her. At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\" She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door. \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I restrained myself. \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a telephone booth where it would be out of the way. She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\" don't ask me why.\" She gave me a speculative look. I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right, but—\" I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door, range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel. Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet. \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly. \"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain.\" She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag. she was reliving some recent scene. sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those \"It's all right now?\" she asked. I nodded. \"As long as we don't move it.\" I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it would have to do. I finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her. I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy for a long while. \"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried. She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab.\" She smiled a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all for me. \"That's where I was going when you caught up with me.\" Julia's bag in his right hand, was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was thinking. She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me. \"I'd rather not then,\" Julia said. She turned to me. \"I'd like some\n\n<question>:\nWhich is likely true about Julia's sister given the information in the story?\n\n<options>:\nA She and Julia have a very close bond\nB She has enough money that she is comfortable calling taxis instead of driving with visitors are in town\nC She was in on the plan with Julia's husband\nD She is flaky and can't be trusted when it comes to travel plans\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,131 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his head examined—assuming he had one left! Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The serious about this, why not just the shoes?\" The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. \"That's just one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many.\" Morgan smiled. \"You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right, everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'\" \"But \"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it. The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell or one of those inhuman lobotomies.\" sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He \"Price,\" the other answered absently. \"George Price. I suppose they Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was. \"It's a cure for alcoholism,\" Price told him. \"It runs a constant blood check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit.\" \"What happens if you take one too many?\" Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but more interesting than what he was saying. \"It drives a needle into my temple and kills me.\" The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed \"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?\" he demanded angrily. \"I did,\" Price said. \"I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible. The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired. Price nodded jerkily. \"Twenty years ago, at least.\" Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray, Cured,\" he said as a reminder. Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He .\" Infield's throat went dry. \"And you're the one to deal with them?\" \"It's my Destiny.\" Price quickly added, \"And yours, too, of course.\" Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground. \"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal, imposed upon many ill minds. He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view. Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop secondary symptoms. People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to operate. A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and the race. relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't want or need it? \"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done,\" Price said. \"I'll and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an \"Incomplete.\" But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a rag doll. She sat down at the table. \"George,\" she said, \"drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head. It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a while back something happened to the baby here—\" she adjusted the doll's blanket—\"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk. \"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important. But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks Price laughed shortly. \"I feel like doing something very melodramatic, like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing at the drink. Makes me laugh.\" Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs. Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now. \"You were explaining,\" the psychiatrist said. \"You were going to tell me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes.\" unless they were absolutely necessary.\" one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept cooing to the doll. \"You made me fall,\" Davies accused. Price shrugged. \"You were unconscious. You never knew it.\" dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more. Mrs. Price screamed. \"The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his system, it will kill him!\" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying to soothe it, and stared in horror. Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that. \"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure.\" Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. \"That's different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one ever gets rid of a Cure.\" . We've got to go after him.\" \"It's slippery,\" Davies whimpered. \"I might fall.\" Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. \"I can't leave the baby and she mustn't get wet.\" \"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment. \"Just a moment.\" Morgan switched on the room lights. \"What were you saying?\" \"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go out without his Cure.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Mrs. Price carry around a baby?\n\n<options>:\nA The baby was a mechanized half-human robot that functioned as Mrs. Price's Cure for the trauma she experienced after accidentally killing her real child.\nB It made her feel matronly, which was a kind of Cure for the trauma she had experienced as a child.\nC The baby was the child she had with her husband, George Price.\nD It was a doll that functioned as her Cure for the trauma experienced after the death of her baby whose passing was as a result of Mr. Price's drinking.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
208 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nI didn't get it at first. I'd argued with 'em, but inside I'd been all set for the sentence, and even sort of reconciled to it. I could even Then I croaked, \"Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir? Want to choke me to death in chlorine instead?\" Being civil to the court didn't seem important just then. Jupiter was worse than the pen, a lot worse. Jupiter was a death sentence. say, eminently suited to the task.\" He beamed at me. I looked around. They were all beaming. At me! Crude, but it was all I could squeeze out. I squeezed out more when I saw those pictures, though. Those inhabitants were charming, just charming if you like scorpions. Well, a cross between a scorpion and a grasshopper, to be accurate. Floating gangrene around the edges. The bleat of anguish that accompanied my first view of those beauties had taken my voice again. \"How big?\" I whispered. He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. \"About the size of a man, I believe.\" now to think of it. The way that bunch of stuffed shirts in the S.S.C. made a gold-barred chimpanzee out of me has broken my spirit and turned me into an honest trader. Me, Casey Ritter, slickest slicker in us and Mars?\" He shrugged, but his little black-currant eyes began to sparkle with real passion, the high voltage kind that only a woman in a million, or His eyes watered at the memory, yearning like a hound-dog's over a fresh scent. me. I chewed my fingernails down to the quick by the time he got out a week later. chisel me way outa this squirrel cage, I'm gonna hit fer good old Jupe and sell 'em to Akroida. She's nuts about jools. What that old girl won't give me fer 'em—\" He whistled appreciatively, thinking about it. \"Jupiter!\" I goggled at him. \"Akroida! Who's she?\" He looked at me as if I hadn't yet got out from under the rock where he From him I took it. I even waited patiently till the master spoke again. The memory still makes me fry. \"Akroida,\" he explained in his own sweet time, \"is the queen-scorp of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the \"You mean those scorpions have really got brains?\" \"Brains!\" he snorted. \"Have they got brains! Why, they're smarter than people! And not ferocious, neither, in spite of how they look, if you just leave 'em alone. That's all they want, just to be left alone. Peace an' quiet, and lots of methane and ammonia and arsenic, that's fer them. Besides, the space suit rig you got to wear, they can't bite you. Akroida's not a bad old girl. Partial to arsenic on her lettuce, so I brought her a hundred pounds of the stuff, an' she went fer that almost like it was diamonds, too. Did I rate around there fer awhile!\" He sighed regretfully. \"But then I went and made her mad, an' I'm kinda persona non grata there right now. By the time I gnaw outa this here cheese trap, though, I figger she'll be all cooled off and ready fer those scorpions, and how he'd made Akroida mad. I found out that them scorpions can't stand yeller. It just plain hadn't helped me, they'd of done it, too. And Akroida claimed I done it a-purpose to upset her.\" Then he winked at me. \"But then I got off in a corner and cooked up some perfume that drives them nuts the other way sorta frantic with ecstasy, like the book says. Didn't have a chance to try it on Akroida, put just a touch o' that there perfume on the outside of it. Akroida'll II Real powerful, said the man. What an understatement! But the day I was to remind me that this was public service, strictly. \"These—\" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and I was back so soon when I knew that Akroida was all set to carve me into steaks for just any meal. But the tone was friendly and even expression. I tapped back very politely that he must be mistaking me for someone else. \"I've never been here before, and so I've never met the charming and I gagged again. My actions didn't bother him a bit. \"Jewels, did you say?\" he tapped out thoughtfully, just like an ordinary business man, and I managed to He simpered. \"My dear friend, Pard Hoskins.\" I breathed again. How simple could I get? He'd already mistaken me for Pard, hadn't he? Then I remembered something else. \"How come you aren't mad at him? Don't you hate yellow, too?\" beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions, Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free Pard was right again. These critters had brains. And my S.S.C. persecutor was right, too. That anti-grav secret was worth more than III No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all grass, and in the center of this reclined Akroida. It had to be. Who Our little Akroida was a pure and peculiarly violent purple—not a space suit, and she was big enough to comfortably fill most of that twenty-foot couch. To my shrinking eyes right then she looked as big as a ten-ton cannon and twice as mean and dangerous. She was idly nipping here and there as though she was just itching to take a hunk out of somebody, and the way the servants were edging away out around her, I could see they didn't want to get in range. I didn't blame them a bit. Under the vicious sag of her Roman nose, her mandibles kept grinding, shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and Akroida rose up sort of languidly on an elbow that was all stripped over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and could hear her question reverberate away over where I was. \"Who from?\" asked Akroida. That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code at all. \"Who from?\" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush. Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. \"His name?\" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my direction. \"Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?\" Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. \"I—uh—the stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention to the—uh—trader. He does seem to resemble an—ah—earthman.\" He ducked his head and fearfully waited. A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. \"An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?\" Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly. The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a maddened stallion and began to thrash around and flail her couch with\n\n<question>:\nWas Akroida like the rest of the scorpions?\n\n<options>:\nA Yes - they were all enormous and vicious\nB Yes - they were all purple and covered in jewels\nC No - she was larger and meaner\nD No - she spoke better and was prettier\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,175 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nAs the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin the descendants were and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer understand. \"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?\" Martin idly asked the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now. The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. \"Conrad's a very shrewd fellow,\" he whispered. \"He's biding his time—waiting until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!\" \"Oh, I see,\" Martin said. He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would Conrad?\" \"Because he's coming to kill you.\" \"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing.\" ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one conversation, anyhow. \"When he does show up, I'll protect you,\" the cousin vowed, touching So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites. \"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in,\" she declared. \"Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here.\" more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his. something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had promised five years before. \"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an idealist,\" Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste. Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having carefully eradicated all current vulgarities. \"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that, and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However, Conrad is so impatient.\" \"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work,\" Martin suggested. \"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!\" Raymond his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated frightening—his race had lost something vital. Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him, Raymond went on blandly: \"Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas' assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back in time and \"eliminate!\" their common great-grandfather. In that way, there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never society in order to root out a single injustice?\" \"Not if it were a good one otherwise.\" \"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea good man, you know.\" Raymond's expressive upper lip curled. \"So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty worthless character.\" was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you.\" He beamed at Martin. The boy smiled slowly. \"Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in eliminating me, then none of you would exist, would you?\" , Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the use of the iron maiden. \"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference. Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. \"I knew you weren't a sloppy sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him, you know.\" Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. \"How do you plan to protect me when he comes?\" \"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course,\" Raymond said her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether descendants were exceedingly inept planners. Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man \"How about a moat?\" Martin suggested when they first came. \"It seems to go with a castle.\" \"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?\" Raymond asked, amused. \"No,\" Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, \"but it would make the place seem safer somehow.\" The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it, until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them. During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy \"Don't be a fool, Grania!\" Raymond snapped. \"Well, Martin, have you Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the descendants Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin which Martin christened they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on The Interregnum . He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through time. ship, giving each other parties and playing an avant-garde Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue even. \"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong,\" Ives said, after a pause. \"Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—\" he smiled \"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except Conrad, and even he—\" Ives looked out over the sea. \"Must be a better way out than Conrad's,\" he said without conviction. \"And everything will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything, he couldn't even seem to care. During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement. But Martin disagreed. a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin\n\n<question>:\nRather than protecting Martin from Conrad, over the years, the descendants\n\n<options>:\nA force Martin to abandon his way of life in favor of theirs, as he realizes how \"good\" they do have it in the future.\nB seem to dull Martin's initially-sharp ability to be perceptive and instinctual.\nC solely ingratiate Martin to the ways of future life, ensuring he will embrace their ideals.\nD do nothing other than wave a flag for Conrad to know where to attack upon his entry.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
415 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIt has happened a hundred times in the long history it extended south to the Arkansas River. And that was about low as five people per square mile! The land was so dry it seemed impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. It strikes us today as ironic that from the late '50s there was grave concern about the level of the water table throughout the entire area. The report was—no fire at all. The rising cloud was not smoke, but dust. Thousands of cubic feet of dry earth rising lazily on the summer terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and The Arkansas River, at Avondale and North Avondale, was sluggishly River, now, was creating a vast mud puddle where the town of Orchard as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile-square gulps. down. They danced \"like sand in a sieve\" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the Mexico, and tore down the Pecos toward Texas. All the upper reaches of the Missouri were standing puddles by now, and the Red River west of Soon the Missouri began slowly slipping away westward over the slowly churning land. Abandoning its bed, the river spread uncertainly across farmland and prairie, becoming a sea of mud beneath the sharp new floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets of sluggish water 193 people had died in that one cave-in. Certainly by 7 October it had to be officially admitted that there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were second phase of the national disaster was beginning. was a sigh and a great cloud of dust, and Oklahoma subsided at the astounding rate of about six feet per hour. was somehow to ride out the coming flood, \"but like as if the land draft, and sank. So did the entire Mississippi and Alabama coast, at about the same moment. The tidal wave which was to gouge the center Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City: 200 miles of shoreline vanished, with over two and a half million people. An hour later a wall of water had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. The Mississippi River now ended at about Eudora, Arkansas, and minute by minute the advancing flood bit away miles of river bed, swelling Helena and Memphis felt the tremors. The tormented city shuddered during the night of panic Memphis residents were sure they were doomed. South and west the waters carved deeply into Arkansas and Oklahoma. By morning it was plain that all of Arkansas was going under. Waves thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the land was still sinking, and the floods were constantly replenished from Lubbock, Texas, went under. On a curling reflex the tidal wave blotted out Sweetwater and Big Spring. The Texas panhandle disappeared in one sucked under, vomited up and pounded to pieces. Gulf-water crashed on River afterwards recalled the hiss and scream like tearing silk as the water broke furiously on the newly exposed rock. It was the most terrible sound they had ever heard. were people down there. When the water hit the cliffs, it was like a because of the spray.\" march of the water, which turned north, gouging out lumps of rock and The water had found its farthest westering. But still it poured north Memphis was by now a seaport. The Ozarks, islands in a mad sea, formed rescuers. The barn, luckily collapsing in the vibrations as the waves bore down on them, became an ark in which they rode out the disaster. typical. The world could only watch aghast as the water raced north along what is roughly the present shoreline of our inland sea, it was estimated that over fourteen million people had lost their lives. No one could even estimate the damage to property almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished from the heart of the North American continent forever. It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea came to America. Today, nearly one hundred years after the unprecedented—and happily unrepeated—disaster, it is hard to remember the terror and despair of those weeks in October and November, 1973. It is inconceivable to think of the United States without its beautiful and economically essential curve of interior ocean. Two-thirds as long as the Mediterranean, it graduates from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the equally blue waves of the Mississippi Bight, becoming cooler and Dakota. What would the United States have become without the 5600-mile coastline of our inland sea? It is only within the last twenty years that any but the topmost layer of water has cleared sufficiently to permit a really extensive fishing industry. Mud still held in contribute no small part to the nation's economy. Who can imagine what the middle west must have been like before the amelioration of climate brought about by the proximity of a warm sea? The now-temperate state of Minnesota (to say nothing of the submerged Of course there have been losses to balance slightly these strong gains. The Mississippi was, before 1973, one of the great rivers of the world. Taken together with its main tributary, the Missouri, it vied favorably with such giant systems as the Amazon and the Ganges. Now, ending as it does at Memphis and drawing its water chiefly from the Appalachian Mountains, it is only a slight remnant of what it was. And though the Nebraska Sea today carries many times the tonnage of shipping in its ceaseless traffic, we have lost the old romance of river shipping. We may only guess what it was like when we look upon the Ohio and the truncated Mississippi. The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only tattered remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood, but none of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny fringe of population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven \"fringe States\" represented in Congress by the usual two Senators each, though the largest of them is barely the size of Connecticut and all are economically indistinguishable from their neighboring states. Fortunately it was decided some years ago that Oklahoma, only one of the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in any sense be considered to have a continuing political existence. So, though there are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomans, and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from its submerged real estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political scene. But this is by now no more than a petty annoyance, to raise a smile when the talk gets around to the question of State's Rights. Not even the tremendous price the country paid for its new sea—fourteen million dead, untold property destroyed—really offsets the asset we enjoy today. The heart of the continent, now open to the shipping of the world, was once dry and land-locked, cut off from the bustle of trade and the ferment of world culture. in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of which we are only now seeing the diminution. This new westering is to\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the effect on the Mississippi River after the disaster?\n\n<options>:\nA It has grown substantially.\nB It has increased river shipping\nC It has merged with the Missouri\nD It has diminished to only a fraction of what it once was\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
837 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe Dwindling years of habit carried the forcing him to make this decision. And maybe it would do no good. Maybe the ship would fail. But through the morning ritual his neck was pounding and his automatic. Somehow, thinking had grown difficult in the mornings recently. cure any allergy or asthma. serious, but quite definite—as well as other signs of aging. I’m afraid the treatment didn’t take fully. It might have been some unconscious block on your part, some infection not the coffee stronger than usual and it seemed to cut through “I guess I’m getting old, Amanda.” some of the thickness in his head. and then smiled. “So we’ll give you another treatment. Any reason you can’t begin immediately?” impossible. “Anything urgent on the Procyon He resented every second of it. It was as if the almost forgotten specter of age stood beside him, they were through and he was led into the quiet rejuvenation room, where the clamps were adjusted about his head and the earpieces painlessly into his arm and the light-pulser was adjusted to his brain-wave pattern. It had been nothing like this his first time. Then it had required months of mental training, followed 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. Or perhaps it lay in the cells themselves, with the brain as only a linkage to it. They’d discovered that, and the fact that the mind could effect physical changes in the body. Even such things as cancer could be willed out of existence—provided the brain could be reached far below the conscious level and forced to operate. There had been impossible every conceivable device to make them return automatically after within minutes, even—but finding the mechanism in the brain that worked those miracles had taken an incredible amount of study and finding a means of bringing it under control had taken even longer. Now they did it with dozens of mechanical aids in addition to the hypnotic instructions—and 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 wasn’t impossible for a mistake message that had come on the shuttle. He fingered the microstrip mind was easy to reach ... he could relax so easily.... He came out of it without even a headache, while they were removing the probes, but the with the eternal unconscious passed the drastic birth limitation find himself suddenly young again. But that, of course, was ridiculous. It took days for the mind to work on all the cells and to repair the damage of time. act and his mother had spoiled him. He’d even tried to an injection of some kind and Oddly enough, the message in the next frame showed none of repeated. But finally the doctor nodded. expectation that he would avoid the compulsory emigration The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties sentiment wore thin in half a century—which now, though it had once seemed long enough. to get shorter as their number increased. awake most of the night again, trying to recall them. The outside line buzzed musically, flashing Research’s number. He found a single table in the dining room and picked his way through the meal, listening to when it was necessary because someone called across to him. richness of living now. He gave it up and went to bed—to “Antigravity!” His voice was Harry had been a complete nuisance, running around with various nostrums, giving him no Jordan cursed harshly. “So we can send a message on the shuttle, buildings outside should night’s sleep after a little relaxation. Even that failed him, though. He’d developed one of the finest world no real progress had been made in two centuries the young have given him a sense of security. What he needed was a good he’d developed through new thinking. There was a measure of truth in it, unfortunately. “They’ll slow up when their populations fill,” Giles repeated to help. He felt choked, imprisoned, the years helped to add to the other discoveries eventually, without interrupting the work of making the Earth fit for our longevity. We can wait. We’ll have to.” down to something or other. was no escaping it. Something about the years—or was it days—dwindling reached Sirius in less than ten days. We can have the secret of this antigravity in less than a year! We—” thickness pushing back at his mind and tried to fight it off. He’d permanently? He fought that off, but he couldn’t escape the nagging What? ” Jordan’s voice rattled the speaker. “Of course not! It took two accidents to get the thing back to us—and with a doubts at the doctor’s words. centuries, if we can ever master it. Even with Sirius expecting the missiles and ready to cooperate. 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 could correct for errors on arrival. Maybe if we put in stronger signaling transmitters....” “Yeah. Maybe in two centuries have proved it safe for human GILES TRIED to stop scaring himself and partially succeeded, until he reached the doctor’s office. Then it was no longer necessary rest of your life rather than waiting a couple more centuries until now. The machines were quiet—and all the doors were shut. Giles shook his head, interrupting the doctor’s technical jargon. Now that he knew there was reason Then the engineer shut his mouth slowly. The belligerence ran out of him. for his fear, it seemed to truth,” he said. His voice sounded dead in his ears. “The worst first. The rejuvenation...?” against such a relatively short Cobb sighed and yet seemed relieved. “Failed.” He stopped, and numbed him. “I’d rather know the whole “It may take longer, but eventually we’ll find a way. With time in a low, defeated tone. “But I thought that was impossible!” to simplify it, no memory is perfect—even cellular memory. It plan for short-term benefits. Usually it was too easy to realize that, and the sight of the solid, time-enduring 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, drawer and locking it. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you, of course. It’s going to be tough enough Today, though, nothing seemed back so violently that his hand you won’t be the last, if that’s any consolation. We’ve got a longer time scale than we used to have—but jerked painfully on the forelock it’s in centuries, not in eons. For everybody, not just Like an automaton, he bent forward, his other hand groping we can make them better. Geriatric knowledge is still on record. We can fix the heart and all the rest. You’ll be in good physical 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! stop twice to catch his breath and fight against the pain that clawed at his chest. When he at once, with a hand under all he could and had at least saved him the suspense of growing doubt and horrible eventual discovery. his arm to guide him toward his alcohol combined with the reaction and started to slow. Then he went on without stopping. He wanted no chance to have them hardly explain his taking a twenty-year speed up the work in some ways still, even if he could never see its finish. came to his lips. “I saw the doctor, Amanda, so you can stop growing old.” childish! Yet he relished the feeling of even with modern safety measures spend the long future as a cripple. ties melted away too fast for interstellar itself. “The years dwindle down to a precious few....” he remembered. needles and the machinery behind the doctor began working on it. faith cures for millenia—cataracts He looked sick, for he had no removed from blinded eyes\n\n<question>:\nIn simple terms, how does the anti-aging process work?\n\n<options>:\nA It makes your brain think it’s younger through memories, and treat the body’s growth that way.\nB It tricks the patient into believing they’re younger.\nC It replaces key parts in your cells with young cells.\nD It halts growth all together by communicating with your brain.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
564 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCharles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece. Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, \"Intelligence is a bankrupt concept\"--has been discredited, and that \"a scholarly consensus has been reached\" around their position. This consensus is \"beyond significant technical dispute.\" Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus. The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called \"independent variables\") in determining a final outcome (called the \"dependent variable\"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. \"I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics,\" wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer. But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows: What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence. Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental \"socio-economic status.\" But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains. Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income. One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that \"half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability.\" This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis (\"a powerful method of statistical analysis\"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: \"In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not.\" If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, \"Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?\" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.) At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that \"the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves.\" And they claim that their view of IQ tests is \"squarely in the middle of the scientific road.\" They end by expressing the hope that we can \"be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life.\" Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report. In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find \"encouraging,\" look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that \"intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected\" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is one reason the author thinks the regression analysis used by Murray and Herrstein was inadequate?\n\n<options>:\nA The results were able to be duplicated by other social scientists.\nB The independent and dependent variables were clearly defined.\nC The tests relied upon in the database were not truly IQ tests.\nD The sources relied upon were balanced and reliable.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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422 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe others took the pistol away from Mister Anderson, the guard, and The man with the gun turned to say to the man at the door, \"Keep your with the gun swung violently back, cursing, and fired the gun. But he'd her best to scratch his eyes out. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson went scooting out the front door and running down the street toward the police station in the next block, shouting, \"Help! Help! Robbery!\" \"Come along home,\" said his mother, grabbing his hand. \"We don't want to be involved.\" \"It was the nuttiest thing,\" said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. \"An operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their getaway car, you know what I mean?\" burned in 'The Scorpion' in big black letters you could see half a crudely-lettered words, \"The Scorpion\" burned black into the paint of The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The Scorpion Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS! THE SCORPION composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins. Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home, brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand. As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom. Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the house at nine o'clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and \"stop acting like a child.\" Neighbors reported to the police that they heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, \"Go away! Can't you let a man sleep?\" At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence, a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the hand and shoulder. Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work with a Zoomar lens. In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house, firing at anything that moved. The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr. Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway. Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge anyone present to hand-to-hand combat. The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken. Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again. The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and dramatically. Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell barrel first onto the lawn. Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall into the arms of the waiting police. were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder. Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The neighbors went home and telephoned their friends. Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy Scorpion.\" Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both more imaginative than most—\"You gotta be able to second-guess the smart boys\"—and to be a complete realist—\"You gotta have both feet \"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?\" he demanded. no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk. prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. 'The Scorpion'.\" \"He says he put that on there himself,\" said the captain. lawyer says he put it on there. Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense.\" \"He put it on there himself, Stevenson,\" said the captain with weary patience. \"What are you trying to prove?\" \"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?\" \"I guess,\" said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, \"I guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind.\" \"And all I know,\" the captain told him, \"is Higgins put that name on his rifle himself. He says so.\" \"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you think \"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?\" \"But there's no explanation—\" started Stevenson. \"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty idea—like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS. THE SCORPION \"Who cares? You go around the other way.\" the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street. And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault. try to connect every single time the word 'scorpion' comes up? What's \"Neither one of them was called 'The Scorpions,'\" Stevenson told \"Why not? Maybe that's what they were fighting over.\" branded 'The Scorpion.'\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the intention of Higgins' lawyer by saying that Higgins had put \"The Scorpion\" on his gun barrel himself?\n\n<options>:\nA To avoid a trial by admitting fault immediately and getting the job done quickly\nB In hopes of the judge and jury seeing the other vigilante acts of The Scorpion and cutting Higgins some slack.\nC In hopes of receiving mercy for the crimes.\nD To try to use an insanity defense for Higgins.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,840 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\none of the crew of the spaceship Washington , first to set Americans almost rebuilt the entire outside and grounds. But he was sorry. He had He was glad. He'd had enough of strangers. Not that he was through with Ralphie was with her. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. They with him all the way, who had engineered the entire fantastic journey—even Carlisle the Nobel prize winner, the multi-degreed genius Edith said, \"He made top forum the six-month period before vacation, and he made top forum the six-month period you went away, Hank.\" He nodded, remembering that, remembering everything, remembering the warmth of her farewell, the warmth of Ralphie's farewell, their tears as he left for the experimental flight station in the Aleutians. They had feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. They had been right to worry. He had suffered much after that blow-up. But now they should be rejoicing, because he had survived and made the long journey. Ralphie suddenly said, \"I got to go, Dad. I promised Walt tired. I'd like to lie down a while.\" Which wasn't true, because he'd Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for—a came. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate it—she hadn't touched him once beyond that first, quick, strangely-cool embrace at the door—then a few seconds later she withdrew it and let it drop out of sight. looked at Hank, and Hank nodded encouragement, desperately interested in mumbled, \"Soup's getting cold,\" and began to eat. His hand shook a little his ruddy face was not quite as ruddy as Hank remembered it. irritated him with an excess of physical and verbal caresses—she barely touched his shoulder and fled. and said, \"Looks fresh enough to have been killed in the back yard.\" Ralphie said, \"Yeah, Dad.\" Aunt Lucille put down her knife and fork and course,\" he said, his laugh sounding forced. Hank looked at Edith Edith was busy with her plate. Hank looked at Ralphie was busy with his plate. Hank looked at Joe chewing, gazing out over their heads to the kitchen. Hank looked at Lucille she was disappearing into the living room. He brought his fist down on the table. The settings jumped a glass overturned, spilling water. He brought it down again and again. They were all standing now. He sat there and pounded the table with his big First One, of being stood back from, looked at in awe of, felt in fear of, that he could have smashed more than a table. Edith said, \"Hank!\" He said, voice hoarse, \"Shut up. Go away. Let me eat alone. I'm sick of the lot of you.\" down his throat. Mother said, \"Henry dear—\" He didn't answer. She began and he, too, was gone. Lucille never did manage to speak to him. something anything to get away from your father.\" Ralphie's head dropped and he muttered, \"Aw, no, Dad.\" Edith said, \"He'll stay home, Hank. We'll spend an evening together—talking, watching TV, playing Monopoly.\" Ralphie said, \"Gee, sure, Dad, if you want to.\" Hank stood up. \"The question is not whether I want to. You both know I and it seemed her old smile. \"They're so anxious to see you, Hank. I could barely keep Phil from coming up and waking you himself. They want to go out and do the town. Please, Hank, say you will.\" It didn't turn out that way. He was disappointed clapped Hank on the shoulder (but not the way he always had—so much more gently, almost remotely), and insisted they all drink more than was good for them as he always had. And for once, Hank was ready to go along on the drinking. For once, he matched Phil shot for shot, beer for beer. They didn't bowl very long. At ten o'clock they crossed the road to and Hank went right on drinking. Edith said something to him, but he merely smiled and waved his hand and gulped another ounce of nirvana. The number finished they walked back to the booth. Phil said, \"Beddy-bye time.\" Hank said, \"First one dance with my loving wife.\" the music ended, he was ready to go home. They rode back to town along Route Nine, he and Edith in the rear of They turned left, to take the short cut along Hallowed Hill Road, and Phil finished a story about a Martian and a Hollywood sex queen and looked at his wife and then past her at the long, cast-iron fence paralleling the road. \"Hey,\" he said, pointing, \"do you know why that's the most popular place on earth?\" Rhona glanced to the left, and so did Hank and Edith. Rhona made a rumbling up from his chest. \"You know why, folks?\" Rhona said, \"Did you notice Carl Braken and his wife at—\" Hank said, \"No, Phil, why is it the most popular place on earth?\" Phil said, \"Because people are—\" And then he caught himself and waved his hand and muttered, \"I forgot the punch line.\" \"Because people are dying to get in,\" Hank said, and looked through the window, past the iron fence, into the large cemetery at the fleeting tombstones. The car was filled with horrified silence when there should have been nothing but laughter, or irritation at a too-old joke. \"Maybe you should let me out right here,\" Hank said. \"I'm home—or that's what everyone seems to think. Maybe I should lie down in an open grave. Maybe that would satisfy people. Maybe that's the only way to act, like Dracula or another monster from the movies.\" Edith said, \"Oh, Hank, don't, don't!\" The car raced along the road, crossed a macadam highway, went four blocks and pulled to a stop. He didn't bother saying good night. He didn't wait for Edith. He just got out and walked up the flagstone path and entered the house. \"Hank,\" Edith whispered from the guest room doorway, \"I'm so sorry—\" \"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's just a matter of time. It'll all work out in time.\" \"Yes,\" she said quickly, \"that's it. I need a little time. We all need a little time. Because it's so strange, Hank. Because it's so frightening. I should have told you that the moment you walked in. I think I've hurt you terribly, we've all hurt you terribly, by trying to hide that we're \"I'm going to stay in the guest room,\" he said, \"for as long as necessary. For good if need be.\" \"How could it be for good? How, Hank?\" That question was perhaps the first firm basis for hope he'd had since \"There are others coming, Edith. Eight that I know of in the tanks right now. My superior, Captain Davidson, who died at the same moment I loses his life by accident, by violence, and his body can be recovered, he'll go into the tanks and they'll start the regenerative brain and Edith said, \"Yes, and I'm so grateful that you're here, Hank. Please Later, half asleep, he heard a dog howling, and remembered stories of pulled the covers closer to him and luxuriated in being safe in his own home. THE END\n\n<question>:\nHow did Hank die?\n\n<options>:\nA Hank's spacecraft exploded when it hit Earth's atmosphere on the way home from Mars.\nB Hank's experimental continent-to-continent flight vessel exploded.\nC Hank died when he crashed his car on the way to the mission launch.\nD Hank's spacecraft exploded when it hit Earth's atmosphere on the way home from the moon.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,038 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nturn Ledman over to the authorities. Then we can catch the next ship for Earth.\" \"I never bothered to find out their names,\" Ledman \"What others?\" other Geigs I caught unawares, have left—Geig-hunting. Look out there.\" He gestured through the translucent skin of the Dome, and I felt sick. There was a Earth needs uranium, honey, and I know you'd never be oxymask to make things a happy quitting in the middle tell-tale clicks.\" once oxymasks and suits, still clung to them. it off as occupational hazards. It was beyond her to see that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at fault—whoever it was who had failed to fasten down the engine mechanism of the atomic engine. Geigs?\" I asked. \" Why? \"Because I hate wars. \"No,\" Ledman said evenly. \"I'm quite sane, believe me. But I'm determined to drive the Geigs—and UranCo—off there's no sense in you all away.\" \"Just pick us off in the desert?\" \"Exactly,\" replied Ledman. of the Dome, ahead nothing but the mazes and gullies of well fortified. I've devoted years to building it. And I'm back against those hills. They couldn't pry me out.\" He let doing this for Earth. \"Come on, kid. Remember—we're We're heroes.\" his pale hand run up into his gnarled hair. \"I've devoted the geigers had been obstinately for their constant undercurrent Earth's, I was starting to tire, and I knew it must have suckers! Why did I ever let you volunteer for the Geig Corps and drag me along?\" right? To mine and Earth to keep the atomic engines ship the radioactives back to I nodded over at our geiger going. Right?\" counters. Ledman said acidly. \"How sad. I could almost feel sorry coming to Mars to help in the for you. Almost.\" \"Just what is it you're obligation, something we keep the industries of radioactives-starved Earth going. represented Ledman Atomics. I was there to sign a new contract for my company. barren terrain. The geiger \"Just enough to necessitate \"But why kill us Geigs? of turning the weary, bedraggled my fellow-members on the board of Ledman Atomics the Geigs. pauper!\" Then he snapped the punchline at me. \"They renamed Ledman Atomics. Who did you say you worked for?\" \"Don't bother. A more inventive for years then I came to Mars, lost myself, built this Dome, and swore to get even. There's not a great deal of uranium on this planet, but the job. \"That's another little souvenir Others. The Blast turned me into a walking pin-cushion. But I'll pay it all the entire Geig Corps, since wanted to keep them. Which much as the whole concept, so The Geig Corps preferred all the insane, cockeyed—\" Val's quick, worried head-shake cut me off. But Ledman had felt my words, all right. \"Yes! I'll get even with every one of you for taking married couples, working in \"Easy, baby,\" I said. I knew what our ace in the hole was. But I had to get Ledman within reach of me first. to turn you loose outside, a spider's web is for a trapped breathe!\" She began to yell, writhing in her bonds. That did it. Ledman hadn't much humanity left in him, but there was a little. He lowered Earthman who had bound us. fish. It had been spun on over. The blaster went off, burning a hole through the Dome roof. The automatic sealers glued-in instantly. Ledman went sprawling helplessly out into the middle of the floor, wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area weren't attached to his opaque. The oxygen cannisters the customary skin-tight pliable I rolled over and covered it with my body. Ledman clawed his way to me with tremendous effort and tried wildly to pry the back as expected, though. They were strapped to the Dome and lay there. Val rolled over to me. \"Now if I could get free of and a very efficient-looking \"Teamwork,\" Val said. She I looked uneasily at Ledman. He was groaning and our legs, keeping the blaster to reach out and grasp the blaster. Then I pulled myself across the floor to Ledman, removed the tanglegun, and melted the remaining tangle-cord my \"And I have no fears of an armed attack. This place is oxysuits. legs.\" waving the tanglegun to indicate the chair and the two exhaust ducts behind the wheel-housings Val got him into his suit, and \"They'll help you on Earth. They'll take all the hatred and brought him the fishbowl helmet. \"I hate Earthmen,\" he spat I've never seen this guy before, and I thought I knew everyone at the Dome.\" \"Quiet up there!\" our captor called, and we stopped that you couldn't bear to hang around on Earth for as much \"Why are you telling all and the prosthetics men, \"Because if you'd stayed long enough, you'd have used some of your pension money Earth needed radioactives, to buy yourself a pair of prosthetic legs, and then you Ledman scowled, and then his face went belligerent again. \"They told me I was 20th Century had used up much of the supply, but the amount used to blow up half the great cities of the world and the only way to get them by a shining new world of gleaming towers and flying roadways. We had profited by above us. He wasn't wearing for fuel. given the necessary replacement limbs free of charge. All Everything: power drills, oxysuits we had. He powered by the inexhaustible energy of the dividing atom. But though the energy is inexhaustible, the supply of of heavy consumption, the supply failed. The mighty sorry for him, a pathetic legless figure propped up against the wall of the Dome at blaster-point. But then I remembered machine that was Earth's industry Geigs—or more—and would on Mars. With every source of uranium mined dry to end up as a madman's prisoners, Ledman,\" I said. \"All this time you could have been happy, useful on Earth, instead he'd killed twelve to tide us over until then. In a of hate starting to topple, helps. It's a stopgap effort, over?\" just to keep things moving Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers deposits. And here we are, I thought. After we walked on a while, a Dome became visible up ahead. It slid up over the crest of a hill, set back between two hummocks on the purr of their motors was the enough to escape observation. For a puzzled moment I thought it was our Dome, the settlement where all of UranCo's Geig Corps were located, Ledman was sobbing. \"Okay, Ledman,\" I said. us and fairly small. A one-man Dome, of all things! \"Welcome to my home,\" he said. \"The name is Gregory Ledman.\" He herded us off to one side of the airlock, uttered this was actually quite near sentenced to psych adjustment. When they're finished, Gregory Ledman the killer a few words keyed to his will be as dead as if they'd Ledman.\" I turned to Val. \"Got the geigers, honey?\" electrocuted you, but there'll who hated. For the first time since muscles. No wonder how unfair I had been. She lifted the geiger harnesses, and I put Ledman back in his wheelchair. Val slipped her oxymask back on and fastened it shut. \"Let's get back to the Dome in a hurry,\" I said. \"We'll\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the Geig Corps important?\n\n<options>:\nA Val and Ron worked for them before signing up with UranCo\nB It is UranCo's method of acquiring manpower for the resource search\nC It is how Ledman got involved in the uranium project in the first place\nD They funded the dome that Ledman lives in\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,929 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nHe himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English the lion-hearted Richard of England— and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\" Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in face us in open battle.\" \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\" \"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all truly Christian knights.\" \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\" \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy to remain with us.\" \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, \"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy, too?\" \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty of Sir Robert de Bouain. mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger. Sir Robert turned his horse to look. The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey the orders of Richard. The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers stopped moving. The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears. \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou and the Knights Templars. The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\" \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once.\" The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and pointed toward the eastern hills. \"They will come from there, hitting us in the flank we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen.\" A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton. \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing time. Are you with me?\" \"Against the orders of the King?\" \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\" After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\" \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St. George and for England!\" \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed. Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights, The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless body. Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\" The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy. Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword. Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them completely.\" \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\" \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an any cigarette.\" \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \" right down to the very end.\" \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight. King Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers the hills, hitting—not the flank as he had expected, but the rear! Saladin had expected him to hold fast! Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England. The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde! Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, bringing with them the banner of England! for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight. Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king. call.\" King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after\n\n<question>:\nWhy is King Richard angry at the King of France? (abandoning the battlefield and his men)\n\n<options>:\nA He has yet to declare his allegiance to King Richard or Saladin\nB He is aiding Saladin's men by providing them with equipment\nC He abandoned the battlefield and left his soldiers to fight his battle\nD He is refusing to send additional French soldiers to the battlefield\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nSo here's how the race shapes up. Bauer will frame it as a populist showdown, chiefly between himself and Forbes. Forbes will frame it as a fight between the establishment, led by Bush, and conservatives, led by himself. Dole will exploit feminism as well as feminine stereotypes, pitching herself as the candidate of change, civility, and moral renewal. And McCain will fortify his war chest while his rivals battle and bleed. Ames has organized the contestants. Let the games begin. This weekend's straw poll in Ames, Iowa, kicked off the 2000 presidential race and sorted out the Republican field. Everyone agrees that George W. Bush is the front-runner, that Steve Forbes is in second place, and that Dan Quayle, who finished back in the pack with Lamar Alexander, will soon join Alexander on the sidelines. But Ames failed to resolve the fate of the candidates who came in third and fourth--Elizabeth Dole and Gary Bauer--and the one who skipped Ames, John McCain. For these three, the post-game spin contest is crucial. Here's a playback of their takes on the straw poll results and a look ahead at their playbook of messages for the remainder of the race. Elizabeth Dole Playback Republican Shakeout 1. Top three. Dole needed to get within striking distance of Bush and to seal off the rest of the pack behind her. On Meet the Press , Face the Nation , and Late Edition , she boasted that she had cracked \"the top three.\" Pundits bought the three-winners line, treating Ames as a horse race (\"win, place, and show\") and noting that \"no one's ever won the Republican nomination without finishing in the top three\" at Ames. Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. Though Dole's 14 percent was closer to Bauer's 9 than to Forbes' 21, she earned a \"solid third\" and a place among the leaders by crossing the \"double-digit\" threshold. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: \"The other seven candidates could not crack double digits.\" 2. Race for third. Since Bush and Forbes were expected to finish first and second, many pundits concluded, as Lisa Myers put it on Meet the Press , that \"the real race here was for third. Elizabeth Dole won that.\" The Boston Globe called Dole \"the winner of this contest-within-the-contest.\" Dole touted her \"victory\" on every talk show and cited the Myers and Globe quotes in a press release. At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's \"real winner.\" 3. Underdog. In every TV interview, Dole claimed to have been \"outspent by millions of dollars.\" Her spokesman told reporters that \"on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes.\" Reporters love an underdog. \"From a strict cost-benefit standpoint, the big winner may be Elizabeth Dole,\" concluded Time . John McCain Playback 1. Ames meant nothing to him. Despite having skipped the straw poll, McCain was invited onto Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday to discuss it. \"If you're going to be taken seriously,\" Brit Hume asked him, \"don't you have to face up to the fact, when all the other candidates decide that an event is worth attending ... that maybe you've got to play too?\" In reply, McCain repeatedly called Ames \"meaningless.\" His chutzpah bowled over the pundits. Stephanopoulos called McCain's no-show \"a pretty smart move\" and portrayed the 83 votes he won in the straw poll--putting him in last place among active Republican candidates--as evidence of his strength. 2. Ames meant death for others. Noting that McCain had bypassed the event, Quayle explained on Face the Nation that he, too, \"almost took a pass on this. It wasn't until George Bush said he was going to participate that then I said, 'OK, we've got to do it,' out of respect to the Iowa Republican Party.\" The result, Quayle pleaded, was that he lost to candidates who had been in Iowa \"years and months.\" McCain, explaining his decision to stay out, espoused a less sentimental philosophy: \"You always want to fight on ground that is most favorable to you.\" For this, the media executed Quayle and spared McCain. \"Quayle and Lamar Alexander might be gone, but I think McCain is still in,\" concluded NPR's Mara Liasson. Ames was Vietnam in reverse: McCain ducked the fight, and Quayle took the beating. 3. Viability. \"Once the dust has settled from the straw poll,\" McCain regally announced, \"I will review the new political landscape\" and begin \"engaging the other Republican candidates.\" Why does McCain get a bye? Because he has convinced the media that he has enough money and support in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other states to skip Iowa and catch fire later. Newsweek , the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , and several TV pundits agreed that McCain remains formidable, wasn't hurt by Ames, and may well end up as the principal alternative to Bush. 4. Vote-buying. To undermine the straw poll's authority as an arbiter of his candidacy, McCain called it a \"fund-raiser,\" \"a sham and a joke\" in which campaigns spent \"millions\" to \"buy\" votes. \"My campaign theme is to try to reform the system that is now awash with money and the influence of special interests,\" he argued on Fox News Sunday . Brit Hume's retort--\"that this whole process isn't quite pure enough for you\"--played right into McCain's hands. McCain doesn't need to persuade the media that his reasons for skipping Ames were morally sound. He just needs to persuade them that his reasons were moral rather than political. Playbook 1. Real votes. The vote-buying complaint only gets McCain a bye on the straw poll. To get another bye on February's Iowa caucuses, he'll rely on two other moral arguments. First, he'll claim that caucuses aren't \"real votes.\" \"We'll have real votes in New Hampshire,\" McCain argued on Fox News Sunday . \"That's where real people are motivated to vote.\" On Face the Nation , he suggested that he would focus on \"the genuine balloting process, which takes place in New Hampshire and then South Carolina.\" 2. Ethanol. Many pundits, fancying themselves shrewd, suggest that McCain's true reason for skipping Iowa is that he has \"taken a position on ethanol subsidies that's unpalatable to voters in Iowa.\" On This Week , Stephanopoulos suggested that McCain might \"have to do something dramatic,\" such as \"make a stand and say, 'We're not going to compete in Iowa. We think these ethanol subsidies are an abomination.' \" This is McCain's greatest triumph: He has conned the media into disbelieving his political calculations and accusing him instead of principle. \"I've taken a lot of unpopular positions,\" he conceded on Fox News Sunday . 3. Experience. The longer McCain stays out of the race without damaging his credibility, the more the field narrows to his advantage. Alexander and Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, are already gone. Quayle and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, won't be far behind. If the field dwindles to Bush, Forbes, and Bauer, McCain can sell himself as the only experienced officeholder running against Bush. But Dole's third-place finish at Ames, coupled with her victory in the post-Ames spin contest, complicates this plan.\n\n<question>:\nWhat doesn't the author believe about John McCain?\n\n<options>:\nA he was trying to send a message about Ames being unimportant\nB he had a lot of courage and cunning to skip over Ames\nC he's the only experienced political candidate in the running\nD McCain could afford to miss Ames because of his support in other states\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCOMPLEXITY AND HUMANITY together patching up the fabric that is rent. Disaster, natural or otherwise, is a breakdown of systems. For a time, chaos reigns. For a days is unknown. All we have to rely on are our wits, fortitude, and common humanity much more so than life was in the past others have planned, means that there are many more moving parts that affect each other. And from this scale of practical effects, complexity emerges. New things too were ever under the sun but the systematic application of knowledge to the creation of new knowledge, innovation to innovation, and information to making more information has become and with it the knowledge that next year will be very different than this. The Web, after all, is less than a generation old. These two features−the global scale of interdependence of human action, and the systematic acceleration of innovation, make contemporary life a unpredictability makes it unwise to build systems that take too much discuss, learn, and repeat. That is why we have seen many more systems take on a loose, human centric model in the last decade and a half: from the radical divergence of Toyota’s production system from the highly structured model put in place by Henry Ford, to the Internet’s radical departure from the AT& T system that preceded it, and on to the way Wikipedia constructs human knowledge on the fly, incrementally, in ways (and are still seen so be many). But it is time we acknowledge that systems work best by making work human. Modern Times Modern times were hard enough. Trains and planes, telegraph and telephone, all brought many people into the same causal space. The solution to this increased complexity in the late 19th, early 20th century was to increase the role of structure and improve its design. During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, this type of rationalization took the form of ever-more complex managed systems, with crisp specification of roles, lines of authority, communication and control. In business, this rationalization was typified by Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management, later embodied in Henry Ford’s assembly line. The ambition of these approaches was to specify everything that needed doing in minute detail, to enforce it through monitoring and rewards, and The idea was to eliminate human error and variability in the face of change by removing thinking to the system, and thus neutralizing the variability of the human beings who worked it. Few images captured that time, and what it did to humanity, more vividly than Charlie Chaplin’s assembly line worker in Modern Times. At the same time, government experienced the rise of bureaucratization and the administrative state. Nowhere was this done more brutally than in the totalitarian states of mid-century. But the impulse to build fully-specified systems, designed by experts, monitored and controlled so as to limit human greed and error and to manage uncertainty, was basic and widespread. It underlay the development of the enormously successful state bureaucracies that responded to the Great Depression with the New Deal. It took shape in the Marshall Plan to pull Europe out of the material abyss into which it had been plunged by World War II, and shepherded Japan’s industrial regeneration from it. In technical systems too, we saw in mid-century marvels like the AT& system and the IBM mainframe. For a moment in history, these large scale managed systems were achieving efficiencies that seemed to overwhelm competing models: from the Tennessee Valley Authority to Sputnik, from inevitable victory. The increasing recognition of the limits of command-and-control systems led to a new approach but it turned out to be a retrenchment, not an abandonment, of the goal of perfect rationalization of systems design, which assumed much of the human away. What replaced planning and control in these systems was the myth of perfect markets. This was achieved through a hyper-simplification of human nature, wedded to mathematical transmission of AIDS. Only by concocting such a thin model of humanity−no more than the economists’ utility curve−and neglecting any successes. But, like its predecessor, its limits as an approach to human systems design are becoming cleare Work, Trust and Play of constant, rapid change and complex global interactions. What we are seeing instead is the rise of human systems that increasingly shy away to coordinating human action will disappear. But these managed systems invite and enable more engaged human action by drawing on intrinsic engage the human and social in the pursuit of what is, in the long term, the only core business competency−innovation. Wikipedia has eclipsed all the commercial encyclopedias except Britannica not by issuing a large IPO and hiring the smartest guys in the room, but by building an open and inviting system that lets people learn together and pursue their The set of human systems necessary for action in this complex, unpredictable set of conditions, combining rationalization with human agency, learning and adaptation, is as different from managed systems and perfect markets as the new Toyota is from the old General Motors, or as the Internet now is from AT& T then. The hallmarks of these newer systems are: (a) location of authority and practical capacity to act at (b) an emphasis on the human: on trust, cooperation, judgment and insight all human variance (the source of slothful shirking and inept error) could be isolated and controlled. Fordism took that ambition and embedded the managerial knowledge in the technological platform of the reliance on small teams where each team member can perform all tasks, all communicate. The system is built on trust and a cooperative dynamic. through social cooperation mechanisms built around teamwork and trust. But let us also consider the system in question that has made this work possible, the Internet, and compare it to the design principles of the AT& T network in its heyday. Unlike the Internet, AT& excluded competitors). This generated profit, but any substantial technical innovations required the approval of management and a re-engineering of the entire network. The Internet, on the other hand, was designed to be as general as possible. The network hardware merely innovation that we have seen, while also creating certain the Internet is needed. We see first of all that doubts about trust and originally designed for people who could more-or-less trust each other, grew and users diversified, trust (the practical belief that other human agents in the system were competent and benign, or at least sincere) elements themselves, and at its periphery, through “trusted computing.” A “trusted computer” will, for example, not run a program or document effective means of preventing copyright infringement or system failure, and preserving corporate security (these are the main reasons offered for implementing such systems). Trusted computing in this form is the ultimate reversal of the human-centric, loosely-coupled design approach machines−technical systems−are trustworthy, while their human users are malevolent, incompetent, or both. Reintroducing the Human Taylorism, the Bell system and trusted computing are all efforts to tightly-bound systems. That is, the specifications and regularities of the system are such that they control or direct action and learning over in managed systems, if not eliminated, and the knowledge in the system contrast, loosely-coupled systems affirmatively eschew this level of control, and build in room for human agency, experimentation, failure, communication, learning and adaptation. Loose-coupling is central to the new systems. It is a feature of system design that leaves room for human agency over time, only imperfectly constraining and enabling any given action by the system itself. By creating such domains of human agency, system designers are accepting the limitations of design and foresight, re-introduce the human into the design of systems. We must put the soul taught us anything, it is that what makes for human insight is extremely systems, then, sits a human being who has a capacity to make judgments, experiment, learn and adapt. But enabling human agency also provides turn our attention to building systems that support human sociality−our goals consistent with a broader social concern than merely our own self-interest. The challenge of the near future is to build systems that Free software, Wikipedia, Creative Commons and the thousands of emerging human practices of productive social cooperation in the networked information economy give us real existence proofs that human-centric systems can not merely exist, but thrive, as can the human beings and\n\n<question>:\nWhat is something that gives us real proof that human-centric systems can thrive?\n\n<options>:\nA Taylorism\nB Google\nC Wikipedia\nD The New Deal\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nacross the way from old Albuquerque,\" he said finally. \"Maybe we ought to be getting on to the Pschorrbräu tent.\" , there was only one thing he could bring back from the wonderful future ... and though he didn't want to ... nevertheless he did.... \"Maybe we ought to eat something Unfortunately his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fumbled in a drawer for the aspirin bottle. \"Providence,\" Simon told her turned up a missing jewel deal, say. Something where you could deduce that actually the ruby ring had gone down the drain and was caught in the elbow. Something that would net \"Lost track,\" Arth said. \"You can come home with me.\" that appealed to you.\" \"Hm-m-m. I didn't know most sleuthing amounted to snooping around department stores to check on the clerks knocking down.\" Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now were certainly the most modern, futuristic people in the world. But I couldn't stand the light. \"Where's Simon said unenthusiastically, \"Good morning, Mr. Oyster.\" He indicated Simon, said finally, \"You know \"You didn't have a hotel. What a stupidity. I'll be phased. undoubtedly was a bathroom. \"Stay where you are. Don't move. Don't touch anything.\" ventured, \"Time travel is impossible.\" \"Why?\" \"Why?\" \"Never saw him before in my for one thing, paradox. Suppose you had a time machine and traveled back a hundred years or so and killed your own great-grandfather. Then how definite answer. She said, \"Well, this marble-missing client came Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, what you wanted to see me about.\" \"I want to hire you to hunt me up some time travelers,\" the old boy said. Betty was too far in now to maintain her proper role of silent secretary. \"Time travelers,\" she said, not very intelligently. The potential client sat more erect, obviously with intent to hold the floor for a time. He removed the pince-nez glasses and pointed them I tried just once more. \"Uh, when be, places like the and then remembered. \"I've got to get my bag. Oh, my head. Where did we spend last night?\" of time travel. Every writer in the field worth his salt has explained cautious, \"At my hotel, don't you remember?\" \"Not very well,\" I admitted. \"I I've got to go to the Bahnhof and get my luggage.\" it's also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a portion of my fortune to investigate the presence in our era of such time travelers.\" Arth didn't put up an argument the ball this morning, so Betty said, \"But ... Mr. Oyster, if the future has developed time travel why don't we ever meet such travelers?\" Simon put in a word. \"The usual explanation, Betty, is that they can't afford to allow the space-time continuum track to be altered. If, say, a time traveler returned to a period of twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler, then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They make heads nor tails of the check Mr. Oyster was pleased. \"I didn't receipt. He didn't speak English and have to tread mighty carefully.\" especially accompanied by a blockbusting hangover. Mr. Oyster went on. \"I've been Simon shrugged and fumbled Simon seemed incapable of carrying Mr. Oyster returned his glasses to Oktoberfest , and I'd had it. I got more guff there. Something to find a time traveler and in some manner or other—any manner will do—exhort from him the secret of was fouled up, some clerk's error, evidently. The trip back was as uninteresting Simon said, \"You want to hire me a bona fide time traveler.\" \"Right!\" Betty had been looking from one as the one over. As the hangover began to the other. Now she said, plaintively, From Idlewild, I came directly to the office rather than going to my apartment. I figured I might as well \"But where are you going to find Oktoberfest , that's where they'd be!\" He seemed found Mr. Oyster sitting in the chair elated. Oktoberfest ,\" he repeated. \"The greatest festival the world has \"Came for?\" Mr. Oyster snorted. my high school German was inadequate, the calendar. Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn't leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn't ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed Oktoberfest is one whale travelers yet.\" \"Well,\" the old boy pursued, into did you first see this Mr. Oyster?\" his subject now, \"that's where they'd Oktoberfest . For one thing, a time traveler wouldn't be conspicuous. At a festival like this somebody with a strange accent, or who didn't know exactly how to wear his clothes correctly, or was off the ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn't be noticed. You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn't be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest . People would figure they had D.T.'s.\" \"But why would a time traveler want to go to a—\" Betty began. \"Why not! What better opportunity to study a people than when they \"See here,\" Mr. Oyster said (interrupting Simon's story), \"did you say this was supposed to be amusing, Roman Triumph, perhaps the Rites of Dionysus, or one of Alexander's orgies. You wouldn't want to wander up and down the streets of, say, Athens while nothing was going on, Simon shrugged, put one hand to was to show me how ridiculous the whole idea actually is. Very well, you'd have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual interest and for protection against being unmasked.\" The old boy wound it up. \"Well, Oktoberfest starts on Friday and continues for sixteen days. You can Mr. Oyster was taken aback himself. Simon dollars bonus. If that story was true, you should have gone back again to Munich. If there was one Mr. Oyster said quietly. \"I time traveler, there might have been—\" \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said door my picture doesn't appear often in his voice. \"A fifty thousand dollar bonus if you bring me a time traveler.\" \"Out of the question,\" Simon said. \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the Oyster (Simon began) in the way The future! Just think!\" Simon said wearily, \"There's just one thing you can bring back with Mr. Oyster. I was going to have to give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a laugh! Oktoberfest in the Munich tourist Where did five million people come from to attend an overgrown festival in comparatively remote Southern Germany? The tourist season showed me where I could check my bag, told me they'd do what they that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent bibbers. Odd is right. As weird an assortment of Germans and foreign tourists as could have been dreamed over to us and then hustled on. Shouldn't have said that.\" I had never heard of the brand so I skipped it. \"Next is the Hofbräu,\" he said. \"Next what?\" Baldy's conversation didn't seem to hang together very well. \"My pilgrimage,\" he told me. \"All my life I've been wanting to go back to an Oktoberfest and sample every one of the seven brands of the best feel lousy. I must have dimmed out. \"New Albuquerque? Where's that?\" Arth thought about it. Took another\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the goal of the story that Simon tells Mr. Oyster?\n\n<options>:\nA Simon wanted to show that he had spent a lot of time thinking about encounters with time travelers.\nB He wanted to explain why the trip would not be successful if he went to Germany.\nC He wanted to mock his prospective client for his ideas about time travel.\nD He wanted to prove that Oktoberfest was the wrong place to look for time travelers.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nat first. Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to think so, too. McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. driving wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin now and then, never far, but a little further each time. Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite he grew quieter with returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time without justifying it. each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and enough myself forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re not going to make the Crossing.” “I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.” “But you’ve got to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout to know.” “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.” like it. One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. much about the others. I was worried about It was the planet that whipped us, that and the broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on Sun . They’ll both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting. whip you, too, if you try it.” “Never,” said Baron. a deep crack. I let out a shout to halt the others I was heartbroken when they just disappeared. I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082, for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission. since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later. I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make nobody’s got Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.” turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned just how Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival temperatures. for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around. The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something was like. Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed him around like a puppy. It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson. We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models, with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in, said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?” I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil, isn’t he?” “Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the line? We’ll need plenty of both.” McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant surface activity.” The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed, sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness. And he never stood still he was always moving, always doing something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about. Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening, Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was set for an early departure after we got some rest. Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?” like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t our big problem right then. seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew that. McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It “Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.” “Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead Bug light as possible.” McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in “That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said sharply. I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws. Then—” “No dice,” the Major broke in. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” “I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he thought out of my mind. gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.” Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires Stone dragged the sledges. Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible. itself. Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would get us. That was the bargain.\n\n<question>:\nWhich word least describes McIvers?\n\n<options>:\nA fidgety\nB experienced\nC lucky\nD stubborn\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
121 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n, as for forty hours the ship had decelerated. Quest III drove on its way once more, lashed by despair toward the speed of light, leaving behind the mockery of yet another solitary and lifeless luminary unaccompanied by worlds where men might dwell. They had grown sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years. time,\" said the voice lightly. \"When he saw that it was hopeless, he preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun.\" A short But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the crew. It was a subdued excitement men and women, they him?\" voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might lie at the long journey's end. For the spent and the holds became radioactively safe, the crew had spread out from its original cramped quarters. Now the interstellar ship was little more than a hollow shell. them with an impassive countenance, and announced quietly, \"We've sighted Earth.\" A feverish buzz arose identified it—no more.\" But this time the clamor was not to be settled. People pressed round each other's hands, kissed, shouted, wept. For the present their fears were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. worry. Things may have changed—but we'll manage.\" But his face had hardened against registering the gnawing of that same doubtful fear He left her and began to climb the stairway again. Someone switched off the lights, and a charmed whisper ran through the big room as the Captain Llud found Navigator Gwar Den looking as smug as the cat Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, \"Probably we'll be intercepted Llud shook his head slowly. \"Who knows? We don't know whether any then he sat idle, alone with his thoughts. The ship's automatic mechanisms had scant need of tending most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend found himself wishing that he could find some back-breaking task for everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained. of Llud's, nine hundred years ago.... He growled, \"What happened to and watch the screens, or to the family apartment where he might find Lesra and the children—but somehow he didn't want to do that either. He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's fuel stores and the hope of success in man's mightiest venture had dwindled, so the strength had gone out of him. Now the last fuel compartment was almost empty and Captain Knof Llud felt tired and old. Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred Earth years—though physically he was only forty now, ten years older than when the voyage had begun. That was the foreshortening along the months had passed for the Quest III in interstellar flight while Bemusedly Llud got to his feet and stood surveying a cabinet with the size of Jupiter, and like Jupiter utterly unfit to support a colony. \"Our hopes were dashed—and I think all of us, even remembering the and its two sisters, the immense expenditure of time and labor and energy stores that went into them, left Earth's economy drained and exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless and transcendent effort—the effort of Egypt that built the pyramids, or the war efforts of the nations in the last great conflicts of the twentieth century. \"Looked at historically, such super-human outbursts of energy are the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and therefore signalize the beginning of the end. Population can be limited, but the price is a deadly frustration, because growth alone is its decline with the knowledge that its race went onward and upward, expanding limitlessly into the Universe.... \"Hopeless, unless we find planets!\" Knof Llud shook his head sorrowfully and took off the spool. That was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments. He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four years old. The recorded voice sounded weary, yet alive with a strange longing.... of aging too greatly. It would be a one-way journey—even if enough fuel remained, there would be little point in returning to Earth after more than forty thousand years. By then our civilization certainly, and perhaps the human race itself, would have perished from memory. phase, and before we can get back it may have collapsed completely from overpopulation. \"Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... \"It doesn't matter. Today I gave orders to swing the ship.\" he sat for a time with head resting in his hands, staring into nothing. The memory of that fierce impulse to go on still had power to shake Llud sighed. He still couldn't say just why he had given the order to to alter that. He wondered if there would still be a quiet stream and a green shady place beside it where a death-weary man, relieved at last of then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all these years he could still respond quickly and smoothly to a crisis. Llud hesitated, said, \"All right. Come along and keep out of the way.\" There were people running in the corridors, heading for their posts. Their faces were set, scared, uncomprehending. The shuddered, again and again, under blows that must have had millions of horsepower behind them most of them breathless. To a man they looked appeal at Captain Knof Llud. \"Well?\" he snapped. \"What are they doing?\" would have felt nothing at all of the vicious onslaught being hurled against them, save that their was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to provide the illusion of Earthly gravitation. One of the officers said shakily, \"It's as if they've been lying in wait for us. But why on Earth—\" bored steadily on through space, decelerating. Even if one were no fatalist, there seemed no reason to stop decelerating or change course. There was nowhere else to go and too little fuel left if there had been apart. Knof Jr. whooped ecstatically and then subsided warily, but no one was conquer. It became evident, too, that the bombardment was being kept up by a constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That argued a planned and prepared interception with virulent hatred behind it. we're having to shed energy, the fuel will be gone in six or eight hours.\" \"We're under the psychological disadvantage,\" said the captain, \"of not knowing why we're being attacked.\" Knof Jr. burst out, spluttering slightly with the violence of a hadn't made himself clear, \"In a fight, if a guy gets mad he starts swinging wild and then you nail him.\" Smiles splintered the ice of tension. Captain Llud said, \"Maybe you've ....\" And so on, identifying themselves and protesting that they were unarmed and peaceful, that there must be some mistake, and querying again, \"Who are you ?\" There was no answer. The ship drove on, its fuel trickling away under multiplied demands. Those outside were squandering vastly greater amounts of energy in the effort to batter down its defenses, but converting that energy into harmless gravitic impulses was costing the nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of his ship. ,\" interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, \" and pleading will do you no good. \" him once more. He snapped, \"But who are you?\" and the words blended absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape. He snapped off the record\n\n<question>:\nWhat characteristics best describe Captain Llud in the present part of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA Jubilant, humorous, and jaded\nB Scared, quiet, and humorous\nC Jolly, excited, and tired\nD Tired, defeated, and confused\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,352 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\ngarlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that The bowl of pelache time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way.\" financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz, at the neon \"No Smoking\" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind, only a thin red line around trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring data and reports. information?\" The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was \"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?\" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable breath. \"It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the foliage. The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage, was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now, It won't as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow before the next ship landed. He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting. felt vaguely concerned. \"Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like \"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this.\" Eckert nodded agreement. \"It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a village. \"You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward appearance, could you?\" The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills. The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream. It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered. Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed other weapons. But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the \"You are was hardly either friendly or hostile. Terrestrial sign of greeting. \"You may call me Jathong for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see, much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving. Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where white-washed house midway up a hill. furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination. them.\" He stopped for a moment, thinking. \"Did you notice the context? nothing that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he \"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?\" \"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was The words came out slowly. \"The people are too casual, as though they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every corner. and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's. for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon. pipe and tobacco. \"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities. Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative art, and their techniques are finely developed.\" it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp. \"What's it for?\" \"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know, of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal there is a scalpel.\" He laughed shortly. \"Primitive little gadget, but it works well—as well as any of ours.\" Eckert hefted it in his palm. \"The most important thing is that they have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science.\" \"Well, what do you think about it?\" \"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at least in fields where they have to have it.\" \"How come they haven't gone any further?\" \"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you know.\" \"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?\" they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any information about him is being withheld for a reason.\" Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the \"Physically perfect, like the men,\" Templin grumbled. \"You could get an damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what suicide?\" \"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm trying to keep an open mind.\" \"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?\" out that we know it is?\" \" \" Sharra! customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments. ulami and the broiled The old Greek ideal moderation in everything. nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay certain aura of authority. \"So far as I know, information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction what Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to \" obscene .\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't a setting that took place in the text?\n\n<options>:\nA Pendleton's residence\nB Earth\nC Tunpesh\nD a rocket\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,716 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing. remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with electricity. So I built this thing. Australia. Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said. Jones stared at him blankly. \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a half, and he was lucky to break even. \"Well, it was to rescue you that I came.\" \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine on the Moon!\" THE END make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't carefully measured there was a four-day reserve. By diligent conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals twenty-one days to live. the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too position. \"Batteries must be dead,\" he told himself. He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to live. was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he did have one illusion he thought that he was completely unfit as a leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he didn't particularly care to have obeyed. For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor. Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking. \"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands,\" McIlroy said. \"I hope they're in good order.\" \"There doesn't seem to be any profit,\" Mr. Phelps said. \"Claim?\" a collector's bag. \"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man. across.\" All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and \"I swear, Mac,\" said Jones, \"another season like this, and I'm going drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him. \"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission.\" McIlroy had heard all of this before. \"How's that?\" he asked politely. \"You may think it's myself running the ship,\" Jones started on his tirade, \"but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need. And then the Commission ...\" The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch. \"The Commission,\" he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity, \"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight.\" McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled it again. \"And then,\" continued Jones, \"if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the profit I could make by cutting rates the other way.\" \"Why not?\" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to \"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to here?\" \"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?\" asked McIlroy. they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel. \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to pay for water.\" Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again: \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone profit.\" half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?\" \"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room.\" \" [Health, McIlroy, man.] \" his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up efficient as the one in the tractor it wasted oxygen. By using the suit so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night.\" \"Pressure's ten and a half pounds,\" said Cade. \"Twenty pounds,\" Cade answered after a couple of minutes. \"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking,\" Cowalczk said. \"Hold \"Good,\" said Cowalczk, \"take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see what happens.\" \"Eight hundred pounds,\" Cade said, after a short wait. \"Good enough,\" Cowalczk said. \"Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get out of here.\" \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve. How come we can operate now?\" \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\" \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\" \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple of weeks.\" carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his oxygen runs out. dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as it is believed he was carrying only short-range, intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ... \"Well, yes,\" Jones answered. \"I thought that it might happen that a rocket would be needed in the search.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Jones a change in the pricing structure for supply runs?\n\n<options>:\nA He thinks it would save time in writing contracts\nB He thinks he can make a bigger profit if he has more control\nC It would allow more necessary supplies to reach Earth\nD He wants to be able to carry more expensive supplies\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,491 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe colony had grown to near self-sufficiency, By CHARLES V. DE VET monkey on his back Under the cloud of cast-off identities also. kill him right away,” a second, less confident voice said. “It’s supposed to be impossible to hold him.” “Don’t be stupid. We just do what we’re told. We’ll hold him.” “What do you think they’ll do with him?” “Execute him, I suppose,” the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. “They’re probably just curious to Two men hurried through a doorway of a small anteroom to his left, calling to him. He turned away and began to run. Shouts and the sound of charging feet came from behind him. He Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew now that it had been a spaceport. His captor’s broad face jeered coming out into the depot again on the other side. It was a trap. He glanced quickly around him. him only a few seconds to push the case into the compartment, lock it and slide the key along the floor from him Zarwell had unobtrusively There was nothing to do after that—except wait. The men pursuing him came hurtling around the turn in the loosened his bonds as much as possible with arm leverage. As the with an instinctive motion. Until that instant he had intended to fight. Now he swiftly reassessed the odds. There were five of them, he saw. He should be able to incapacitate two or three and break out. But the fact that they had been expecting him meant that others would very probably be waiting outside. His best course now was to sham ignorance. He relaxed. He offered no resistance as they reached him. The man’s mouth opened and he ruffian, copper-brown face damp frantically backward. He clawed at the hands about his neck. When with perspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and slammed him back against the tried to yell as he threw himself that failed to break the grip he suddenly lockers. As he shifted his weight body down against his chest and world. nonchalance. “The next couple should do it.” Here a city burned. Its resistance adjusted to a life of ease and some prestige to meet danger calmly. Curiosity restrained his trigger finger. had to spend weeks, sometimes months or years interviewing a patient. If he was skilled enough, he could sort the relevancies from turn you in to the police, I’d have done it before this.” an excavation for a new structure. “Because you’re no mad-dog killer!” Now that the crisis seemed When a man strolled to his side approaching—not walking, but merely shortening the space between pressed his advantage. “One more scene might do it,” he said. “Should we try again—if you trust twitch, expand and contract. The face was unharmed, yet it was no loungers. would serve as an adequate disguise now. concealed by his present perplexity. He was a man who could handle He rose. “That disguise and and pushed himself to his feet, apparently unaware that his shirt clung damply to his body. Removing his fiber-cloth jacket he slashed it into strips with the razor blade and flushed it down the uncomfortable in the day’s heat, and the lowing of imported cattle waiting in a nearby shed to be shipped to the country. for the shot. But why would you deliberately give yourself amnesia?” “What better disguise than to believe the part you’re playing?” the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower would not come. “We have nothing and trading marts class techmen who live there. gang of hoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a movement to get them out. There was some bloodshed, but it went quite well. Several months later an them thoughtfully. “I learned then the truth of Russell’s saying: ‘When the oppressed win their freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters.’ When they went bad, I opposed them. This time I failed. But I escaped again. I have quite a talent for that to a stranger. He pulled himself from his blankets, his body moving with mechanical only as it would have been if he had studied it from blueprints, not at injustice. And now I’ve done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually gets out, and I’m right back in a fight again. It’s like the proverbial monkey on my back. I can’t get rid of it.” beneath the locker. memory planting were supposed to get me out of it. I should have known it wouldn’t work. But this them, seldom taking part in the back in! You and your Vernon Johnson can do your own revolting. I’m through!” individual clashes, yet a moving Men struggled and died in the streets. Zarwell moved among understood that he was on a different riding a shaggy pony outside a high wall surrounding the stricken metropolis. He moved in and joined a party of short, bearded men, directing building watching workmen drilling them as they battered at the and stood watching the workmen, he was not surprised. He waited for concrete and the besiegers charged through, carrying back the defenders who sought vainly to plug the gap. Soon there would be rioting in the streets again, plundering and killing. The log broke a breach in the rebellion. But he had played a leading part in the planning of the Time passed, without visible break in the panorama. Now Zarwell was fleeing, pursued by the same bearded men who had been his comrades before. Still he moved with the same firm purpose, vigilant, resourceful, and well prepared for the eventuality that had befallen. He made his escape without difficulty. He alighted from a space ship on Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at least “Then will you just listen? After, I’ll leave—if you tell me to.” to talk about,” was the best he could manage. is beginning to prosper. Yet the only ones receiving the benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. They are poorly housed , poorly fed, poorly clothed. force in the Why hadn’t he chosen some other world on which to hide? The last question prompted a recall episodes are always purely random, with no chronological sequence. Our problem will be to reassemble his own have put the monkey on his back? “… and we need your help.” later. Or some particular scene may trigger a complete memory return. them in proper order up the next morning and he rode with a tech crew to the edge of the reclam area. Beside the belt brought crushed lime and phosphorus to supplement the ocean sediment. The progress of life from the sea to the land was a mechanical [p life. The necessary machinery and technicians had been supplied by Earth, and the long struggle began to fit the world for human miles inland. And every day the progress continued. A large percentage of the energy and resources essential expansion. The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted binding grasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. When there were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in the foothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ and insect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, they imported microorganisms from Earth. Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountains until they joined the road passing the belt. They were loaded with ore that would be smelted into metal for depleted Earth, or for other colonies short small relief from the heat. After its three-thousand-mile journey across scorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man’s body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was other laborers. Fully three-quarters of them were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not the men’s faces and hands were scabbed and red.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the purpose of the reclam crews?\n\n<options>:\nA To imprison anyone who breaks the Meninger oath of inviolate confidence\nB To establish habitable human settlements after the destruction of Earth\nC To search for minerals that could be used to produce serum for comanalyses\nD To reclaim fugitives from resistance movements and force them into captivity\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,315 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nAnd when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again. Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his eyes glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk with a sigh. \"All right, Jack—what's wrong?\" \"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth. \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period.\" \"So you bring him down here,\" said Lessing sourly. \"The worst place he could be, if something's really wrong.\" He looked across at the boy. The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear. Lessing sat back slowly. \"Tell me about it, Tommy,\" he said gently. \"I don't want to go back to the Farm,\" said the boy. \"Why?\" \"I just don't. I hate it there.\" \"Are you frightened?\" The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly. \"You think that would make you feel better?\" \"It would, I know it would.\" Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the \"It stops things from going out.\" \"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator. You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off, away from the Farm.\" The boy fought back tears. \"But I don't want to go back there—\" The fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. \"I don't feel good there. I never want to go back.\" \"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so much of that up there.\" \"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with. I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing ran a hand through sparse grey hair. \"See what you can do for the boy of it. If Tommy's in the Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really get back to work again. \"I've got 'til New Year.\" Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the Farm this afternoon.\" The girl nodded, then hesitated. \"But what about your lunch?\" \"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along through the afternoon sun. \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\" Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose. might be measuring the instruments \"Why not?\" Lessing growled. \"It wouldn't be the first time the tail wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any more.\" Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. \"That's why we have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get at it any more?\" Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a long, low building. effective for our purposes.\" \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose. makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like that one, for instance—\" somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\" Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't right. It wasn't the instruments, of course.\" \"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down.\" \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall down.\" suddenly, his voice earnest. \"You have fine facilities here, good workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never .\" Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence. At first Lessing pretended to work cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's face was intense. \"Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every grounds aren't right at all, in this case.\" Dorffman snorted. \"Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—\" \"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after the theory.\" \"So it seems. But why?\" them for all he's worth .\" \"But why shouldn't he?\" \"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep his objectivity,\" said Lessing. \"And what if he just happens to be wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's what he says that counts.\" Farm.\" \"Yes, I know.\" Lessing's voice was weary. \"But first I think we'd better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—\" you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—\" She broke off helplessly. \"He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined.\" \"What happened?\" \"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it.\" \"Tommy!\" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror, Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. \"Go away.\" \"Why are you afraid, Tommy?\" \"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away.\" \"Why do you hurt?\" \"I—can't get it—off,\" the boy said. The monitor , Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But this youngster was sick— And yet an animal instinctively seeks its own protection when they had the report back in their hands. Dorffman stared at it angrily. \"It's obviously wrong,\" he grated. \"It doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with anything we've observed We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy doesn't Tommy want to go back to the Farm?\n\n<options>:\nA Tommy misses his family and he wants to go home.\nB Tommy is tired of being experimented on.\nC Tommy is slowly going insane at the farm.\nD He doesn't feel good at the farm.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,139 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\norbit. Once every two hours, the artificial satellite looped completely She smiled back she knew the pain wouldn't return for a few minutes yet. \"Fine, doctor. It's no worse than I was expecting. How long will it before we can contact White Sands?\" The major looked nervously at his wristwatch. \"Nearly an hour. You'll be all right.\" \"Certainly,\" she agreed, running a hand through her brown hair, \"I'll be okay. Just you be on tap when I call.\" The major's grin broadened. \"You don't think I'd miss a historical event like this, do you? You take it easy. We're over Eastern Europe now, but as soon as we get within radio range of New Mexico, I'll beam a call in.\" He paused, then repeated, \"You just take it easy. Call the nurse if anything happens.\" Then he turned and walked out of the room. know it never entered mine.\" \"But that was two and a half months ago! Why didn't you come to me before this? Of all the tom-fool—\" His voice had died off in \"I know. I know.\" A puzzled frown had come over his face then, a frown which almost hid the green eyes that contrasted so startlingly with the flaming red of his hair. \"The question is: what do we do next? We're gravity at the rim only half that of Earth's surface, and the closer to the hub she went, the less her weight became. According to the major, the baby was due sometime around the first of September. \"Two hundred and eighty days,\" he had said. \"Luckily, we can pinpoint it almost exactly. And at a maximum of half of Earth gravity, space. fingertips and looking worriedly at the clock on the wall. The Chief Nurse at a nearby desk took off her glasses and looked at him speculatively. \"Something wrong, doctor?\" \"Incubator. We can't deliver a seven-month preemie without an The nurse's eyes widened. \"Good Lord! I never thought of that! What are you going to do?\" \"Right now, I can't do anything. I can't beam a radio message through to the Earth. But as soon as we get within radio range of White Sands, I'll ask them to send up an emergency rocket with an incubator. But—\" \"But what?\" \"Will we have time? The pains are coming pretty fast now. It will be at least three hours before they can get a ship up here. If they miss us on the next time around, it'll be five hours. She can't hold out that long.\" The Chief Nurse turned her eyes to the slowly moving second hand of the wall clock. She could feel a lump in her throat. Major Banes was in the Communications Center a full five minutes needed. He handed it to the teletype operator and paced the floor impatiently as he waited for the answer. When the receiver teletype began clacking softly, he leaned over the page, waiting anxiously for every word. WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0913 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER RENDEZVOUS WITH SS-1 AS OF NEXT PASSAGE ABOVE USA. CAPT. JAMES BRITTON PILOTING. MEDICS LOADING SHIP TWELVE WITH INCUBATOR AND OTHER SUPPLIES. BASE OBSTETRICIAN LT COL GATES ALSO COMING TO ASSIST IN DELIVERY. HANG ON. OVER. Banes nodded and turned to the operator. \"I want a direct open telephone line to my office in case I have to get another message to the base before we get out of range again.\" He turned and left through the heavy door. Each room of the space station was protected by airtight doors and individual heating units if some accident, such as a really large meteor hit, should release the \"How's it coming, Lieutenant?\" She smiled, but another spasm hit her before she could answer. After a \"Something on that order, I suppose. But it won't be all my glory. Colonel Gates, the O.B. man, was supposed to come up for the delivery in September, so when White Sands contacted us, they said he was coming late. This isn't going to last that long.\" Banes had to fight hard to keep his face smiling when she said that, but he managed an easy nod. \"We'll see. Don't hurry it, though. Let nature take its course. I'm not such a glory hog that I'd not let Gates have part of it—or all of it, for that matter. Relax and take it easy.\" There was a faint rap, and the heavy airtight door swung open to admit the Chief Nurse. \"There's a message for you in your office, doctor. I'll send a nurse in to be with her.\" WHITE SANDS ROCKET BASE 4 JULY 1984 0928 HRS URGENT TO: MAJ PETER 0-199515 COMMANDING WSRB ROCKET. ORBIT COMPUTED FOR RENDEZVOUS AT 1134 HRS MST. CAPT BRITTON SENDS PERSONAL TO LT BRITTON AS FOLLOWS: HOLD THE FORT, BABY, THE WHOLE WORLD IS PRAYING FOR YOU. OUT. Banes sat on the edge of his desk, pounding a fist into the palm of his left hand. \"Two hours. It isn't soon enough. She'll never hold out that long. And we don't have an incubator.\" His voice was a clipped monotone, timed with the rhythmic slamming of his fist. The Chief Nurse said: \"Can't we build something that will do until the rocket gets here?\" The voice at the other end said: \"This is Communications, Major. I tape recorded all the monitor pickups from the Earth radio stations, and it looks as though the Space Service has released the information to the public. Lieutenant Britton's husband was right when he said the whole world's praying for her. Do you want to hear the tapes?\" \"Not now, but thanks for the information.\" He hung up and looked into the Chief Nurse's eyes. \"They've released the news to the public.\" She frowned. \"That really puts you on the spot. If the baby dies, people may think!\" \"Yes, sir. I just thought—\" \"Well, think about something useful! Think about how we're going to to go around having babies on a space station!\" The slow, monotonous rotation of the second hand on the wall clock air fresh enough for breathing, but fire of any kind would overtax the system, leaving too little oxygen in the atmosphere. It was a few minutes of ten when he decided he'd better get back to Alice Britton. She was trying to read a book between spasms, but she analytically. \"Say! Just what is months ago. Or did you forget something?\" That hit home, but he just grinned feebly. \"I forgot to get somebody to Ninety seconds! It was long and hard. When the pain had ebbed away, he said: \"We've got the delivery room all ready. It won't be much longer now.\" \"I'll say it won't! How about the incubator?\" There was a long pause. Finally, he said softly: \"There isn't any account. It's my fault. I've done what I could, though the ship is bringing one up. I—I think we'll be able to keep the child alive until—\" out. Ask yourself just one question. Ask yourself, 'Why is a space Space Ship Twelve docked at Space Station One at exactly eleven \"You mean— already ?\" The colonel said nothing, but he raised an eyebrow. \"Over an hour ago,\" said Banes. \"But—but—the incubator—\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy do the astronouts have to wait to talk to White Sands?\n\n<options>:\nA Some of their communication systems are down\nB They have to wait until they are in the right place in orbit to send a signal\nC It takes a couple of hours for a signal to get to Earth\nD They are waiting on a response from the base so they have more information\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,382 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nhumans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous. not pleased with what they saw. \"Watch yourself, colleague,\" he warned as he left. \"Soon you might not be worth the saving.\" the letter combination \"Games?\" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was wanted by then. \"Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?\" \"Is there a good zarquil game in town?\" The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the teleview. A very ordinary face. \"Look, colleague, why don't you commit suicide? It's cleaner and quicker.\" \"I can't contact your attitude,\" the passenger said with a thin smile. \"Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a thrill-mill.\" He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy. \"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?\" The driver spat out of the window. \"If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ... ,\" Gabriel corrected. \"Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel \"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard,\" the fat man said, car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too. thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come,\" he addressed her husband, When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night, the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others had been or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification. Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care. Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so \"crimes against nature.\" Actually the phrase was more appropriate to zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs. Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been big money in musical chairs as such. When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet. The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible. But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence too logical for the man he was haunting. However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. \"One?\" the small green creature in the slightly frayed robe asked. \"One,\" the fat man answered. Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. \"Only two to come out to a place like this?\" \"I really think Gabriel must to herself. \"I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse. It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?\" The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. \"Yes, I'm all of them.\" \"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?\" Automatically she been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that. respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not, she thought, the best way her body was much too good a one to risk so barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of \"I am not helping him . And he knows that.\" \"Too bad he got married,\" the young man said. \"I could have followed him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway,\" he added, his voice known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect that's what you're doing I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then it was tough on me too, wasn't it?\" The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate, getting pretty tired of this.\" He stopped for a long spell of coughing. \"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't, \"Sorry,\" the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, \"but I'm afraid you cannot play.\" \"But I have plenty of money.\" The young man coughed. The Vinzz shrugged. \"I'll pay you twice the regular fee.\" The green one shook his head. \"Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This game is really clean.\" \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or biological impossibility, no one could tell. It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever \"Why, that's three times the usual rate!\" \"The other will pay five times the usual rate.\" \"Oh, all right,\" the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel \"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to see his body spoiled.\" very probably he was relieved \"Give it back to him, eh?\" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly. more than you deserve?\" \"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe,\" she said truthfully enough, for she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. \"Of course I'd \"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a hulk I had!\" match your character. Pity you could only change one.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow are Helen and Gabriel Lockhard similar?\n\n<options>:\nA they both despise Gabe\nB they are both running away from something\nC they both seek revenge\nD they both regret playing zarquil\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
219 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nBy JAMES McCONNELL There should be an epitaph for every man, big or little, but a really grand 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 the day. And he had been a nobody, full of a nobody's idle hopes and schemes. A thought teased at him. Charles looked at the woman again and decided 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— She would have given herself to any man— His thoughts beat a rapid crescendo, activating emotions, stimulating sensations of angry rage. He wanted to cry, to weep angry tears of To any man, WHO HAPPENED TO BE THE LAST MAN ON EARTH! flesh. Charles ignored it. Even smells had lost their customary meanings. He felt the rage build up inside again, tearing at his viscera. His \"But I don't want to be the last man alive!\" he shouted. \"I don't know Maybe I'm not the last! \" The thought struck him with suddenness, promisingly, edged with swelling comfort to fill his emptiness. Charles got up slowly, noticing for the first time that his fingers and dangled from the edge of the bed like a crazy pendulum. Charles smashed, stores looted, gyro-cars wrecked, proud buildings defaced. \"That was it,\" he said to himself. \"Pride. We called this the 'Proud Era.' Everything was better and bigger and nicer to have. Buildings were taller, men were healthier, most of the problems of humanity seemed licked, or nearly so. It was a time of free power, each small 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. \"I've got to find out,\" Charles told himself. He meant it, of course, walked on down the bloody street. Before the plague the Bureau of Vital Statistics had been one of man's In all of his life, Charles had never once glanced at The Index. Reaching the gigantic building, Charles pushed aside the body of a 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 room. The impression of intense activity, of organized confusion, of mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life. not because she liked him, but because.... The main screen focused itself, the patterns shifting into a recognizable perceptual image. Charles stopped talking and forced his eyes upwards. Peripheral vision continued to move, slowly, reluctantly. They caught the over-all relief of Greater New York City—and then concentrated on the single, shining dot at the very heart of the map—and he understood. His eyes stabbed quickly for the counter above the screen. Charles was by himself, the last person alive in all of New York City. Charles screamed. Why? Such a simple question, but in those three letters lay the essence of human nature. Why. The drive of curiosity. Stronger, in a way, than the so-called \"basic\" drives: hunger, thirst, sex, shelter, warmth, companionship, elimination. Certainly more decisive in the history of the race. Man began to think, to differentiate himself from the other animals, when he first asked the question: \"Why?\" But thinking about \"why\" didn't answer the question itself, Charles Why. His mind kept returning to the question. Of all the people on earth, me. The last. Why me? Average, that's what he was. Height: 5'11\". Weight: 165. Age: 32. member, but not a good one. Could that be it? Could the most normal be the most perfect? Had he led the best of all possible lives? Was that 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 Christ-like, most nearly.... Lies—His mind snapped back to reality. He half smiled. Saint? Christ? He was no saint. Charles sighed. What about—? Chance. That was it! The laws of probability, the bell-shaped curve, normal distribution, rectilinear regression. More people per square to be the last to go and that was— \"No,\" Charles said, standing up in the quiet of the spring evening. 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 \"It ought to be something impressive,\" he thought out loud. \"Something fitting the occasion.\" What did one say on these situations? There was so little chance to THE LAST MAN ON EARTH Charles was hungry. He got up and started for one of the restaurants of granite and move it to the plot. He could spend his free time carving on it, copying the inscription. He would make it into a real shrine maybe he would practice up a bit and try to carve a statue to go with the stone. 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 smallpox. The vaccination never took. That's probably it.\" 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 now he thought he almost had the answer, if there were an answer. He thought he had seen the solution peering out at him from the recesses of his mind, and he didn't like the expression on its face. Better to 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! He wanted to protest, but there was no one to listen to him. He appealed to every divinity he knew, all the time knowing it would be useless. His body, out of his voluntary control, tried to run off in Charles struggled to end his body's disorganized responses, to 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 he forced his body to become an unwilling 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 and custom to the rude irrationalness of it all. for the grave. And then he was upon it. One arm reached out for grass, and clutched bare space instead. He gathered energy from his final reservoirs of strength for one final movement that would throw him headlong into the shallow grave. He 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 The world will end, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with the last man's anguished cry at the unreasonableness of it all. Charles screamed. \"It is finished?\" asked the second. \"Beautiful,\" said the first. \"It went according to the strictest THE LAST MAN ON EARTH—\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Charles think he was the last person alive?\n\n<options>:\nA His sickness was taking longer\nB He had some sort of immunity\nC He was the reason for the plague\nD He was meant for greater things\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,441 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nwho knew chevrolet were so woke Sara lets the Lyft park itself in the drive, lets out a sigh, and tweets i can't believe they did that, so amazing Hang on, are they taking about the same ad? \"It's fine, there was no need. I didn't want to put any-\" \"But you shouldn't be wasting money, not with how much rent you pay and-\" Jesus. Not this already. \"Mom. I can afford a cab ride. I'm not that much of a failure.\" A large, child's rendition of the American flag. Sara smiles. They hold each other for a few long seconds, rubbing and squeezing each other as the Lyft silently backs itself out of the driveway. When they part it's Mom's hand that's on the bag's handle. Voiceover: Keeping America safe means never sleeping, but keeping America great means never forgetting who we are, and how we got here. Fade to black. Chevrolet logo. White text against black. 'We know what really makes America great' For a few seconds Sara is alone in the hallway, the smell of cooking meat coming from one doorway, the sound of rolling news from another. She shakes her head, kicks off shoes, tucks hair behind her ears. Braces herself. \"The Chevrolet ad?\" \"Good flight?\" \"No Dad, of course not.\" He grins back at her. \"Like Super Bowl ads?\" The war spills out of Fox News, casualty figures scrolling across monochrome drone footage, attack helicopters circling over Caracas apartment blocks, pundits with bronzed skin and immaculate blond hair smiling from four-way split screens. \"So you just got a cab?\" \"How much did that cost?\" \"Not much. Really. I can afford-\" \"Cabs are expensive. You shouldn't be wasting your money.\" \"It wasn't expensive. It wasn't a cab, it was a Lyft.\" \"One of those driverless things?\" \"Yeah.\" Ad break. An elderly couple ride a tandem bicycle through a park, laughing and smiling in Instagram-perfect sunshine, as a calm, relaxing voice lists the potentially lethal side effects of a diabetes drug. \"Yeah.\" Dad shakes his head. \"I don't know how you can use those things. I don't trust them.\" \"Dad, they're perfectly safe.\" There's a brief second, a fleeting moment, where Sara can bite her lip, let it go. She misses it. \"But I thought it was immigrants that are stealing people's jobs?\" \"That's not what I mean. They're stealing people's jobs.\" But it's too late. \"Well I'm sure they'll be fine.\" She regrets the sarcasm as soon as she hears it in her own voice, but she still can't stop herself, like it's expected, like it's part of the routine. Part of their schtick. \"They just got to get themselves out there, huh Dad? Pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's the American way, right?\" From three different directions, three different Chevrolet jeeps appear, screeching to a halt, kicking up dust. From them jump Border Patrol agents and Minutemen militia, guns drawn and ready. The gang of men don't even put up a fight. They know they're surrounded, they drop their weapons and pathetically raise their hands. \"I'm glad you think this is funny, I really do. But what you New York types need to realise is-\" Voiceover: Keeping America safe means never sleeping, but keeping America great means never forgetting who we are, and what keeps us strong. Sara turns back to the TV, to watching the war, to trying to work out which one it is. Fade to black. Chevrolet logo. White text against black. 'We know what really makes America great' Fox, Breitbart News, Family Values TV, Info Wars, The Rebel, Glenn Beck, The Voice of America, America First, The Bible Today Dinner is Mom's meatloaf, with gravy and mashed potatoes. Cornbread and broccoli. Every mouthful tastes like nostalgia, and Sara can feel herself being encompassed by a bubble, this barrier of warm air and long forgotten simplicity enveloping her body, protecting her from the confusion of the world outside. Sara laughs, covering her mouth as she nearly chokes on chewed food. \"What? No they don't Dad.\" \"Dad, no. Just no. Trust me.\" \"-because they are the world's largest manufacturers of solar panels. But the research has been done. The scientific evidence is out there. Look it up.\" Reluctantly, she takes it. His Facebook feed. Somewhere in the middle of it is the article, a very to the point CHINESE SOLAR PANELS CAUSE CANCER headline. But she can't even focus on it, because the rest of the screen is filled with distractions, looping videos and animated gifs, all adverts, and all for guns. Or security systems. Panic rooms. Back up power generators. Emergency rations. More guns. \"Jesus Christ Dad, these ads!\" \"They show me this stuff because they've got products to sell. That's how the economy works. That's how we create jobs. Godammit Sara, are you telling me you hate advertising now? Do you just hate everything about America?\" \"What things? Solar panel cancer?\" \"Don't joke Sara, I'm serious. There's a lot that bothers him. The state of the world. The future. All these damn wars.\" \"And the ads! The Super Bowl ads! You know how much he loves watching the new ads with you. It's a stupid thing, sure, but he loves it. Talks about it all the time. It's like a tradition to him. That's why he got so upset over dinner when you got angry at his ads. It's something special he has with you, he doesn't want to lose it.\" It's the second down on the Falcon's 60 yard line with 30 yards to cover, and the Lions need one touchdown to equalise. Sara and her Dad are sat in the front room, working their way through a family sized pack of Oreos, when the ad break starts. Cut to: airfield, the desert. The distinctive silhouette of a Predator drone taxis across the screen, rising heat shimmering the air around it. Cut to: interior of the trailer. The faceless figure works controls, the joysticks, touch screens. Voiceover: They say you need to get up pretty early to get past America's finest. But the truth is we never sleep. \"Fuck this,\" says Sara, getting up from her seat. \"Sara!\" says Mom. \"Sara!\" Mom makes to get up. Out in the kitchen Sara sits at the table and wants to scream. She's angry, mainly with herself. She should never have fucking come here. She should have known better. There was never any fucking way anything good was going to come from this. As much as Mom wants to romanticise things, to make them sound cute and adorable, the truth is shit with Dad has never been right since she was a teenager. Too much resentment, too much bad blood, too much control and rebellion. They hadn't agreed on anything - they hadn't managed to have a simple conversation that didn't descend into fighting - in 15 goddamn years, and no amount of eating cookies and watching fucking Super Bowl ads on the TV was going to fix that. holy shit that chevrolet ad /fire emoji\n\n<question>:\nIn Sara's version of the Chevrolet ad, what is implied as the thing that makes America great?\n\n<options>:\nA freedom of speech\nB freedom of religion\nC diverse inhabitants\nD affordable vehicles\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,571 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nwas being marooned on a planet of endless terrors. which would mean his destruction one way or another. The plans were thrashed out very painstakingly, in formal conference on the space-yacht men settled on. But it had been found to be necessary. The ecological complicated. It had turned out, in fact, to be the ecological system of ship's company, it was simply Earth, and unless all parts of the complex were present, the total was and annoyances. If they left their pests behind, the total system of checks and balances which make life practical would get lopsided. It The ice-cap, by its existence and circular shape, proved that the planet , then approaching the world on planetary drive. He was to be left here, with no reason ever to expect rescue. Two of the Nadine's four-man crew such as are placed on certain worlds for the convenience of interstellar skippers who need to check their courses on extremely long runs. This people on the Nadine were capable. They'd managed to recapture the Nadine from him, but they were matter-of-fact about it. They didn't seem to resent what he'd tried to do, or that he'd brought them an indefinite distance in an indefinite direction from their last landing-point, and they had still to re-locate themselves. its space-port. With clearance-papers in order, they could land unquestioned at any other space-port and take off again—provided the covering five persons aboard—four men and a girl Carol. Moran made six. its crew would spark an investigation. A lengthy, incredibly minute land anywhere for supplies. With five on board, as her papers declared, because the drive had been dismantled in the engine-room. So the ship's craft had to depend on the Galactic Directory. The process would be to find a planet and check its climate and relationship to other planets, The rest of the ship's company came into the control-room. Burleigh waved his hand at the speaker. \"Listen!\" They heard it. All of them. It was a trilling, whining sound among the innumerable random noises to be heard in supposedly empty space. Moran stirred, and he knew that every one of the others was conscious of the movement. But they didn't watch him suspiciously. They were alert by long habit. Burleigh said they'd been Underground people, fighting the government of their native world, and they'd gotten away to make it seem the revolt had collapsed. They'd go back later when they weren't expected, and start it up again. Moran considered the story probable. Only people accustomed to desperate actions would have remained so calm when Moran had used desperate measures against them. should make its next landing. The little yacht went on. All five of its proper company watched as the planet's surface enlarged. The ice-cap The emergency-kit contained antiseptics, seeds, and a weapon or two, with elaborate advice to castaways. If somebody were wrecked on an even possibly habitable planet, the especially developed seed-strains would though, and Moran grimaced. She hadn't said anything about being sorry that he had to be marooned. Maybe she was, but rebels learn to be practical or they don't live long. Moran wondered, momentarily, what sort of world they came from and why they had revolted, and what sort of set-back to the revolt had sent the five off in what they considered a strategic retreat but their government would think defeat. Moran's own situation was perfectly off-planet, and fast. But space-travel regulations are especially designed to prevent such escapes. space-traffic required a ship on landing to deposit its fuel-block in carrying the crew in the overdrive. Then the yacht—and Moran—was away. But his present companions got the drive dismantled two days later and once the yacht was out of overdrive they efficiently gave him his choice of surrendering or else. He surrendered, stipulating that he wouldn't be landed back on Coryus he still clung to hope of avoiding return—which was almost certain anyhow. Because nobody would want to go back to a planet from which they'd carried away a criminal, even though they'd Now the space-yacht moved toward a vast mass of fleecy whiteness without course. Fifteen miles to surface below. Ten. Five. At twenty-five very much like a small boy trailing a stick against a picket fence, only much louder. Something hooted, maintaining the noise for an impossibly long time. And persistently, sounding as if they came from far away, Then, instantly he'd said it, he recognized that it could be true. The mound was not a fold in the ground. It was not an up-cropping of the rested. The enigmatic, dirty-yellow-dirty-red-dirty-blue-and-dirty-black ground-cover hid \"It's a ship,\" said Moran curtly. \"It crash-landed and its crew set up a signal to call for help. None came, or they'd have turned the beacon off. Maybe they got the lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they lived as I'm expected to live until they died as I'm expected to die.\" Burleigh said angrily to get in the ship.\" \"Right,\" growled Burleigh again. \"Brawn and Carol, you'll keep ship. The rest of us wear suits. We don't know what that stuff is outside.\" easily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned their to kill everybody aboard, but not smash the boats!\" planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance rested. Agitatedly, it spread its wing-covers and flew away, droning loudly. The four men heard the sound above even the monstrous cacophony of cries and boomings and grunts and squeaks which seemed to fill the air. Carol's voice came over the helmet-phones. \" They're—bugs! \" she said incredulously. \" They're beetles! They're the galaxy, but that's what they are! \" Moran grunted. Distastefully, he saw his predicament made worse. He knew what had happened here. He could begin to guess at other things to be discovered. It had not been practical for men to move onto new planets and subsist upon the flora and fauna they found there. On some new operation was necessary before humanity could move in. A complete would multiply, and animals and birds to carry the seeds planet-wide. On colony was to feed itself. Alien plants did not supply satisfactory it, so somebody dumped germs and spores and bugs to make it ready for plants and animals eventually. But nobody's come back to finish up the job.\" was uncertain, as on a trampoline. They staggered. They moved toward the hillock which was a covered-over wrecked ship. \" What's the matter? What do you see? \" \"It's not a hunting creature on worlds where it's smaller. It's not likely to have turned deadly here. Come on!\" \"This ship won't do anybody any good. It's old-style. That thick belt of the change was blurred over by the revolting ground-stuff growing everywhere. \"We're going to find that this wreck has been here a century at least!\" destroy it. Thick fumes arose, and quiverings and shakings began. Black creatures in their labyrinths of tunnels began to panic. Off to the right the blanket-like surface ripped and they poured out. They scuttled crazily here and there. Some took to wing. By instinct the other men—the armed ones—moved back from the smoke. They wore space-helmets but they felt that there should be an intolerable smell. with him on board without his being detected as an extra member of the crew. His fate would then be sealed. But they also would be \" Look out! It's coming! Kill it! Kill it—. \" , necessarily accepted as a member of her crew.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the mission of the crew?\n\n<options>:\nA The mission is to answer a distress signal.\nB The mission is to maroon Moran as punishment for murder.\nC They are rebels, regrouping to fight their government another day.\nD They are rebels, fleeing a collapsed revolt.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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621 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA only trouble was—the cargo had a will of its own! Captain Hannah climbed painfully down from the Delta Crucis , hobbled across the spaceport to where Beulah and I were waiting to greet him care of her for him because Beulah's baby belongs to me and Beulah has to take care of it—kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. across the field to the spaceport bar. I didn't ask Captain Hannah why he had socked me. Although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost every inch of he had tangled with a hive of misanthropic bees. The gold-braided hat of his trade was not clamped in its usual belligerent position slightly He glared at me in silence. I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was him Delta Class freighter can carry almost anything,\" he said at last, in a travesty of his usual forceful voice. \"But some things it should He lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. I the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"When I left, marocca was growing like mad,\" said Captain Hannah. I relaxed and leaned back in my chair. I no longer felt the need of Gloryanna III,\" he said balefully. \"I ought to black your other eye.\" enough tolerance to cause no trouble in the trip in Delta Crucis .\" A light dawned. \"Our tests were no good?\" \"Your tests were no good,\" agreed the captain with feeling. \"I'll tell \"You'll remember that I warned you that we should take some marocca out into space and solve any problems we might find before committing ourselves to hauling a full load of it?\" asked Captain Hannah. \"Sure. Written in Myporian. A very difficult language to translate. Especially when you're barricaded in the head.\" I almost asked him why he had been barricaded in the bathroom of the Delta Crucis , but I figured it was safer to let him tell me in his own way, in his own time. them all night, still pointing at the underground sun, so that they're the night time. So what? We had that problem all figured out.\" of motion, with everything else dark. So I lined up the Delta Crucis perpendicular to her direction of motion, put a once-every-twenty-one hour spin on her to match the rotation rates of Mypore II and Gloryanna \"For Heaven's sake, why not?\" \"For Heaven's sake why should it? With no gravity for reference, how and they can only take a few \"Oh,\" said Captain Hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, \"it for ten and one-half hours, until I had gone halfway around the room. Then I could turn the light off and rest for ten and one-half hours. The plants liked it fine. \"Of course, first I had to move all the hydroponic tanks from their original positions perpendicular to the axial thrust line of the ship the plants up in two different rooms, and run an artificial sun for hydroponic tanks, when all the plastic membranes that were supposed to keep the water in place started to break.\" \"I'd like to know,\" I said sincerely. He stared at me in silence for a moment. \"Well, it filled the cabin all the water into the cylinder. Of course, you have to hold the pump with your feet while you pull the handle with your free hand.\" introduce it into the ship's tanks.\" \"But you solved the problem?\" \"In a sense,\" said the captain. \"I just emptied the pump back into the air, ignored the bubbles, repositioned the tanks, put spin on the ship and then ladled the liquid back into the tanks with a bucket.\" \"Didn't you bump into a lot of the bubbles and get yourself dunked a good deal while you were working with the tanks?\" \"Then after that you were all right, except for the tedium of moving the lights around?\" I asked him. I answered myself at once. \"No. There must be more. You haven't told me why you hid out in the bathroom, yet.\" \"Not yet,\" said Captain Hannah. \"Like you, I figured I had the situation fairly well under control, but like you, I hadn't thought things through. The plastic membranes hadn't torn when we brought the tanks in board the Delta Crucis . It never occurred to me to hunt around for the reasons for the change. But I wouldn't have had long to mosquito. They had apparently been swimming in the water during their larval stage. Instead of making cocoons for themselves, they snipped tiny little pieces of plastic to use as protective covers in the pupal inside of everything they could get down inside, and clung. That \"I broke out a hand sprayer full of a DDT solution, and sprayed it around me to try to clear the nearby air a little, so that I could spray in the ship's fumigation system worked just fine. It killed fumigation system is designed to work with the fumigator off the ship, \"I finally blocked the vents and the door edges in the head, after It was on page eleven that it mentioned casually that the midges—the the air in the ship to get rid of the poison. I knew it was too late before I started, and for once I was right. \"The only live midges left in the ship were the ones that had been a breeding ground for midges, but the midges didn't seem to want to cooperate. Whatever I tried to do, they came back to me. I was the only thing they seemed to love. I didn't dare bathe, or scratch, or even blundered around aimlessly. \"I lit out for the head again, to keep away from that intolerable whining. This time I took a luxurious shower and got rid of most of the midges that came through the door with me. I felt almost comfortable, set up artificial gravity by spinning a ship, the gravity is fine down on the middle line of the ship. And the unfamiliar gravity gradient, dizzy, so they can't catch carolla. capturing her prey by sound alone. who is captain of his own ship.\" me to keep my mouth shut. inquisitive. They explored the whole ship, going into places I wouldn't have believed it to be possible for them to reach, including the inside duct, against the flow of air, to see what was going on inside. course, so it was back to the head for me. 'Night' had come again—and it was the only place I could get any privacy. There were plenty of the carolla left to join me outside. watch keep them clear of the vines, and keep the vines from shadowing each , surrounded by a bunch of worried dingleburys. was necessary for me to cut back the marocca vines. For one thing, I couldn't get up to the area of the bridge. For another, the main computer was completely clogged. I could use the auxiliary, on the bridge, if I could get to it, but it's a poor substitute. For another get the plants out of the ship. And I was a little anxious to get my Delta Crucis back to normal as soon as possible. But before cutting, I had to translate the gouge. whatever they need against the time of the next explosive period of naturally, which takes several months. there was only one special processor on board. Delta Crucis down safely. Even as shaky as I was, Delta Crucis behaved like a lady. reasonable at the time.\" Captain Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and Hannah nodded. \"They were growing luxuriously.\" He nodded his head a him. fortune. And got out again quickly. \"The Gloryannans were going to hold my Delta Crucis as security to pay for the cost of stamping out marocca all over again—those spores Captain Hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little\n\n<question>:\nIn what room does Captain Hannah barricade himself?\n\n<options>:\nA The bathroom of the space bar\nB The cockpit of the Delta Crucis\nC The lobby of the Delta Crucis\nD The bathroom of the Delta Crucis\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,309 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWar and Pieces No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: \"Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?\" Or \"This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather. Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God. He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew. The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. (\"Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?\") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, \"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining.\" another, skeletal, laughs and laughs a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, \"Are you righteous? Know that I was, too.\" Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind.\" I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.\n\n<question>:\nWhat wouldn't the author say of Malick?\n\n<options>:\nA he knows how to bring out the beauty amongst war\nB he told a well-rounded story of war\nC he's a philosophical thinker\nD he did more than just make a war movie\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nfound out.\" She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth For Felicitas K. Wilson THE SIOUX SPACEMAN \"Of course,\" he said, grinning at his stupidity. \"And I guess we're not Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that townspeople, a crackpot professor. that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not answers, then transportation.\" \"Transportation?\" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. \"Why? Don't you days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy! \"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if I like it here?\" to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his clean clothes, you're not going to like me.\" she said, \"before you deteriorate.\" They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him. the witching hour. Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his plaintively: \" Cold up here!\" Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, \"Why did been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe that it was more than adequate. But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered, with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully. But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, \"Excuse me,\" and followed sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive and even an old red shirt. swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture. \"Behold,\" he said. \"Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his Cavalier.\" Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the world, hasn't it?\" \"Overnight,\" Geneva Jervis said. \"If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say \"What's that?\" Don asked. and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us for a while.\" \"What do you mean by that?\" Jen Jervis asked. \"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?\" \"Maybe not a plane,\" Don said, \"but a helicopter could land just about \"Hm,\" said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?\" \"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?\" \"Not everybody. Me, for instance.\" \"No?\" she said. \"Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State.\" He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably close. \"Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs Don laughed again. \"He sure is.\" late.\" to sleep,\" she corrected. She looked angry. \"Of course,\" Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. \"Come on. Where they put comfortable,\" she said. \"What a night, eh? The professor is simply beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the cosmolineator blew up.\" Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to \"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?\" Don struggled to manipulate knife and them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and the latter-day alchemist.\" \"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out of here by then.\" whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose.\" \"Scarcely fell , Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be \"I didn't know there were any.\" \"Actually there's only one, the Superior Sentry , a weekly. This is an Don blinked at the headline: \"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,\" Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on investigating.... Don skimmed the rest. \"I don't see anything about it being deliberate.\" bottom.\" Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his The \"reasons\" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against by county, state and federal agencies (2) Cavalier Institute has been held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited) colleges and universities understand (b) lacks space to publish and which (it being atrociously handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to set. Don said, \"I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark.\" \"He's a doll,\" Alis said. \"He's about the only one in town who stands up to Father.\" \"Does your father claim that he Earth?\" \"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them, being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually ever since.\" \"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?\" of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was. \"You may call me Alis,\" she said. \"And I'm nineteen.\" \"Three months past. How old are you , Mr. Cort?\" \"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it.\" \"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go with you to the end of the world.\" \"I'll admit to the double entendre ,\" Alis said. \"What I meant—for the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us.\" \"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?\" \"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age. On to the brink!\" are you going to do?\" \"What can \"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that Superior's water supply?\" \"That's funny. Come on let's follow it to the edge.\" \"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people.\" \"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look.\" \"Don't! You'll fall off!\" topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down. \"I still can't see where the water goes,\" Don said. He stretched out on \"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look.\" Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his ankle and held it tight. \"Just in case a high wind comes along,\" she said. tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going isn't going off the edge!\" \"It isn't? Then where is it going?\" sufficient to kill. It was signed: Vincent Grande, Chief of Police, \"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?\" Don\n\n<question>:\nWhich word least describes Don?\n\n<options>:\nA secretive\nB calm\nC inquisitive\nD caring\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nHow much is the impossible worth? Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that know how it is. Snead's dead, don't you remember?\" were they trying to pull on him? \"The man who isn't Snead is leaving,\" Snead's brother, I might catch him to pay my respects.\" \"No,\" Howell said, \"I wouldn't do that.\" \"Snead came to Greta's funeral. It's the least I could do.\" \"I wouldn't. Probably no relation to Snead at all. Somebody who looks like him.\" \"That fellow who just left looked like a friend of yours, huh?\" the friend's dead.\" you've probably got old Snead into trouble.\" Monster—there's no doubt or semantic leeway to the thing.\" \"You know how it is,\" Howell said. Linton had thought he had known how death was. He had buried his wife, or rather he had watched the two workmen scoop and shove dirt in on the sawdust-fresh pine box that held the coffin. He had known what he sincerely felt to be a genuine affection for Greta. Even after they had let him out of the asylum as cured, he still secretly believed he had known a genuine affection for her. But it didn't seem he knew about death at all. I suppose he might have been resurrected.\" \"The Mafia, I guess. Who knows who runs it?\" \"You mean, somebody has invented a way to bring dead people back to some people had a system of making it appear that a person had died patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to the surface immediately. \"An invention? I guess that's how it is,\" Howell agreed. \"I don't know much about people like that. I'm an honest businessman.\" \"But it's wonderful,\" Linton said, thinking his immediate thoughts. \"Wonderful! Why should a thing like that be illegal? Why don't I know in the White House, ready to assassinate if they have to. Death is their whole life. You got to realize that.\" \"That's not enough. Not nearly enough.\" \"Think of all the problems it would cause. Insurance, for one thing. Overpopulation. Birth control is a touchy subject. They'd have to take \"But what do they do about it? Against it?\" charges, if any, come under general vice classification.\" to be dead someday,' not anything sexual. You know how it is. The He tried to assimilate it. Of course he had, he reminded himself, been out of touch for some time. It might be true. Then again, they might be But the temptation was too strong. of people and if you're smart, you'll not either.\" Howell threw money on the table with the same kind of disinterest as the thick-set man and stalked out. disturbing.\" don't know more than you do.\" \"People who want to know the answers to questions have to ask them. You can find out anything by asking the right questions of the right person at the right time.\" Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a resurrect the dead?\" \"Will you stop being cynical? Of course I can!\" dead?\" \"Size has nothing to do with it.\" \"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months.\" could be years. Centuries. It's all mathematics, my boy. I need only one fragment of the body and my computers can compute what the rest of it was like and recreate it. It's infallible. Naturally there is a degree of risk involved.\" realize I've just got out of an institution....\" \"I've often been in institutions myself, for alcoholism, narcotics addiction and more.\" \"What a wonderful professional career,\" Linton said, when he couldn't care less. \"Oh, yes—yes, indeed. But I didn't come out broke.\" \"Neither did I,\" Linton said hastily. \"I invested in shifty stocks, faltering bonds, and while I was away they sank to rock bottom.\" \"Then—\" \"When they hit rock bottom, they bounced up. If I hadn't found you, I would have been secure for the rest of my lonely, miserable life.\" \"All that's ended now,\" the doctor assured him. \"Now we must go dig up to obtain. The doctor had taken the body and Linton's fortune and fed them both into the maw of his calculators, and by means of the secret, smuggled formulae, Greta would be cybernetically reborn. Linton shook his head. It seemed impossible. But Greta opened the olive-drab slab of metal of the door to the doctor's inner-inner sanctum and walked out into the medicinal cold fluorescent lighting. It wasn't fair at all, Linton thought. He should have had some time to prepare himself. Greta lifted her arms, stretching the white smock over the lines of her body. \"Darling!\" she said. \"Greta!\" he said, feeling a slight revulsion but repressing it. No doubt he would be able to adjust to her once having been dead the same way he had learned to accept the, to him, distasteful duty of kissing her ears the way she enjoyed. Greta swirled across the room and folded her arms across his shoulders. She kissed his cheek. \"It's so wonderful to be back. This calls for a celebration. We must see Nancy, Oscar, Johnny, all our old friends.\" trial.\" was the same hair, black as evil, contrasting with her inner purity. Of course it would be it hadn't changed even in the grave. He remembered the snaky tendrils of it growing out of the water-logged casket. \"I must see all our old friends,\" Greta persisted. \"Helen and Johnny....\" \"It was a terrible accident right after—that is, about five months \"Traffic accident. Killed instantly.\" \"Darling, resurrection is a risky business and an expensive one. You have to pay premium prices for strawberries in February. I no longer have the money to pay for a resurrection of Johnny.\" Greta turned her back to him. \"It's just as well. You shouldn't bring back Johnny to this dream of life, give him a ghost of mind and the sure you haven't the money to do it?\" \"No,\" Linton said. \"I'm sold out. I've borrowed on my insurance to the hilt. It won't pay any more until I'm buried, and then, of course, you can resurrect me.\" \"Of course,\" Greta said. She sighed. \"Poor Johnny. He was such a good friend of yours. You must miss him. I'm so sorry for you.\" \"I have you,\" he said with great simplicity. to quench death and smother decay. It's .\" \"No, dear, it's perfect for some things that have to be done.\" Her eyes flashed around the doctor's office and settled somewhere, on something. Linton followed the direction of Greta's gaze and found only an ashtray stand, looking vaguely like a fanatic's idol to a heathen religion on a pedestal. Greta pounced on the stand, hefted it at the base and ran toward him with it over her head. Linton leaped aside and Greta hit the edge of the desk instead of him. Brain damage, he concluded nervously. Cell deterioration. Greta raised it again and he caught her wrists high over her head. She writhed against him provocatively. \"Frank, I'm sorry, dear, but I have to have that insurance money. It's hell!\" green. No one must ever know. in some appalled form of satisfaction as it registered horror and acceptance of the crumpled metal disk falling toward it. wreckage. Yes, it seemed they had to automate and modify the bodies somewhat Or— But it didn't matter. Not a bit. She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the It was what you thought was real that made it so, not the other way\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is not a likely consequence of the end of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA Howell will be hesitant to help Linton again\nB The doctor continues taking advantage of people\nC Linton goes through treatment, eventually repeating the same events\nD Greta finds her own way to establish herself and find the money she wants\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. World Report (and frequent 2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999 Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. --Susan Hoechstetter The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story. The team's first championship occurred in 1921 therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play. The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999 10. Don't Worry in 1999 The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. --Margaret Taylor Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999 I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . A sitting president was accused of rape. 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least.\n\n<question>:\nWhat caused increased attention to the Women's World Cup in Soccer?\n\n<options>:\nA Sports bras\nB Cheating\nC Trans players\nD Steroid use\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] It was a fine day at the beach for Purnie's game—but his new friends played very rough! Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi. With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers interrupted in the least their respective tasks had been performed with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped, not the world around him. done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked. The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its repast. Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in \"Hi there, wanna play?\" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter. He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them, expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation.\" The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in now!\" When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along. \"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow \"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months.\" When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box. Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. \"Can you do this?\" He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful \"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box.\" \"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!\" box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box.\" what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box.\" Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for, the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box. Purnie sat up to watch the show. \"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no intention of running away.\" \"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!\" Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that, and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box. \"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's all. Now pick him up.\" The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion. The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to understand. in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the spot where Purnie had been standing. \"My God, he's—he's gone.\" \"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf. Others were pinned down on the sand. \"I didn't mean it!\" Purnie screamed. \"I'm sorry! Can't you hear?\" He hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and shame. \"Get up! Please get up!\" He was horrified by the moans reaching The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf. Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves. The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of death. wavelet gently rolling over his head. Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding the consequences, he ordered time to stop. Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore. It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke. position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock. Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the chaotic scene before him. At last he could do no more He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness, he knew he must first resume time. Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then \"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this. Hee-hee!\" Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone? He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks, where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the \"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on.\" As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was had become familiar. \"Where are you?\" Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend he was beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered \"If you're hurt I'd like to help!\" The twin moons were high in the sky now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of the others. Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the purpose of the box in the story?\n\n<options>:\nA To transport Purnie\nB To kill Purnie\nC To save Purnie from the environment\nD To heal Purnie's injuries\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,408 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nsag of the dust I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there driving wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route now and then, never far, but a little further each time. Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite he grew quieter with number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew the patrons were few in Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the end of an eight-hour trek. But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we heard a sharp cry through our earphones. “At perihelion?” “Of course. When else?” without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and Peter Claney?” “That’s right.” of a Bug middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were where have you been hiding? We’ve been trying to contact you for months!” two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in “I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.” felt different. “But you’ve got to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the have to know.” “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking me worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. It was the planet thought out of my mind. Sun . They’ll whip you, too, if you try it.” that whipped us, that and the a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond a deep crack. I let out a shout to halt the others then I edged my Bug I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared. I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my blood, sure as death. But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American. He was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission. I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him. He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at “That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on “No, I mean real heat.” He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the just how hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed him around like a puppy. It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson. We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models, The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?” “Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know. I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil, isn’t he?” gone. “Great balls of fire, man— “Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide. The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited. He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness. Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was set for an early departure after we got some rest. like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most route next.” was only half done—we would still have to travel another two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead Bug light as possible.” Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down to the frame and wheels.” McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the advance work. I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws. Then—” “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.” We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together. Got that?” McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and we nodded, too. “All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight, the Twilight Lab. I moved out first bite. We didn’t feel degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates, at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land itself. cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly their sides were shrouded with heavy ash. dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous surface for the Bug’s pillow tires. I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the\n\n<question>:\nWho seems to be the least intelligent person?\n\n<options>:\nA Stone\nB McIvers\nC Sanderson\nD Mikuta\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,129 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The sand-thing was powerful, lonely and strange. No doubt it was a god—but who wasn't? Stinson lay still in the sand where he fell, gloating over the success \"Listen to that, will you?\" Stinson said angrily. \"Just listen! You \"Earthman, wait....\" \"No!\" Stinson shot back. \"You've owned this planet for a million years. You have brooded here alone since before my people discovered fire, and in all those ages you never learned self-control. I can't subject my people to the whims of an entity who throws a planetary fit \"Stinson,\" the Sand God said. \"You said I was adolescent. You are sun. Not Sol. What should he call it, Alpha or sun of this particular solar system. He was Stinson tried to imagine it. At first there must have been a single The sun burned fiercely, although he would have said it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been Earth. Not a tree, nor a bush, nor even a wisp of dry grass was in sight. Everywhere was desert. everyone ?\" A frenzied searching of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. Then a returning to the planet. Empty.... Change. Buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. Such a race would have built of durable metal. Durable? Centuries, eons passed. Buildings crumbled to dust, dust blew away. Bridges eroded, fell, decomposed into basic elements. The shape of constellations changed. All trace of civilization passed except in the cavern of the heated pool. Constellations disappeared, new patterns formed in the night sky. The unutterably total void of time—FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS! And a nine-year-old child brooding over an empty world. base. Then Stinson backed away again. It was changing. Now it became a Again Stinson felt the urge to run, or to use the cylinder to project other living thing. It is a lesson my people never knew. Select any portion of this planet that suits you. Take the web-footed woman for your wife. Have children. I promise never to harm you in any way.\" \"The webfoots?\" but it was composed only of grains of sand. There was no core, no central place you could point to and say, here is the brain, or the nervous system. But then, how could a group of loosely spaced grains of supporting life. Life? Intelligence? He examined the wind devil as closely as he dared, himself somewhere else, but he said, \"No!\" very firmly to himself. He was here to investigate, to determine if this planet was capable of wall surrounding the pool was inscribed with intricate art work and indecipherable symbols. Life. Intelligence. The planet was inhabited. Should he give up and return to earth? Or was there room here for no meaning for Stinson. The men were dark-skinned, the women somewhat \"My name is Stinson,\" he said, pointing to himself. \"I'm from the planet Earth.\" They looked at each other and jabbered some more. Stinson grasped it firmly, with half a notion to break it over his disappeared. A small cloud of dust settled slowly to the floor. Disintegrated! Stinson's face drained pale, and suddenly, unaccountably, he was The funnel of sand had moved closer and while he watched it, it seemed voice crying into a monstrous emptiness, \"Mother, where are you? MOTHER! \"I am Stinson, of the planet Earth.\" planet.\" \"Then you must know where I came from, and how.\" \"I do not understand how. You have a body, a physical body composed of atoms. It is impossible to move a physical body from one place to another by a mere thought and a tiny instrument, yet you have done so. You deserted me out in the desert.\" Where is Stinson felt a mental shrug. \"It is of no importance. When they arrived \"The tube is not of their technology. That is, they did not make it directly. These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. I permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve.\" \"You should live so long.\" don't understand you. I see you as a cone of sand which keeps changing color and configuration. Is it your body? Where do you come from? Is this planet populated with your kind?\" \"I do not know. I alone exist. I have searched all the levels of time and matter from the very beginning. My people are gone. Sometimes it Stinson was silent, thinking of the endless years of searching through not last. When He is gone they will probably kill us.\" \"As for the webfoots,\" the wind devil, or Sand God, said, \"I will destroy them. You and your people will have the entire planet.\" \"Destroy them?\" Stinson asked, incredulously, \"all these people? They the most basic structure of nature.\" The Sand God did not reply. The great bodiless, directionless voice was silent, and Stinson felt as if he had been taken from some high place and set down in a dark canyon. The cone of sand was the color of wood ashes. It pulsed erratically, like a great heart missing a beat now and Stinson donned the shimmering skirt, smiling as he did so. The others name is Stinson.\" never had been an athlete. How was he to decide if this planet was suitable for his people, hampered by a woman, slinking through a frozen wilderness like an depended on him. Anyway, he decided, pursuit was impossible. They left no tracks on the position.\" \"I cannot leave her. She is helpless against them.\" \"What form of primitive stupidity are you practicing now? Leave, or Stinson shook his head. The Sand God pulsed more violently than before. Ice melted in a wide area around it. Brown, frozen grass burned to ashes. primitive logic long before it reached your level of development.\" \"Yes,\" Stinson said, \"and your race no longer exists.\" The Sand God became a sphere of blue flame. A wave of intense heat drove them backward. \"Earthman,\" the great voice said, \"go back to your Earth. Take your inconsistencies with you. Do not come here again to infect my planet with your primitive ideas. The webfoots are not as intelligent as you, but they are sane. If you bring your people here, I shall destroy you all.\" burn, that and the skirts. Then, when he had burned the ship, the Sand God went to the sixth planet and burned two of the largest cities, as a warning that no more of us must come here.\" Well, Stinson said to himself, that does it. We are better off on Earth. We can't fight a monster like him. \"I did not hear.\" \"Yes, I know now. His voice sounds like thunder in the sky, but it is a voice that speaks only in the mind. He said I must leave this planet.\" sorry. It was all for me.\" \"Don't worry. The Sand God travels without a ship, why shouldn't I?\" \"Now?\" to green. Then he tires and lets winter come back again. He is the loneliest God in the universe.\" \"What makes you think he's lonely?\" \"The Sand God isn't doing this,\" Stinson said. \"It's only a storm.\" \"You're leaving?\" There was panic in her voice. \"Only for a moment.\" \"And you won't come back. You will go to your world.\" \"I'll be back.\" He disappeared at once, giving her no chance to object again, and went to the desert of sand, where he had first arrived on the planet. He wanted to see if the storm were world-wide. Stinson had never been in a sand storm before, even on Earth. He could purposefully. Stinson prepared himself to leave. In spite of his desire Stinson ignored him. He glanced down at Sybtl, who sensed that this was a time for good-bys. He thought, perhaps I can stay here alone with her. The webfoots might find us, or the Sand God might destroy us in\n\n<question>:\nWhich is the most accurate description of the planet Stinson finds himself on?\n\n<options>:\nA A haven for amphibious creatures\nB A research outpost for discovering new species\nC Some kind of penal colony\nD An abandoned desert planet that cannot sustain life\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
309 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDOUBLE TROUBLE Grannie Annie, that waspish science-fiction writer, was in a jam again. What with red-spot fever, talking cockatoos and flagpole trees, I was running in circles—especially since Grannie became twins every now and then. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that Interstellar Voice three days ago, Earth time, and now as the immense disc of Jupiter flamed across the sky, He could be excused this time, however, for this was only our third day , and other works of science fiction. Blood-and-thunder as these books are, however, they have one redeeming feature—authenticity of background. \"What do you mean?\" \"There are two companies here,\" he continued, \" . Chap by the name of Jimmy Baker runs that. However, the point is, between the properties of these two companies stretches a band or belt which has become known as the Baldric. \"There are two principal forms of life in the Baldric flagpole trees and a species of ornithoid resembling cockatoos. So far no one has crossed the Baldric without trouble.\" \"What sort of trouble?\" Grannie Annie had demanded. And when Antlers Silver in plumage, it resembled a parrot with a crest and yet it didn't. In some strange way the thing was a hideous caricature. \"Look what I found,\" I yelled. \"What I found,\" said the cockatoo in a very human voice. \"Thunder, it talks,\" I said amazed. \"Talks,\" repeated the bird, blinking its eyes. The cockatoo repeated my last statement again, then rose on its short legs, flapped its wings once and soared off into the sky. Xartal, the Martian illustrator, already had a notebook in his hands and was sketching a likeness of the creature. cockatoos and more flagpole trees. Above us, the great disc of Jupiter began to descend toward the horizon. party of four persons. In the lead was a little old lady in a black dress. Behind her strode a grizzled Earth man in a flop-brimmed hat, another Earth man, and a Martian. Detail for detail they were a duplicate of ourselves! \"A mirage!\" said Ezra Karn. awe. The duplicate of myself was talking to the duplicate of Grannie the sand seemed to grow more and more powdery. For some time I had fixed my gaze on a dot in the sky which I supposed to be a high-flying cockatoo. As that dot continued to move across the heavens in a single direction, I called Grannie's attention to it. \"It's a kite,\" she nodded. \"There should be a car attached to it \"This is Jimmy Baker,\" she said. \"He manages questioned. spirits. Then the Red Spot Fever got them.\" Jimmy Baker nodded. \"The first symptoms are a tendency to garrulousness on the part of the patient. Then they disappear.\" them. We tried following them, of course, but it was no go. As soon as they realize they're being followed, they stop. But the moment our eyes \"But surely you must have some idea of where they go,\" Grannie said. Baker lit a cigarette. \"There's all kinds of rumors,\" he replied, \"but none of them will hold water. By the way, there's a cockatoo eyrie ahead of us.\" I followed his gaze and saw a curious structure suspended between a rude circle of flagpole trees. A strange web-like formation of translucent gauzy material, it was. Fully two hundred cockatoos were perched upon it. They watched us with their mild eyes as we passed, but they didn't move. \"There must be ways of stopping this,\" she said. \"Have you called in any physicians? Why don't you call an enforced vacation and send the I may have to do that, but when I do, it means quits. Our company is to produce during a period of thirty days or more, and you lose all threw off the switch. happened to Annabella C. Flowers, I would never forgive myself and coalesced into a three-dimensional scene. were Jimmy Baker, Grannie, and Xartal. It was as if I were standing directly behind them. \"It's Mr. Baker's own invention,\" the operator said. \"An improvement on the visiphone.\" \"Do you mean to say you can follow the movements of that car and its \"Miss Flowers left with Mr. Baker for Shaft Four,\" I said. \"There's trouble up there. Red spot fever.\" it, I might drive over to Shaft Four and give Jimmy Baker the formula. trouble, I shouldn't either.\" Then once more I was directly behind my friends, listening in on their conversation. The view through the windscreen showed an irregular array of flagpole trees, with the sky dotted by high-flying cockatoos. \"There's an eyrie over there,\" Jimmy Baker was saying. \"We might as well camp beside it.\" the proper shading and then go on to the next. In swift rotation likenesses of Ezra Karn, of myself, of Jimmy Baker, and of Antlers Park took form. Ezra spoke over my shoulder. \"He's doing scenes for Grannie's new Look at that damned nosy bird! \" A silver cockatoo had alighted on the kite car and was surveying curiously Xartal's work. As each drawing was completed, the bird scanned it with rapt attention. Abruptly it flew to the top of the eyrie, where it seemed to be having a consultation with its bird companions. And then abruptly it happened. The cockatoos took off in mass flight. A group of Earth people suddenly materialized on the eyrie, talking and moving about as if it were the most natural thing in the world. With a shock I saw the likeness of myself the image of Jimmy Baker. The \"Those things we see up there are nothing more than mental images. They're Xartal's drawings!\" \"Don't you see,\" the lady continued. \"Everything that Xartal put on paper has been seen by one or more of these cockatoos. The cockatoos are like Earth parrots all right, but not only have they the power of copying speech, they also have the ability to recreate a mental image of what they have seen. In other words their brains form a powerful photographic impression of the object. That impression is then transmitted simultaneously in telepathic wavelengths to common foci. That eyrie might be likened to a cinema screen, receiving brain vibrations from a hundred different sources that blend into the light birds reconstruct images from the actual person. Why use drawings?\" \"Probably because the drawings are exaggerated in certain details and made a greater impression on their brains,\" Grannie replied. Up on the eyrie a strange performance was taking place. The duplicate of Grannie Annie was bowing to the duplicate of Jimmy Baker, and the it and found it contained the case histories of those men who had been attacked by the strange malady. something screwy here.\" \"Ezra!\" I yelled, swinging the car. \"That wasn't Grannie! That was one of those damned cockatoo images. We've got to catch him.\" The other car was some distance ahead now. Park looked back and saw us Annie's very life might be at stake, not to mention the lives of sent it coiling across the intervening space. themselves in a long flanking corridor in a northwesterly direction, as that cause red spot fever. Those men won't stop walking until they've Jimmy Baker had struck a new big lode of Acoustix, a lode which if Interstellar Voice . Antlers Park didn't want that. Then suddenly becoming fearful of Grannie's prying, Antlers Park strove He did head her off and managed to lure her and Baker and Xartal into lens button. But Grannie only pretended to contract the plague. Park then attempted to outwit Ezra Karn and me by returning in Jimmy Baker's kite car with a cockatoo image of Grannie.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the party run into duplicates of themselves?\n\n<options>:\nA It's the Red Fever influencing their perception.\nB As Grannie Annie says, it's a form of mass hypnosis.\nC They're a mirage, a result of the Baldric.\nD They're the cockatoos, copying their appearance.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,384 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nhe had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate! The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior The man in the gray suit smiled. \"Who else in any world would stand up for you?\" \"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you around, of course,\" Gabriel added too quickly. \"You do come in useful at times, you know.\" yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?\" Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. \"Come on, have a drink with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out.\" things worked out fine, didn't they? For you.\" His eyes studied the other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of not pleased with what they saw. \"Watch yourself, colleague,\" he warned as he left. \"Soon you might not be worth the saving.\" \"Is there a good zarquil game in town?\" teleview. A very ordinary face. \"Look, colleague, why don't you commit suicide? It's cleaner and quicker.\" \"I can't contact your attitude,\" the passenger said with a thin smile. \"Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a thrill-mill.\" He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em.\" \"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a commission, wouldn't it?\" the other man asked coolly. the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago, and now he isn't ... anything.\" \"You saved our lives,\" the girl said. \"I'd like to give you some token of my—of our appreciation.\" Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation held little gratitude. driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse. Playing the game was fabulously expensive it had to be to make it zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs. When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. \"One?\" the small green and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up. The girl looked closely at him. \"You look different, but you are The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. \"Yes, I'm all of them.\" \"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?\" Automatically she He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking. \"But why do you do it? Why! Do you like it? Or is it because of for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not, \"I am not helping him . And he knows that.\" \"You'll change again tonight, won't you?\" she babbled. \"You always change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body there's something about you that doesn't change.\" \"Too bad he got married,\" the young man said. \"I could have followed him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway,\" he added, his voice less impersonal, \"for your sake.\" She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but \"Why must you change again?\" she persisted, obliquely approaching the subject she feared. \"You have a pretty good body there. Why run the risk of getting a bad one?\" \"This isn't a good body,\" he said. \"It's diseased. Sure, nobody's supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty of foliage.\" \"How—long will it last you?\" for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should know him better than most. except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, \"but I'm afraid you cannot play.\" \"Why not?\" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes. \"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house.\" The green one shook his head. \"Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This game is really clean.\" \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him? Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original casing had? happens, a body available for a private game,\" he lisped. \"No questions to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good health.\" himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do. He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many rude health, was not a very comfortable fit. I can do a lot with a hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner maybe \"It is a pretty good body, isn't it?\" Gabe flexed softening muscles very probably he was relieved at having someone with whom to share his secret. \"Not as good as it must have been,\" the girl said, turning and looking at him without admiration. \"Not if you keep on the way you're coursing. Gabe, why don't you...?\" nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little more than you deserve?\" \"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe,\" she said truthfully enough, for she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. \"Of course I'd nothing could ever wash that experience from her mind or her body. \"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?\" she went on. \"You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose, looked in a mirror.\" He swung long legs over the side of his bed. \"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a hulk I had!\" \"Oh, yes, I can,\" she said incautiously. \"You must have had a body to match your character. Pity you could only change one.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow do you win at zarquil?\n\n<options>:\nA there is no such thing as winning zarquil\nB by finding your body and getting back to it\nC by defeating other participants\nD by being a better person after playing\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThat said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon. With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, \"There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.\") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center. A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of \"glam\" or \"glitter\" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts. In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay. But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one. A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung. Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then \"finding\" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he \"found\" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year. Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980 Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin \"Am I to understand that ...?\" and a corporate villain who directs another character to \"wake up and smell the thorns.\" It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd \"never write the great American novel\"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent. Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank \"Hey now!\" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the author's main purpose in this text?\n\n<options>:\nA to compare the abilities of three directors\nB to persuade us to pay attention to the hidden meaning in the films\nC to compare the queenly characteristics of the three films\nD to inform us of the pros and cons of each movie\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe movie has a scope that makes Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic. Miyazaki is after nothing less than the moment in our history (the film is set in the 14 th and 15 th centuries) when the power shifted from a \"natural\" world to one shaped by human technology. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called \"the end of nature\"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. The hero, Ashitaka, a warrior from the isolationist Emishi clan, is forced in the first scene to kill a marauding boar--a god turned into a demon (covered in roiling, corrosive worms) by an iron ball lodged in its body. Infected, destined to be consumed by--and to die of--rage, Ashitaka leaves his village in search of the iron ball's source. He discovers a fortress-cum-arms-manufacturing plant called Irontown, presided over by one of the most complex villains in modern film: the regal Lady Eboshi. On one hand, she's a benevolent industrialist who presides over a warmly matriarchal society on the other, she wants to destroy the forest, harness its resources, and exterminate its animal deities--chiefly the Spirit of the Forest, a magnificent deer god whose touch brings instant life or death, and who transforms at dusk into the towering Night Walker. P rincess Mononoke builds to a full-scale war between humans and the animal kingdom--which does not, by the way, consist of your father's cartoon critters. In fact, the boars and apes have little patience with Ashitaka's call for nature and mankind to live together in harmony they'd like to eat him. The wolf god, Moro, is slightly more sympathetic, but that's because her adopted \"daughter,\" San (a k a Princess Mononoke), is human. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred. Her second appearance--a lone attack on Irontown to assassinate Lady Eboshi--is one of the movie's high points. It's Miyazaki's use of sound--and silence--that takes your breath away: the determined tap of the wolf princess's shoes as she scuttles over the fortress's rooftops the silence of Eboshi and her army as they stare at this tiny yet formidable tomboy against the black sky. Their battle is so furious that the blades streak and lose definition--it's almost subliminal. It's a shame that the wolf princess warms up to Ashitaka and spends the rest of the film either saving him or being saved by him. She loses that punk-bitch allure. The voice of Claire Danes doesn't help. When Danes says, \"I'd do anything to get you humans out of my forest,\" she sounds like a Valley Girl peeved over lack of parking spaces at the mall. (San needs a more ragged voice--I'd be interested to hear the original Japanese actress.) Billy Crudup is just as Disneyfied (Miramaxed?), but that doesn't hurt as much because Ashitaka is conceived from the start as a rather bland ingénu. Gillian Anderson's growling Moro sounds silly (she doesn't have the breath control), and the fey-hick tones of Billy Bob Thornton are too recognizable as the Akim Tamiroff-like mercenary, Jigo. But Minnie Driver--coming off a triumphantly dizzy Jane in Tarzan --once again provides a voice that the animators deserve. \"Bring the strange-ah to me late-ah,\" she commands in sexy Martian Queen cadences that will stir the loins of Flash Gordon fans everywhere. \"I would like to thank him puh-sonally.\" The overfamiliar voices nudge Princess Mononoke closer to its American counterparts--but not by a lot. There's always something wondrously strange. The \"kodamas\" are little tree spirits on doughboy bodies. They cock their trapezoidal dice heads and emit a series of clicks then their heads pop back with a conclusive rattle. Something about them seems just right I could watch them for hours. (Miyazaki limits their appearances to seconds--he doesn't wear out their mystery the way that, say, George Lucas would.) And no Hollywood animated feature would end with such a powerful vision of apocalypse, as the land is bestridden by a colossus dropping a thick, caustic, tarlike gel that recalls the post-Hiroshima \"black rain.\" Can you take the kids? I think so. As Miyazaki said at a New York Film Festival press conference, \"Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.\" Princess Mononoke , at least, can tell them why. \"A special smile ... a certain touch ...\" So begins the elevator-music theme song of Music of the Heart ... \"I never had a lot that I loved so much.\" The credits had just started and I was already looking for a barf bag. Did Miramax and director Wes Craven have to work so hard to schlockify the story of Roberta Guaspari (played here by Meryl Streep), whose violin courses in East Harlem elementary schools have become a beacon for such programs nationwide? A fabled taskmaster (her story was told in the 1996 documentary Small Wonders ), Guaspari used music as a way to teach self-discipline--along with the healthy self-respect that follows in its wake. When the New York school board cut the funding for her program, she proved a marvel of self-promotion, attracting features in all the major dailies and ending up along with her best students at Carnegie Hall for a benefit \"Fiddlefest\"--along with Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, and other legendary \"fiddlers.\" Streep has said that she spent so much of the time on the set learning the violin (she doesn't play any instruments) that she didn't bring the full force of her acting technique to bear on Roberta. Maybe that's why the performance seems so natural. Let her always learn an instrument on the set! Still, she doesn't make much sense of Guaspari. The script, by Pamela Gray ( A Walk on the Moon ), has her students complain of her nastiness and perfectionism, but Streep--who has made herself look dumpy, thick-waisted, and bedraggled--is so busy telegraphing her vulnerability that all we get is dippy niceness. Instead of a monument to an individual's iron will, Music of the Heart becomes the story of a woman so helpless that she arouses the kindness of strangers.\n\n<question>:\nHow does the animal kingdom feel about Ashitaka?\n\n<options>:\nA They too want to live together in harmony.\nB They look upon him with feral hatred.\nC They don't like him, some tolerate him.\nD They are enemies.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthere isn't a trap, the Karna can't satisfy Braynek, because he's convinced that there has Nordon, and all his questioning on the wildest possibilities, just serves to keep Nordon from getting unconfused. \"These two men are honestly doing The Karna can see that we're not Malloy leafed trying to stall our men are actually Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the \"Maybe, but I doubt it. They might have gotten around me someway by sneaking up on a blind spot. Nordon and Braynek have blind spots, but they're covered with armor. No, I'm Malloy ran his finger down the columns Occeq of Saarkkad. eyebrow. \" Couldn't go, Mr. Ambassador?\" Malloy looked at him. \"Didn't you on his guard against imaginary plots and persecutions. know? I wondered why you appointed hand was turned against him. He trusted no one, and was perpetually Malloy sighed and pushed the dossiers Malloy closed his eyes. Somewhere And, Malloy knew, his own position official was aloof. The greater his importance, the greater must be his isolation. The Occeq of Saarkkad underlings. It was a long, roundabout way of doing business, but it was the only way Saarkkad would do any It was Bertrand Malloy's job to But Malloy didn't have top-grade men. They couldn't be spared from So Malloy was stuck with the culls. Not the worst ones, of course war effort. Malloy knew that, no matter and he'd better not try fermenting his own on Saarkkad unless regulations. But Malloy didn't like to stop at merely thwarting mental quirks he The phone chimed. Malloy flipped it on with a practiced hand. \"Malloy here.\" \"Mr. Malloy?\" said a careful voice. \"A special communication for you has bring it in?\" \"Bring it in, Miss Drayson.\" Miss Drayson was a case in point. Malloy had made her his private out of Malloy's office without his direct order. It had taken Malloy a long time to get it into Miss Drayson's Malloy. someone might at any instant snatch it from her before she could turn it over to Malloy. let you know immediately, sir,\" she said. \"Will there be anything else?\" Malloy let her stand there while he \"Armistice,\" he said in a low whisper. \"There's a chance that the war may be over.\" \"Yes, sir,\" said Miss Drayson in a hushed voice. Malloy read the whole thing through, fighting to keep his emotions in check. Miss Drayson stood there calmly, her face a mask her emotions were a secret. Finally, Malloy looked up. \"I'll let you know as soon as I reach a decision, Miss Drayson. I think I hardly need say that no news of this is to leave this office.\" \"Of course not, sir.\" Malloy watched her go out the door without actually seeing her. The war in the matter of the peace talks. Karn as it was from Earth, that it was only a few million miles from a planet which was allied with Earth, armistice. Why hadn't Earth been prepared? Did they intend to fight to the utter destruction of Karn? It wouldn't have been a problem at as neutral as possible during the Earth-Karn war. They had no intention of sticking their figurative noses into a battle between the two most side if war broke out again. If the Karna played their cards right, their And that was where Bertrand Malloy and Plenipotentiary Extraordinary to the Earth-Karn peace conference. of the communique, Malloy made his decision. He flipped on his intercom and said: \"Miss Drayson, get hold of James Nordon and Kylen Braynek. I want to see them both immediately. Send Nordon in first, and tell Braynek to wait.\" \"Yes, sir.\" \"And keep the recorder on. You \"Yes, sir.\" Malloy knew the woman would listen in on the intercom anyway, and it was better to give her permission to do so. James Nordon was tall, broad-shouldered, and thirty-eight. His hair was graying at the temples, and his handsome face looked cool and efficient. Malloy waved him to a seat. \"Nordon, I have a job for you. It's probably one of the most important jobs you'll ever have in your life. It can mean big things for you—promotion and prestige if you do it well.\" Nordon nodded slowly. \"Yes, sir.\" Malloy explained the problem of the Karna peace talks. \"We need a man who can outthink them,\" Malloy finished, \"and judging \"You'll be leaving within an hour for Saarkkad V.\" Nordon nodded again. \"Yes, sir certainly. Am I to go alone?\" \"No,\" said Malloy, \"I'm sending an assistant with you—a man named Kylen Braynek. Ever heard of him?\" Nordon shook his head. \"Not that I recall, Mr. Malloy. Should I have?\" \"Not necessarily. He's a pretty shrewd operator, though. He knows a lot about interstellar law, and he's capable of spotting a trap a mile away. You'll be in charge, of course, but I want you to pay special attention to his advice.\" \"I will, sir,\" Nordon said gratefully. \"A man like that can be useful.\" \"Right. Now, you go into the anteroom to study it and get it into your head before the ship leaves. That isn't much time, but it's the Karna who are doing the pushing, not us.\" As soon as Nordon had left, Malloy said softly: \"Send in Braynek, Miss Drayson.\" Kylen Braynek was a smallish man Again Malloy went through the explanation of the peace conference. \"Naturally, they'll be trying to trick you every step of the way,\" Malloy went on. \"They're shrewd and underhanded we'll simply have to be more shrewd and more underhanded. Nordon's job is to sit quietly and evaluate the data yours don't baby them, either. If you see anything underhanded going on, let Nordon know immediately.\" \"They won't get anything by me, Mr. Malloy.\" By the time the ship from Earth Malloy had full reports on the whole parley, as relayed to him through the ship that had taken Nordon and Braynek to Saarkkad V. Secretary of State Blendwell stopped eyes. He took Malloy's hand and shook it warmly. \"How are you, Mr. Ambassador?\" Malloy handed them to the secretary, and as he read, Malloy watched good man, Malloy had to admit, but he didn't know all the ins and outs of the Diplomatic Corps. When Blendwell looked up from They've held off the Karna at every point! They've beaten them back! They've managed to cope with and outdo the finest team of negotiators the Karna could send.\" \"I thought they would,\" said Malloy, trying to appear modest. Malloy nodded. \"I think so. The Karna put us in a dilemma, so I threw a dilemma right back at them.\" \"Nordon had a mental block against making decisions. If he took a girl out on a date, he'd have trouble wasn't rigged, Nordon couldn't possibly make up his mind. I drummed into him how important The Secretary nodded slowly. \"What about Braynek?\" \"Paranoid,\" said Malloy. \"He thinks everyone is plotting against him. In this case, that's all to the good because the Karna are plotting against him. No matter what they put forth, Braynek is convinced that there's a trap in it somewhere, and he digs to find out what the trap is. Even if\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Malloy send James Nordon to the peace talks?\n\n<options>:\nA Nordon has trouble making decisions but will commit once the Karna present him with a choice that is not rigged in the Karna's favor.\nB Nordon is going to the peace talks to assist Braynek in case of a trap.\nC Nordon is the best negotiator Earth has to offer.\nD Nordon is a trained assassin. He will be ready to take out the ambassador from Karn if there is any funny business.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOne of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\" Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home. Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce. Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits. Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages. And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\" I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine. Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death. Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is it suspected that William Shawn blushed at Green's remark?\n\n<options>:\nA He was known for disallowing sexual content from his publications and was put off by the comment.\nB As someone who looked into risque material himself, it piqued his curiosity.\nC The phrasing took him by surprise. It's not the answer he thought he'd receive.\nD He was prudish in nature, and he was embarrassed by it.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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80 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDoctor Universe By CARL JACOBI Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers, had stumbled onto a murderous plot more Spacemen's Club in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the shoulder. Spacemen's was a sanctuary, a rest club where Grannie Annie! calm defiance. I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. \"Grannie Annie! I \"Hi, Billy-boy,\" she greeted calmly. \"Will you please tell this friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely againth the ruleth....\" and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed Spacemen's ? What happened to the book you were writing?\" \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known. \"What happened to Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly Pluto .\" I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\" your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\" \"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we In front was a big sign. It read: ONE NIGHT ONLY DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS NINE GENIUSES THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the yet.\" The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian advanced to the footlights. \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\" There was a roar of applause from the Satellite From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place on the dais. The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to voice echoed through the theater: Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury? \" Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her hand. She said quietly: \"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed, or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had brought me here. And then I began to notice things. seemed to have lost much of its original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete. Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm \"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?\" \"What do you mean?\" asked abruptly. rays has never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of Beta Gamma rays from the Green Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate, a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\" I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word. \"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long enough to endanger all civilized life. Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor. If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed. \"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl and laughed heartily. \"The same old Flowers,\" I said. \"Tell me, who's your thief ... Doctor Universe?\" She regarded me evenly. \"What makes you say that?\" I shrugged. police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military dictator to step in. If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the An instant later we were plunging through the dark night. It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots appeared. Grannie gave a single warning: Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed. I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me. tent and faced me with earnest eyes. \"Billy-boy, our every move is jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn. Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\" \"Dangerous?\" \"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face. Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned. \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months. You gotta wait 'til I hear it.\" Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning, \"What's that thing on top?\" Karn demanded, puzzled. Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. \"Billy-boy, take three \"Up we go, Billy-boy.\" Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\" Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the \"You'll never do it that way,\" Grannie said. \"Nothing short of an atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the Green Flames are more accessible.\" Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal plate. Grannie stamped her foot. \"It's maddening,\" she said. \"Here we are at\n\n<question>:\nWhat brought Billy-boy to the realization of why Grannie Annie had brought him to the Satellite Theater?\n\n<options>:\nA The publication of her newest book\nB The appearance of Charles Zanner\nC The attraction of the performance of the Nine Geniuses\nD The spell placed by Doctor Universe\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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650 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nradioactivity. Still, it doesn’t take so very much radioactivity door. “You awake, Eddie?” man, broad-shouldered and still thin-waisted. Eddie found it easy to believe the stories he had heard about his father being an outstanding “Then—then you mean whoever stole it were spies!” Eddie exclaimed breathlessly. “That’s entirely possible,” his father said. “In fact, it’s the only logical explanation I can “You may use the Geiger counter any time you want, Eddie,” Mr. Taylor said, “as long as you take good care of it. You figured out where radioactive isotopes without a mighty important During dinner Eddie wasn’t sure just what the block. Teena answered his knock. “Come on in, Eddie,” she invited, seeming surprised to see him. “Mother and I are just finishing dinner.” “Oh, I figured you’d be through by now,” Eddie apologized, following her inside. 35 “Hello, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross said, but she didn’t seem as cheerful as usual. “Good evening, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie said. “I—I hope I’m not making a pest of myself.” He looked around for Mr. Ross, but Teena’s Acme Aircraft yet. There wasn’t a place set for him at the table, either. “You’re never a pest, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross assured him. “I was going to call your mother in a little while about that newspaper write-up.” said. “Maybe we could understand more of what it’s all about if you could explain what a radioisotope is, Eddie.” 36 along the way. Eddie knew that a radioisotope was a material which had been “cooked” in an radioisotope. Much of his father’s work at Oceanview College was of a secret nature. Eddie had learned not to ask questions about it. His father usually volunteered any information he wanted known, so Eddie stuck to questions which could and would be answered. “Well, they know just how to do it,” Eddie replied. “Aren’t the rays dangerous?” Mrs. Ross asked. “I’ll say they’re dangerous,” Eddie said. It took Eddie over an hour to sort out the over his hasty retreat. “What are you going to do?” “Think I’ll do a little prospecting,” Eddie “I would,” Eddie said. “Everyone is carefully protected. They see to that. Well, anyway, wants to go,” Eddie answered casually. He tried to make it sound as though he would be doing Teena Ross a big favor. After all, she was only a girl. Eddie didn’t figure a girl stoop to stealing isotopes more than likely soaks up water.” 40 “My, that’s interesting, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross said. “I’ve seen them do it,” Eddie said proudly, then added, “from behind a protective shield, “Oh, hi, Eddie,” Teena greeted him, appearing at the screen door. “I was hoping you’d come over.” “Well, I—I just happened to be going by,” Eddie said. “Thought you might want to watch me do a little prospecting with the Geiger counter. But maybe you’re too busy.” That’s how to handle it, Eddie thought. Don’t act anxious. Let Teena be anxious. Then maybe she’ll even offer to bring along “Dad didn’t say exactly,” Eddie answered, “except he did say that if whoever took it didn’t know what he was doing and opened up talk so long.” Eddie nodded. It was even more serious than its threat of danger to anyone who lighter in the summer. Eddie couldn’t tell deep summer tan simply made her hair look lighter by contrast. Maybe both. “Hello, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross said, coming into the kitchen. “Looks like Teena put you to work.” “She always does, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie said, pretending great injury. “Don’t know why I keep coming over here.” it depended on how they were used. Eddie assumed that anyone who would could do either Eddie knew she was right. They were friends—good friends. They had been ever since Eddie’s family had moved to Oceanview and his father had become head of the college’s “Oh, we’re glad you did, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross said. “I’m afraid too few of us know anything about this atom business.” 43 “That’s right, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie agreed. manufacturing concerns. “Well, I’ll be glad to finish them, Eddie,” “People should talk more and read more about Mrs. Ross offered. “I know how boys detest doing dishes.” “Oh, I don’t really mind, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie atom is.” Mrs. Ross smiled. “I guess you’re right, Eddie,” she said, “but I wouldn’t quite know how to go about feeding an atom.” “Or greasing one,” Teena added. Eddie laughed. “I sure wouldn’t want the “Three million billion is a lot of something,” a man’s voice spoke behind him. “What are we talking about, Eddie?” “Oh, hello, Mr. Ross,” Eddie said, turning around and standing up. “I didn’t hear you come in.” You know the rules.” “We sure do, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie assured counter. “And stick near the main roads. Ross cautioned, as Eddie picked up the Geiger her. “And we’ll be back early.” table, leaned over, and gave both Teena and Mrs. Ross a kiss on the cheek. “Eddie was telling us about atoms,” Teena’s but Eddie knew these indicated no more than “How many in a comma?” Mr. Ross said to Eddie, then added quickly, “forget it, Eddie. It wasn’t very funny. I—I’m afraid I don’t feel very funny tonight.” on a recent birthday. Then Eddie said good-by and went on down the street toward his After putting Sandy on his long chain and filling his water dish, Eddie went in the back too.” room and glanced into the den. His father sat stiffly behind his homemade desk, talking rapidly into the telephone. Eddie caught only “Don’t go too far out from town,” Mrs. placed the telephone in its cradle, glanced up, and saw Eddie. the last few sketchy words. Then his father in Eddie’s mind about something being wrong, it vanished now. Mr. Taylor looked If there had been even the slightest doubt whether Eddie had discovered any uranium ore that day. Always before, he had shown genuine interest in Eddie’s prospecting trips. “Dad,” Eddie said anxiously, “what—what’s the matter?” wrong, Eddie,” he said, “and I guess there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. It’ll be in the evening papers, anyway.” “Eddie, you remember me mentioning this morning about that radioisotope shipment I was expecting today?” “It did—and it didn’t,” his father said. “What does that mean, Dad?” Eddie asked, puzzled. “Disappeared?” “The radioisotope was stolen, Eddie,” his CHAPTER TWO At the moment, Eddie didn’t pry for further think it was any kid, Eddie. Not by a long shot. The whole thing was carefully planned and carefully carried out. It was not the work Eddie read the newspaper account. The in the crime. 31 “Dad,” Eddie asked, looking up from the walk around without attracting any undue attention.” “But, Dad,” Eddie continued, “how would the men know that the delivery truck would a radioisotope,” Eddie said. “Maybe they figured food, or even as a source of power.” “Power?” Eddie said. “Boy, it must have been a strong isotope.” He knew that the strength of radioisotopes could be controlled\n\n<question>:\nHow does Eddie’s interest in radioactivity affect the story’s plot?\n\n<options>:\nA It causes major holes for the reader when Eddie doesn’t explain his scientific jargon.\nB It provides a basic subject matter for Eddie to use to get closer to Teena.\nC It provides basic subject matter for the story and informs the brunt of Eddie’s characterization.\nD It is used as a way of putting Eddie in contact with the story’s antagonist: Mr. Ross\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,044 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nhe had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate! The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was almost ordinary-looking. As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous. Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century. The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his clothing the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather buy you a replacement.\" He gestured to the bartender. \"Another of the same for my fellow-man here.\" The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth hastily supplied by the management. was implied. And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance, was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just go to jail because of him.\" The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to The man in the gray suit smiled. \"Who else in any world would stand up for you?\" \"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were not pleased with what they saw. \"Watch yourself, colleague,\" he warned as he left. \"Soon you might not be worth the saving.\" He shrugged. \"I never saw him before in my life.\" Of course, knowing him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he happened to have been telling the truth. , he went out into the street. If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for years. shook his handsome head. \"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty,\" he said thickly, short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist. To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them. had been perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the everybody else far too well. The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually creature in the slightly frayed robe asked. \"One,\" the fat man answered. III The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. \"Only weighted out,\" he muttered, \"he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I think?\" There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about something about you that doesn't change.\" \"Too bad he got married,\" the young man said. \"I could have followed him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway,\" he added, his voice She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an outsider \"Ask your husband.\" The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate, snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name, and stirred it with his toe. \"I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to \"Why not?\" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes. \"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house.\" \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game. He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration. And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him? he would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl, seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that the hulk he inhabited was a sick one The man hesitated. \"But unable to pass the screening?\" he murmured aloud. \"A criminal then.\" also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials \"The other will pay five times the usual rate.\" himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do. He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the pockets, but it wasn't necessary he recognized the face. Not that it was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful student of the \"wanted\" fax that had decorated public buildings from police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily, nor whom the police intended to capture easily. , the new tenant thought, as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious Lockard's—body.\" She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror. Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven chin. \"That what he tell you?\" and made no attempt to deny her charge very probably he was relieved she went on. \"You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose, does he?\" \"I don't want to know!\" he spat. \"I wouldn't want it if I could get it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he looked in a mirror.\" He swung long legs over the side of his bed. \"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a hulk I had!\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy were the extraterrestrials not enchanted by Gabriel Lockard like the rest of the humans that were present?\n\n<options>:\nA They were more enchanted by the girl with him.\nB They were too intoxicated to care.\nC They saw all humans as the same.\nD They found him appaling.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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2,068 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nEvery writer must seek his own Flowery Kingdom in imagination's wide demesne, and if that search can begin and end on Earth his problem has been greatly simplified. In post-war Japan Walt Sheldon has found not only serenity, but complete freedom to write undisturbed about the things he treasures most. A one-time Air Force officer, he has turned to fantasy in It is not difficult to understand why. The working model and the fact that the small people with their At the end of sixteen days I had the entire problem all but whipped. and grinned all the while. his lighter moments, to bring us such brightly sparkling little gems as this. of the old things every day, and truly that went far to take the clutter out of my mind. I was no longer so lonely that I couldn't think properly. equation noises. It was in a park near the and the soft breeze stirring them up nuclear propulsion center—a cool, a secluded little green sanctuary just over the hill from Mr. Riordan's at any given moment, under any work out an equation to give the coefficient of discharge for the matter workable equation when we set bargain.\" \"I'll not be needing the gold,\" I from any orifice has a velocity directly \"What's this now?\" root of the pressure-head driving it. \"I don't feel it would be But when you actually put things sort.\" together, contractions or expansions \"I'll not be needing it,\" I repeated. of nuclear explosion—which is what the drive amounts to despite the fact that it is simply water in which nuclear salts have been previously from a mortal.\" He turned to his long as he shall live!\" much of this that if you're not a nuclear engineer yourself it's certain to weary you. with the leaves making only word for it that without this equation—correctly along. It smelled exactly like a stated, mind you—mankind would be well advised not slowly and chuckled to myself at how I had gotten the best of the say, upon the tongue of a man named Kevin Francis Houlihan. But I am, after all, a scientist. If I had not been a specialist in my field I would hardly have found myself engaged in vital research at the center. had given them the wrong equation, of course. They would never get their spaceship to work now, and in eerily mysterious fashion with a determined the true coefficient of absent-minded. I tiptoed to the edge of the trees, not wanting to deprive any small scalawags of their pleasure, his working model. It would go down in scientific literature now, I suppose, as Houlihan's group of little people, hard at work. though it would have been pleasant to be truly rich for a change. There was no sense in cheating leprechauns are most clever in matters of this sort and he would have had it back soon enough—or else made it a burden in some way. Indeed, I had done a piece of work greatly to my advantage, and also to the advantage of humankind, and when a man can do the first and include the second as a fortunate byproduct never seen them so busy, either. They were building something in the middle of the glade. It was long this crotchety one, looking straight work! You'll not be needin' to mind that man standin' there! You know he can't see nor hear us!\" Transcriber's Note: and became stiff and alert for a moment, he shrugged and turned away, clearly staring open-mouthed. Then he said, \"What? What's that, now?\" catch one and keep him. Or so the often about the truth of them. tongue. I was lonely here in America, even if I had latched on to a fine job of work for almost shamefully generous pay. You see, in a place as full of science as the nuclear propulsion center there is not much almost miraculously complete and workable. father used to say! Come on out now, and pass the time o' day!\" Then I waited, but they didn't I'd come to the glen to work out a knotty problem, and I was up against a blank wall. Simply because I was so lonely that my mind had become clogged. to think the problem through to a satisfactory conclusion. \"Do you understand? I'll give The leader—he seemed more wizened and bent than before—approached me slowly and warily as I at a safe distance. I smiled to reassure in a friendly gesture of greeting. \"Good morning,\" the foreman drawing a kind of peppered dignity up about himself, \"in such matters I am never fully convinced. After living for many centuries I am all too acutely aware of the perversity of human nature.\" \"Yes,\" I said. \"Well, as you will quickly see, all I want to do is talk.\" I nodded as I spoke, and sat down cross-legged upon the grass. \"And often that's he wants,\" He shook his head and remained standing. \"Have your say, Mr. it if you'll go away and leave us to our work.\" \"Well, now, your work,\" I said, and glanced at the spaceship. \"That's exactly what's got me curious.\" expression, and said, \"I've been so often, though not as frequently as it did a century ago. But knowing does me.\" \"It just so happens I'm a doctor of science.\" \"A doctor of science, now,\" said Keech. \"Invited by the American government \"A scientist, is it,\" said Keech. \"Well, now, that's very interesting.\" \"I'll make no apologies for it,\" I \"Oh, there's no need for apology,\" said Keech. \"Though in truth we prefer poets to scientists. But it has just now crossed my mind, Mr. Houlihan that you, being a scientist, might be of help to us.\" usually does.\" \"I am surprised from time to time to find myself here,\" I said. \"But continue.\" \"We had to come here,\" said Keech, \"to learn how to make a spaceship.\" \"Leprechauns are not really mechanically inclined,\" said Keech. \"Their major passions are music and laughter and mischief, as anyone knows.\" \"Well, if I may use an old expression, that we're not long for this world. Or let me put it this way. We feel the world isn't long for itself.\" I scratched my cheek. \"How would a man unravel a statement \"It's very simple. With all the \"Well, then, as I say,\" said equations sits strangely, you might learned how to do it. Well—almost how to do it. We haven't learned I was inclined to suggest the but I was hooted down. Be that as it may, my own job was to go into There's one thing which puzzles me, though. If you've been constantly \"You're determined to go.\" has crossed my mind. That's why I'm wastin' all this time with you, sir. You say you are a scientist.\" to know at any instant exactly how much thrust is bein' delivered And on paper it looks simple you get to doin' it it doesn't come out exactly as it does on paper.\" \"You're referring to the necessity for a coefficient of discharge.\" \"Whatever it might be named,\" said Keech, shrugging. \"'Tis the finally, \"why should I help you?\" not with humor, \"the avarice of That's a grandmother's tale. a proposition.\" us how to make our ship work.\" \"Well, now, that's quite an \"You accept the proposition was out we had half the spaceship apart, and were deep in argument about the whole project. It was a most fascinating session. I had often wished for a true working model at the center, but no allowance had been inserted in the as you would a needle, I was able to make many sensible observations and even a few innovations. I came back again the next day—and or the center itself would pass by, and stop to watch me. But of course or anything the leprechauns had made, not being believers. I would halt work, pass the time of day, and then, in subtle fashion,\n\n<question>:\nWhich best describes the narrator's attitude towards his work?\n\n<options>:\nA He is frustrated that nobody ever recognizes his progress\nB He wishes he were in a different country interacting with his own people\nC He is proud to be contributing to broad scientific questions\nD He is disappointed he has to work inside a lab but enjoys research\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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68 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS they skipped several steps in the procedure. The chordata discerner read Positive over most of the surface. There was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought on the body? Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to it required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only. \"Limited,\" said Steiner, \"as though within a pale. As though there were the world to make sure we've missed nothing,\" said Stark. There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results. The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator had refused to read Positive when turned on the inventor himself, bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had told the machine so heatedly. The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that not have extraordinary perception he had only ordinary of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply. And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read Positive Positive on ninety per cent of the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a it had read Positive on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all was shown by the test. So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests. Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug of the shoulders in a man. They called it the \"You tell me light.\" So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be forewarned. Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion, I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming from?\" like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very bright light. He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at him, so he went on. It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this but the woman smiled, proving that she was human. \"What do you make of them?\" asked Stark. \"Human,\" said Steiner. \"It may even be that they are a little more than human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem to be clothed, as it were, in dignity.\" \"And very little else,\" said Father Briton, \"though that light trick They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you. wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And those rocks would bear examining.\" \"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else,\" said Stark. \"A very promising site.\" I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be, the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I haven't yet tried the—\" and he stopped. \"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think,\" said Gilbert, \"then it will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or \"Ask him first. You ask him.\" \"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?\" \"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden.\" \"Well, the analogy breaks down there,\" said Stark. \"I was almost \"All things are possible.\" And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: \"No, no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!\" It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it. but does not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a medieval painting?\" \"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated.\" \"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too incredible.\" \"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost.\" colors and first move.\" \"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect.\" are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we persevere, it will come by him.\" They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone disturbed that happiness.\" a goof saying those same ones to each bunch.\" \"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming better researched, and they insist on authenticity. strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of \"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the crackpot settlers will bring a new lion.\" \"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's hell.\" \"I'm working on it.\" \"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?\" \"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!\" \"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by our senses? Why do you doubt?\" \"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds. Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible, zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers.\" \"What?\" \"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere it\n\n<question>:\nWhy had the owners of Little Probe obtained the E.P. Locator at such a discounted rate?\n\n<options>:\nA The readings were unclear as it had struggled with detecting E.P on worms.\nB The designer had no longer used it as it had not detected E.P. on himself.\nC It was a faulty machine and often shut off without notice.\nD It often produced an orange light meaning it was unsure of the results.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
10 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The throbbing rumble changed tone. \"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?\" O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, \"Didn't you lock them controls before blast-off?\" \"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting,\" O'Rielly answered from his own angry bewilderment, \"the error would have registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?\" \"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?\" \"I don't know yet, sir.\" \"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!\" why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a the thing had been bossed by dames of course officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt that way. resetting the control.\" O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age himself saying in sympathetic outrage, \"A shame you had to go to all that bother to get out here!\" Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. \"Well, what about that control?\" \"What control?\" \"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!\" \"Oh, that little thing.\" sharply. \"Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again? snapped back over his shoulder, \"Use your shower!\" O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now. to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig \"Venus dames,\" O'Rielly said dreamily, \"don't boss anything, do they?\" \"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?\" \"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones \"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys. \"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys dreamily. \"But not a peek of any Venus dame.\" With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. \"Hey, how \"Hah? What?\" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance even groaned to himself, something that sounded like, \"Blabbering like I'd had you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at least!\" Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee. O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not was being slapped together again. \"O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we don't flimflam the Old Woman!\" With which ominous remark, rendered in a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into O'Rielly's shower. O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a worry about another thing!\" \"Oh, I'm not,\" she assured him happily. \"Everything is going just the Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more said with a jaunty laugh, \"dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting out laughing for joy. course. \"Trillium?\" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. \"Trillium!\" \"Trillium,\" O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, \"why do you have to of Venus and this thing can mean war!\" O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. \"All right, come along!\" The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices. The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features, that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. \"Trillium! My \"Some loud creature is interfering,\" Madame President snapped with annoyance. \"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed,\" Mr. President swore. \"Some silly female cackling now!\" \"An innocent child,\" Mr. President snapped, \"obviously kidnapped by those two idiotic Earthmen there!\" tell the truth!\" \"Very well. Grandmamma told me how.\" \"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged,\" His Excellency Dimdooly declared. \"Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first thing about such things!\" \"She learned,\" Trillium stated emphatically, \"a hundred and twenty-five years ago.\" \"Hundred twenty-five,\" Grandpapa president growled like a boiling poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow Earth out of the universe. \"My grandchild was kidnapped by men under your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?\" \"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't His bellows, however, could be heard yet. \"Unhand me, you fool creatures! Guards! Guards!\" control everywhere now.\" \"Dimmy,\" Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, \"you have beat around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!\" enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden. Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan. said in sudden thought. \"If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why \"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time,\" Callahan mumbled, Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears.\"\n\n<question>:\nO'Rielly starts to talk about \"venus dames\" unprompted and acting strangely. Why?\n\n<options>:\nA He's out of sorts from working on the controls. The heat got to him.\nB He's had an experience with them in the past, and wants to discuss is with Callahan.\nC It's the effect that Venus women have on Earth men. The woman's presence changes his focus.\nD He's embarrassed about the controls malfunction and is trying to change the subject\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
696 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared. As best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. Perhaps it was a prison cell. Whatever it was, he had no business in it for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump calling Herrell McCray....\" And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: \" Jodrell Bank! Where are you? Help!\" IV Hatcher's second in command said: \"He has got through the first survival test. In fact, he broke his way out! What next?\" \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. The new one was female and seemed to be in pain but it was not the pain that disturbed Hatcher, it was something far more immediate to his interests. \"I think,\" he said slowly, \"that they are in contact.\" His assistant vibrated startlement. \"I know,\" Hatcher said, \"but watch. Do you see? He is going straight toward her.\" Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions but he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in exasperation: \"If I could only death. He said, musing: \"This new one, I cannot communicate with her, but I get—almost—a female is perhaps not quite mute.\" \"Then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?\" Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well. Remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died he is alive at least. But I am wondering. We can't quite communicate with whisper, now and then. The first one, the male, nothing. But this the female—\" \"But?\" \"But I'm not sure that others can't.\" The woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the she begged him to hurry. Her voice was heavily accented, with some words in a language he did not recognize. She seemed to be in shock. McCray was hardly surprised at that he had been close enough to shock himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped. He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while There had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall. of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind it— Yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard. It was a woman, all right. The voice had been so strained that he hadn't been positive. Even now, short black hair might not have proved even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls. He knelt beside her and gently turned her face. She was unconscious. Broad, dark face, with no make-up she was She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort her face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he moved her. He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in. His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation one of the female passengers for coffee. Item, apart from being shaken up and—he admitted it—scared damn near witless, he did not nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting seem to be hurt. Item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what cooling brain. McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow he remembered what a spacesuit was good for. It held a radio. He pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest Of course, the thing might not be operating. He reached for the microphone again— He cried aloud. II Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from Earth. After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman. \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report: \"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure. \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\" see Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing.\" There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The everything you can to establish communication with your subject.\" \"But the danger to the specimen—\" Hatcher protested automatically. \"—is no greater,\" said the councillor, \"than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies Hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily. It was just like the council to put the screws on it was not pity or sympathy that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day. He returned quickly to the room. existence to their enemies— \"Hatcher!\" The call was urgent second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded. \"Wait....\" Hatcher was patient Hatcher was startled. \"Another one! And—is it a different species? Or merely a different sex?\" Hatcher studied him frostily his patience was not, after all, endless. \"No matter,\" he said at last. \"Bring the other one in.\" And then, in a completely different mood, \"We may need him badly. We may be in the process of killing our first one now.\" Before Stage Two began, or before Herrell McCray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration. The dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been At the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of Stage Two. He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening. For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before but then that was amazement in its tone, \"McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you calling from?\" He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he cried. \"I'm in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—\" am answering, damn it,\" he roared. \"What took you so long?\" \"Herrell McCray,\" droned the tiny voice in his ear, \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is say, except for one more word: Help.\" He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to consider what to do next. He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm.\n\n<question>:\nWhat effect does Stage Two have on Herrell?\n\n<options>:\nA It distresses him to the point of leaving the cell in order to find the woman.\nB It distresses him to the point of risking what wearing the space suit will do to him.\nC It distresses him to the point of breaking out of the cell.\nD The woman’s distress inspires him to break out of the cell.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
524 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOrison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious come on real cool in the secretary-bit.\" \"He was a very kind employer,\" Orison said. She tried to keep from \"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?\" Orison asked. Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the By lunchtime Orison had finished the Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed, finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed, silent, hat-clasping gentlemen. boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought. She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker. \"Testing,\" a baritone voice muttered. Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. \"Beg pardon?\" she said. \"Testing,\" the male voice repeated. \"One, two, three Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, Orison lay down cautiously. \"All right,\" she whispered to her pillow. Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone. Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by registered mail. \"I'm Orison McCall,\" she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight? the chair to the right of her desk. \"It's nothing,\" Orison said, switching off the microphone. \"Dink?\" she asked. \"And I suppose you're to call me Orison?\" just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding. Orison finished the Orison looked up. \"Oh, hello,\" she said. \"I didn't hear you come up.\" Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends.\" \"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?\" \"So kind of you, darling,\" Auga Vingt said, \"but I shan't have time to n'est-ce pas ?\" \"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly,\" Orison said, rolling her annoyance. Understand me, darling?\" \"You make it very clear,\" Orison said. \"Now you'd best hurry back to your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone.\" \"What is this?\" Orison demanded. \"Visiting-day at the zoo?\" She paused and shook her head. \"Excuse me, sir,\" she said. \"It's just that ... Vingt thing....\" \"Auga is rather intense,\" the new Mr. Gerding said. and Trust Company family, Miss McCall,\" he said. \"I'm Kraft Gerding, had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it. Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and said, \"I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you, Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing business with pleasure.\" Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. \"I quit!\" she shouted. \"You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in finance, and listen to another word.\" \"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon,\" Kraft Gerding said, bowing again, Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. \"Until we meet again?\" Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding. finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits upper floors. Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before \"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding.\" Orison clicked the phone down. it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk, she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could only fire her. Orison folded the paper and put it in the \"Out\" basket. Someone would be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going. Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the liquid. Then she screamed. crawling, leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the stairway door. Into a pair of arms. \"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall,\" Kraft Gerding said. Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder Gerding. \"It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders,\" he the earmuffed sumo -wrestlers protested. \"Elder Compassion has no rank,\" Kraft Gerding said. \"Miss McCall, you must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders.\" \"Dink ... Dink!\" Orison shouted. damsels in distress,\" Kraft said. \"Someone, after all, has to mind the bank.\" \"The message?\" Kraft Gerding demanded. \"Something about escudo green. Put me down!\" Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering \"All right,\" she said, still trembling. \"They were going to throw me to the spiders.\" \"Kraft told you that?\" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the kneeling man. \"Stand up, Elder Brother.\" \"I....\" Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink through half-closed eyes. \"No? Then get out of here, all of you. Samma! \" Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with \"I've always been terrified of them,\" Orison said. \"When I was a little girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite Orison,\" he said. \"Here. You hold him.\" \"I'd rather not,\" she protested. \"I'd be happier if you did,\" Dink said. Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the \"What's he doing now?\" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, We'd better get you down where you belong.\" Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring. Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to\n\n<question>:\nWhat did Orison do when she met Kraft Gerding?\n\n<options>:\nA She went to visit him on the upstairs floors.\nB She typed up a dictated letter for him.\nC She set up a date with him for that evening.\nD She snapped at him and threatened to quit.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,902 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting what she wanted. Phil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack. \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the ritual but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand. \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his \"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it released her and stood up. \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\" \"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil, if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not the noble sort of wife.\" She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes. \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\" \"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off. It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous dream!\" man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever. If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky again. I'd be through.\" ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert, if such was its destiny. Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching out of sight to right and left. At the gate they were stopped by the guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand. \"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled. They drove between the rows of wooden buildings that lined the field, and he parked near the low barbed fence ringing the take-off zone. He \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap. \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said. \"Good-by, darling,\" she said. \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked. \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out. The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell of the rocket waiting silently for flight. Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle stopped. They turned as one man toward him, and General Small came up to him and took his hand. \"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all set, son?\" \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said. As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say something but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said. \"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\" \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\" The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There were chairs set up for the scientists and Air Force officers directly connected with the take-off. They were seated now in a semicircle in front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now. He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence. The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears. to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours until—\" Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and handshakes. They were ready now. \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside. \"Sir?\" \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\" \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\" \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness, Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\" \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry conviction. He reached for a cigarette. \"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned. \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and over. \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only thing that matters is you didn't go.\" \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with\n\n<question>:\nHow might the story's conclusion have differed if Phil, in the beginning of the story, had agreed to Mary's wish?\n\n<options>:\nA The conclusion would likely not have differed -- Phil would lose his sense of purpose and thus his vitality in a relationship\nB Phil would have agreed to Mary's wishes, but left to go on the mission without telling here\nC Phil would eventually come to accept Mary's fear and let go of his dream to go to the moon\nD Phil would have tried to keep a positive attitude and wait his turn for the next mission\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,130 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The sand-thing was powerful, lonely and strange. No doubt it was a god—but who wasn't? of his arrival. He touched the pencil-line scar behind his ear where the cylinder was buried, marveling at the power stored there, power to fling him from your hand. Then what do you do? You throw a fit. Yes, a fit! Like an adolescent. Worse.\" \"Earthman, wait....\" \"No!\" Stinson shot back. \"You've owned this planet for a million years. You have brooded here alone since before my people discovered fire, and in all those ages you never learned self-control. I can't subject my people to the whims of an entity who throws a planetary fit when it pleases him.\" cyclones. But he knew little. Weather control made cyclones and other climatic phenomena on earth practically non-existent. The cloud Sybtl said, \"Is the Sand God happy?\" She shook her head. \"No, he is not did not move, though, except to spin on its axis rapidly, emitting not like to be a God.\" \"Stinson,\" the Sand God said. \"You said I was adolescent. You are The sun—no, not the sun. Not Sol. What should he call it, Alpha or Centaurus? Well, perhaps neither. He was here and Earth was somewhere up there. This was the sun of this particular solar system. He was right the first time. the solar system, the galaxy. Then a returning to the planet. Empty.... Change. Buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. Such a race would have built of durable metal. Durable? Centuries, eons passed. Buildings explanation. \"What am I afraid of?\" he said aloud, \"a few grains of sand blowing in the wind? A wind devil?\" unutterably total void of time—FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS! And a nine-year-old child brooding over an empty world. but it was composed only of grains of sand. There was no core, no The Sand God disappeared. Sybtl said \"Is the Sand God angry again?\" sand possibly have a nervous system? \"You and they shall share the planet.\" \"No, he is not angry.\" She laughed softly. \"You are a strange God.\" \"Listen,\" he said, \"I am not a God. Get that through your head.\" earth to this fourth planet of the Centaurian system in an instant. a place in the sand and drew a triangle with his forefinger. When it first grains of sand, the realization of what was happening dawned with indecipherable symbols. Life. Intelligence. The planet was inhabited. revolved around the sun. This weapon was completely out of place in a culture such as this. Or was it? What did he know of these people? Very little. They were humanoid. They had exhibited human emotions of anger, fear and, that most human of all characteristics, curiosity. But up to now the tube and the chain was the only evidence of an advanced technology, unless She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. \"It is the way of the Gods,\" she on this planet I attempted to explain that I was not a God, but the primitive is not deeply buried in them. They soon resorted to emotion rather than reason. It is of no importance.\" it directly. These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. I permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve.\" \"You should live so long.\" don't understand you. I see you as a cone of sand which keeps changing this planet populated with your kind?\" The wind devil hesitated. \"Where do I originate? It seems I have always been. You see this years ago my people were as you. That is, they lived in physical bodies. Our technology surpassed any you have seen. The tube these webfoots use is a toy by comparison. Our scientists found the ultimate nature of physical law. They learned to separate the mind from the body. Then my people set a date. Our entire race was determined to free greatest law of all—that an entity, once in existence, can never cease to exist.\" The woman looked at him, and she was not smiling. \"Please ask the Sand not last. When He is gone they will probably kill us.\" \"As for the webfoots,\" the wind devil, or Sand God, said, \"I will destroy them. You and your people will have the entire planet.\" is a scientific hypothesis. It has to do with what comes after physical the most basic structure of nature.\" The Sand God did not reply. The great bodiless, directionless voice was and set down in a dark canyon. The cone of sand was the color of wood When he looked back, the Sand God was gone. God.\" \"Listen, Sybtl,\" he said desperately, \"I am not a God and you are not never had been an athlete. How was he to decide if this planet was suitable for his people, hampered by a woman, slinking through a frozen wilderness like an the Sand God. It was blood red now. It pulsed violently. The great The Sand God pulsed more violently than before. Ice melted in a wide primitive logic long before it reached your level of development.\" \"Yes,\" Stinson said, \"and your race no longer exists.\" The Sand God became a sphere of blue flame. A wave of intense heat drove them backward. \"Earthman,\" the great voice said, \"go back to your Earth. Take your inconsistencies with you. Do not come here again to intelligent as you, but they are sane. If you bring your people here, I shall destroy you all.\" The sphere of blue fire screamed away across the frozen wilderness, and the thunder of its passing shook the ground and echoed among the lonely hills. Sybtl shivered against his arm. \"The Sand God is angry,\" she said. \"My people tell how he was angry once before, when we first came here. He killed half of us and burned the ship that brought us. That is how Kaatr got the tube-weapon. It was the only thing the Sand God didn't burn, that and the skirts. Then, when he had burned the ship, the Sand God went to the sixth planet and burned two of the largest cities, as a Sybtl touched his arm. \"Why did the Sand God come? He did not speak.\" \"I did not hear.\" \"Yes, I know now. His voice sounds like thunder in the sky, but it is a voice that speaks only in the mind. He said I must leave this planet.\" She glanced at him with suddenly awakened eyes, as if thinking of it \"Don't worry. The Sand God travels without a ship, why shouldn't I?\" no time, now, to warm cold feet or dwell on the vagaries of Sand Gods. \"The Sand God,\" Sybtl said. \"Sometimes he plays among the clouds. He to green. Then he tires and lets winter come back again. He is the loneliest God in the universe.\" \"What makes you think he's lonely?\" She shrugged her shoulders. \"I just know. But he's an angry God now. angry?\" \"The Sand God isn't doing this,\" Stinson said. \"It's only a storm.\" and be more angry.\" \"But it is, don't you see? You give him powers he does not possess.\" understand. The Sand God is terrible, even when he plays. See the to the desert of sand, where he had first arrived on the planet. He Stinson had never been in a sand storm before, even on Earth. He could not breathe. He could not see. Bullets of sand stung his skin. Bullets of sand shot into his eyes. Clouds of sand howled around him. He fell, \"The Sand God is tired,\" Sybtl said. \"He is not angry now. I'm glad. here with a God who is half devil.\" The cone of sand suddenly appeared. It stood in the canyon, its base \"Earthman,\" the Sand God said, as if he were about to make a statement. her. The webfoots might find us, or the Sand God might destroy us in\n\n<question>:\nWhich is the best description of the Sand God?\n\n<options>:\nA An ancient being who carries centuries of wisdom but has become more volatile with age\nB One of many like beings, all with the same types of powers\nC Volatile and convinced of old ideas without putting them under scrutiny\nD A tempermental, angry power who has always lived on this planet\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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253 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nJUPITER'S JOKE By A. L. HALEY Casey Ritter, the guy who never turned down a dare, breathed a prayer to the gods of idiots and spacemen, and headed in toward the great red spot of terrible Jupiter. also, I had promised not to rat on him before taking the job. Well, Casey Ritter may be a lot of things we won't mention, but he fall and the head man intone the sentence that would take me out of circulation for a long, long time. And instead, blast me, if they didn't foul me with this trip to good old Jupiter. I didn't get it at first. I'd argued with 'em, but inside I'd been all set for the sentence, and even sort of reconciled to it. I could even hear the words in my mind. But they didn't match what the judge was saying. I stood there gaping like a beached fish while I sorted it out. Then I croaked, \"Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir? Want to choke me to death in chlorine instead?\" Being civil to the dried-up straw, joined his fingertips carefully, cleared his scrawny throat, and told me what for. \"You've no doubt heard tales of the strange population of Jupiter,\" he said. \"Every spaceman has, I am sure. Insect-like creatures who manifestly migrated there from some other system and who inhabit the Red Spot of the planet, floating in some kind of artificial and in some way worm from them the secret of their anti-gravity field, substantial monetary reward. Your talents, Mr. Ritter, seem, shall we I squeezed out more when I saw those pictures, though. Those inhabitants were charming, just charming if you like scorpions. Well, a cross between a scorpion and a grasshopper, to be accurate. Floating collapsed onto my chair. A crafty-eyed buzzard across the table leaned toward me. \"So this is the great Casey Ritter, daredevil of the Solar System!\" he sneered. \"Never loses a bet, never turns down a dare!\" I shuddered. \"You're telling that one! And besides, a man's got to draw They were really stumped. They hadn't expected me to take this attitude at all. No doubt they had it figured that I'd gratefully throw myself into a sea of ammonia among man-size scorpions just for the hell of it. Nuts! After all, in the pen a man can eat and breathe, and a guard won't reach in and nip off an arm or leg while he's got his back turned me into an honest trader. Me, Casey Ritter, slickest slicker in \"Oh, no!\" I moaned. \"What were you trying to do, start a feud between us and Mars?\" and sell 'em to Akroida. She's nuts about jools. What that old girl won't give me fer 'em—\" He whistled appreciatively, thinking about it. \"Jupiter!\" I goggled at him. \"Akroida! Who's she?\" He looked at me as if I hadn't yet got out from under the rock where he was sure I'd been born. \"Don't you know nothin', butterhead?\" again. The memory still makes me fry. \"Akroida,\" he explained in his own sweet time, \"is the queen-scorp of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the Halcyon Diamond that disappeared from the World Museum five years ago, remember?\" He winked broadly. \"It come from Mars in the first place, about the rocks on Mars but I jerked him back. \"You mean those scorpions have really got brains?\" \"Brains!\" he snorted. \"Have they got brains! Why, they're smarter than cheese trap, though, I figger she'll be all cooled off and ready fer them emeralds.\" nails, I bit myself. So I faced it. Casey Ritter lost his nerve, and along with it, the chance of a lifetime. A better man than me had already penetrated the Great Red Spot of old Jupiter and come out alive. That thought ate me to the quick, and I began to wonder if it was too late, after all. I could hardly wait for morning to come, so that I could pry more information out of Pard Hoskins. letter to the S.S.C. The Big Sneer of the conference table promptly dropped in on me, friendly as a bottle of strychnine. But for a lad headed for Jupiter that was good training, so I sneered right back at him, explained the and the caper set up. There were a few bits of info that Pard had to shell out, like where the emeralds were, and how to communicate with those scorpions, and how he'd made Akroida mad. that took me in was colorblind, so I didn't have no warning at all. I found out that them scorpions can't stand yeller. It just plain drives them nuts! Thought they'd chaw me up and spit me out into the He ruminated a few minutes. \"Tell you what, chump. Make them shell out with a green an' poiple spacesuit—them's the real Jupiter colors—an' slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut Emeralds from where Pard Hoskins had cached them and safe out in space Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with He paused, his long nose twitching cynically—\"IF you succeed, your Jupiter's farthest moon then they took me in to the edge of Jupiter's ice-cloud and turned me loose in a peanut of a space boat with old Jupe looming ahead bigger than all outdoors and the Red Spot dead ahead. I That famous Red Spot was that big, too. It kept expanding until the red, because it wasn't long until I spotted a purple and green hopper-scorp traveling straight toward me, sort of rowing along with He lolled his hideous cranium practically on my shoulder. \"Anything! Just anything you desire, my dearest friend.\" I tried to back off from him a bit, but the ship stopped me. \"I'm Casey Ritter. What's your label, chum?\" natural lump on his back, and he darted away from me. I opened the throttle and tore after him among the immense red blobs that were now beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions, all busy filling huge baskets with buds and tendrils, no doubt. Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free and peaceable manner that almost made me forget that I was scared to what about Casey Ritter, who hadn't cultivated even a feather? Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the glowed like the inside of a red light. No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all name?\" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my direction. \"Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?\" Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. \"I—uh—the\n\n<question>:\nWhat convinces Casey Ritter to help the government by throwing himself into Jupiter’s Great Red Spot?\n\n<options>:\nA Pard Hoskins tells him that Jupiter’s scorpion race is rich with emeralds, which makes Casey realize how easy it would be to caper the emeralds and collect the compensation the S.S. Court’s offered him for completing the mission.\nB Pats Hoskins tells him that Jupiter’s scorpion race isn’t as harmful as previously thought, which makes Casey realize how easy it would be to earn the compensation the S.S. Court’s offered him if he completed the mission.\nC Casey wants to earn back his honor as a dare devil by successfully tricking Jupiter’s scorpion race into selling him emeralds.\nD Casey wants to learn more about Jupiter’s scorpion race.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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2,278 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were. It made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish. But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was the making. Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray, saying, \"Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of abscence, if you're interested.\" fine record in this sort of thing.\" Keith Ellason smiled, but just barely. \"You should have called me for the first trip.\" before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the Sessions in dealing with such matters. \"Space affects men in a peculiar way,\" Phipps said. \"We have conquered the halfway point. It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. Sessions was lucky to escape with his life.\" \"I suppose that's problematical,\" Phipps said, \"but I think you will. Captain Branson and his fifty crewmen want to return as badly as you Being a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship, and I think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be what we are. The Weblor II were chunks of blue. strictly from the observer viewpoint. There will be no story for Transworld at the end.\" I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it.\" Ellason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something, if it was important? He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle, which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters. He felt rather than heard the dull rumble. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning. He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last view of Earth for two years. The penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under shown the way. The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies ? They had passed stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year. knows we try to vary it as much as we can. Space creates rough edges. But the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it happen. We've got to find that thief.\" \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber mask that covered his head completely.\" Quadrant Two or Four. Elias Cromley, who had the compartment next to Janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, \"Surely a man wouldn't steal from his own quadrant, now would he, Mr. Ellason?\" compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent. On the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. She was in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of the ship. Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on Captain Branson, demanding action. Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have no crewmen to spare for police duty.\" The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by Branson's raised hand. \"I sympathize,\" Branson said, \"but it is up to each quadrant to deal \"No, I trust my men. I won't violate that trust.\" Ellason left, feeling uneasy. If he were Branson, he'd initiate an As a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of it was ready for ripening. Raymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\" Faces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of Captain Branson speaking to them. better weapon than any gun.\" \"What's that?\" \"This ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. If every inch is searched, you'll find your man. He has to be somewhere aboard.\" The colonists quieted. Benjamin Simpson, one of the older men, was each of the quadrants was named to serve under him. Each of these men in turn selected five others from his own group. Those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked, everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was conducted. It took twenty hours. The captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless. At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the and by Keith Ellason. We Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is death. During sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened the landing on Antheon. But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him make so much as a move.\" \"And what will you do when you get him?\" fiercely than ever. \"Without a trial?\" \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for Critten looked him square in the eye and said, \"I threw it out one of the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?\" \"Threw it away?\" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous. blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. It was witnessed by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew disposed of his body through a chute. It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks. Dying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand, which it always is. The Weblor II \"Hello,\" Critten said, grinning from ear to ear. there were wars.\" \"You were excellent,\" Ellason said. \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved , so they had you trained to be a scapegoat. Is that right?\" Critten nodded. \"When great numbers are being transported, they are apt \"To say nothing of me,\" Critten said. \"Naturally.\" \"We removed the charges before the guns were used.\" \"And Carver Janssen's case?\" \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You see, I was a liar.\" \"How about that assault on June Failright?\" Critten grinned again. \"She played right into our hands. She ran out robbed along the corridor. That really stirred them. Lucky nobody got hurt during any of it, including that Stoneman woman. I was trying to rob her when she woke up.\" Branson cleared his throat. \"Ah, Ellason about that story. You understand you can't write it, don't you?\" Critten sighed. \"And I'll have to be caught again.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow many times has Critten been a Nilly?\n\n<options>:\nA 8\nB 5\nC 7\nD 6\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,364 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nAn Unsolved Mystery “Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine, it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t anything that Judy can’t solve.” Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe she’d understand—understand any better than I do. Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no exception.” “You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited “Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—” “Judy Dobbs, remember?” “Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved all those mysteries. I met you when the whole valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened by flood and you solved that—” “That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace, “A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh. “What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.” “It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively. “I was just out for a drive.” “You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.” “Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back, what she was or how she spoke to me is more than I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling. And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them. “For what?” asked Judy. Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts to gossip. documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary. It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her. Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries, but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally told them, the summer before they met. Horace had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton Lee, who gave him his job with the Now Judy did remember. It was something she she was a good judge of character, and she had taken would have preferred to forget. She liked to think series you like. When they’re finished there are plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother “I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two dark-coated figures strode down the road toward Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to have her. “You here again?” she had greeted her that summer, and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with yourself this time?” “Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so much as to escape to a place where she could have a good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—” A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion, of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it. Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy A voice had answered, although she could see no one. “Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely come true.” grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up “Then you—you are the fountain!” Judy remembered said in a mysterious whisper. If Wishes Came True “Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly. “Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any longer. What did you wish?” “Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming to that.” wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton, and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to think of others that my wishes started to come true.” Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a pets, and have a nice home, and—” “And your wishes all came true!” “Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I “It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?” “Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then Judy was telling them the story of the fountain. Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had tasted it too often while she was making it. Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was removed. But there was still a door closing off the she and Grandpa like the way they lived without any modern conveniences or anything.” as Grandma used to call them. That one came true in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?” “I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m to, wouldn’t you, Judy?” “I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically. “You’ll remember it, won’t you?” Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois both argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly. she’d wish for one exactly like it. “Well, you know what your grandmother said about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you let people know about them instead of muttering had covered the distance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s wagon. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t Lorraine reminded her. “Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember “We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.” and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered. “The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind Judy until the car had passed. The man driving it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a\n\n<question>:\nWho is Honey?\n\n<options>:\nA Judy's sister-in-law\nB Judy's younger sister\nC their mutual friend\nD Judy's grandmother\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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907 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nNo movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: \"Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?\" Or \"This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather. The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. (\"Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?\") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, \"In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one.\" Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, \"I seen another world.\" At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, \"Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining.\" Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\" Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass. Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind.\" I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness. John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the film reviewer, Thin Red Line has succeeded in all of the following EXCEPT:\n\n<options>:\nA Overwhelming viewers with bloodshed and prattle\nB Not living up to its pre-release date hype\nC Creating one of film's most notorious villains\nD Maintaining an unnecessarily long-winded tone\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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594 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\njacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a \"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor \"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?\" Orison asked. with the Bank's operation?\" Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the By lunchtime Orison had finished the . Reading this peculiar fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than microphone for an invisible audience. Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought. Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she thought. o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results of her first day's spying. No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock was set the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her? Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs \"Testing,\" a baritone voice muttered. Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. \"Beg pardon?\" she said. \"Testing,\" the male voice repeated. \"One, two, three Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it. The room was empty. \"Testing,\" the voice repeated. \"Where are you, Monitor?\" she demanded. \"That's classified information,\" the voice said. \"Please speak directly to your pillow, Miss McCall.\" Orison lay down cautiously. \"All right,\" she whispered to her pillow. \"Over here,\" the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow beside her. \"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today.\" Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company. \"That's about it, so far,\" she said. a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone. Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by registered mail. the chair to the right of her desk. \"It's nothing,\" Orison said, switching off the microphone. \"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important,\" he said. \"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any as though this explained everything. \"By the way, your official designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here and dictate it?\" \"Please do,\" Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and Orison finished the well , darling,\" someone said across the desk. Orison looked up. \"Oh, hello,\" she said. \"I didn't hear you come up.\" Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends.\" \"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?\" \"So kind of you, darling,\" Auga Vingt said, \"but I shan't have time to Street Journal into a club and standing. \"Darling.\" \"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here. You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of annoyance. Understand me, darling?\" \"What is this?\" Orison demanded. \"Visiting-day at the zoo?\" She paused my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end, dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to the wise....\" \" \"I'll hold my breath,\" Orison promised. \"The elevator is just behind and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits upper floors. Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before \"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding.\" Orison clicked the phone down. What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk, she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could only fire her. Orison folded the paper and put it in the \"Out\" basket. Someone would be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going. The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the liquid. Then she screamed. The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the stairway door. Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder Gerding. \"It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders,\" he said. \"Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were -wrestlers protested. \"Elder Compassion has no rank,\" Kraft Gerding said. \"Miss McCall, you must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders.\" \"Dink ... Dink!\" Orison shouted. \"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of bank.\" questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms around Orison. \"They can't harm you,\" he said. She turned to press her face against his chest. \"You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn your brain back on. All right, now?\" \"All right,\" she said, still trembling. \"They were going to throw me to the spiders.\" \"Kraft told you that?\" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the through half-closed eyes. \"No? Then get out of here, all of you. Samma! \" to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. \"I had to see what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you \"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless,\" Dink said. \"Now, what is this thing you have about spiders?\" \"I've always been terrified of them,\" Orison said. \"When I was a little girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. \"This is no spider, Orison,\" he said. She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped \"What do they do?\" Orison asked. \"That's still a secret,\" Dink said, smiling. \"I can't tell even you that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary.\" \"What's he doing now?\" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to\n\n<question>:\nDoes Orison know what is taking place at the bank?\n\n<options>:\nA Yes - Dink is very open and honest with her\nB No - there are many secrets and oddities\nC Yes - she's a very smart woman\nD No - no one will tell her anything\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,607 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthings got tough, but could still satisfy a woman's craving to mother something small. There was no use hanging around after breakfast. His wife was in a hurt mood, and he could neither endure the hurt nor remove it. He put on his \"I thought they were all registered,\" Anne said. \"They are. I told her she had the wrong neutroid, but she got mad. Went and got the sales receipt. It checked with her newt, and it was from O'Reilley's pet shop—right place, wrong number. I just don't get it.\" \"Nothing to worry about, is it Terry?\" He looked at her peculiarly. \"Ever think what might happen if someone started a black market in neutroids?\" They finished the meal in silence. After lunch he went out again to gather up the rest of the group. By four o'clock, he had gotten all owners down upon him. He began to understand why bio-inspectors were It seemed in order, although the expiration date was approaching. He started toward a bank of neutroid cages along the opposite wall, but of their own, could get quite attached to a cat-Q-5. The felines were emotionally safer than the quasi-human chimp-K series called \"neutroids.\" When a pet neutroid died, a family was broken with grief but most couples could endure the death of a cat-Q or a dog-F. Class-C couples were allowed two lesser units or one neutroid. of growth hormones, trying to raise himself a harem to sell. Besides, you're required to keep sales records until they've been micro-filmed. one when they executed that shyster doctor for shooting K-108s full something he had been expecting for several days. Attention All District Inspectors: Subject: Deviant Neutroid. Unauthorized neutroids could mean lots of trouble. lab. Return standard units to their owners. Accomplish entire survey project within seven days. do it in a week? And there were only eleven empty neutroid cages in his kennel. The other forty-nine were occupied by the previous inspector's \"unclaimed\" inventory—awaiting destruction. Bermuda K-99 serial numbers that had entered his territory, together with the retailers to whom the animals had been sold. A week's deadline for finding and testing forty neutroids would put him in a tight squeeze. Glubbes—called a while ago and said her baby was sick. I must be getting absent-minded, because I forgot she was class C until I got there.\" He hesitated. \"The baby turned out to be a neutroid. It's understand?\" \"I think so,\" Norris replied slowly. \"But what do you want me to do? Can't you send the neutroid to a vet?\" \"She insists it's going to a hospital. Worst part is that she's heard of the disease. Knows it can be cured with the proper treatment—in humans. Of course, no hospital would play along with her fantasy and take a neutroid, especially since she couldn't pay for its treatment.\" \"I still don't see—\" \"I thought perhaps you could help me fake a substitution. It's a K-48 Norris immediately regretted his consent. It bordered on being illegal. But he saw it as a quick way to get rid of an animal that might later have to be killed. And that , he thought, was like trying to take a year-old baby away The robot operator, which had on tape the working habits of each Wylo me —and charging one of them with assault. I tried to pick up their neutroids for a pound inspection—\" Yates bellowed lusty laughter into the phone. \"It's not funny. I've got to get those neutroids. It's in connection with the Delmont case.\" Yates stopped laughing. \"Oh. Well, I'll take care of it.\" be dropped if they cooperate. Don't shake those warrants around unless they just won't listen to reason. But get those neutroids.\" \"Okay, boy. Gotcha.\" Norris grinned, caught her shoulders, and pulled her close. \"Honeymoon's on again, huh?\" she whispered against his neck. \"Come on,\" he grunted. \"Let's unload some neutroids, before I forget all about work.\" with a conveyor belt leading from it to a crematory-incinerator. Norris kept the third locked lest his wife see its furnishings. The doll-like neutroids began their mindless chatter as soon as their \"They get to love whoever feeds them.\" \"I can't see—\" \"How would you feel about disposing of something that loved you?\" Anne folded her arms and stared at him. \"Planning to dispose of any \"Honeymoon's off again, eh?\" She turned away. \"I'm sorry, Terry. I'll try not to mention it again.\" He began unloading the truck, pulling the frightened and squirming he's got to be quick about it before the ovum dies from an overdose of radiation from the enlarger. A good operator can get one success out of seven tries. had a couple of flaws—something wrong in the central nervous system's determinants, and in the glandular makeup. Not a standard neutroid ovum. He passed it on to the incubators to get a credit, knowing it wouldn't be caught until after birth.\" \"So it would develop sexuality. A neutroid would be born a female if they didn't give it suppressive doses of male hormone prenatally. That keeps ovaries from developing and it comes out neuter. But Delmont figured a female would be caught and stopped before the final inspection. They'd dispose of her without even bothering to examine for the other defects. And he could blame the sexuality on an equipment malfunction. He thought it was pretty smart. Trouble was they didn't catch the female. She went on through they all female.\" \"How did they find out about it now?\" \"He got caught last month, trying it again. And he confessed to doing \"Put it in the cage, Anne,\" he said quietly. She looked up and shook her head. \"It belongs to somebody else. If it fixes a libido attachment on you, you're actually robbing its owner. They can't love many people at once.\" She snorted, but installed the thing in its cage. \"Anne—\" Norris hesitated, hating to approach the subject. \"Do won't catch us. I'll have it at home, Terry. Not even a doctor. We'll brandishing a pistol and screaming, 'You stole my baby! You gave me the wrong baby! Where's my baby?' \"When the doctor assured her that there was no other baby, she fired, shattering his salad plate. Glancing off it, the bullet pierced his \"Woman killed a man. I happened to know the motive.\" \"What was it?\" \"Neutroid trouble.\" \"You meet up with a lot of unpleasantness in this business, don't you?\" \"Lot of unpleasant emotions tangled up in it,\" he admitted. of bed and tiptoed quietly through the door, carrying his shoes and trousers. He put them on in the kitchen and stole silently out to the He went into the neutroid room and flicked a switch. A few sleepy chatters greeted the light. was obvious. Society manufactured them because killing them was permissible. Human babies could not be disposed of when the market became glutted. The neutroids offered solace to childless women, kept them satisfied with a restricted birth rate. And why a restricted that he had damn little chance of being born to enjoy it. A neutroid filled the cradle in his stead. A neutroid that never ate as much, or grew up to be unemployed. A neutroid could be killed if\n\n<question>:\nWhat act suggests that Terry empathizes with the owners of the neutroids he confiscates as part of his job?\n\n<options>:\nA He returns lost neutroids to their owners instead of taking them to the pound and incinerating them.\nB He drops charges after they assault him if they agree to cooperate with authorities.\nC He ignores discrepancies in serial number checks even though it could cost him his job.\nD He thinks about stealing a neutroid for his wife, but ultimately feels bad and returns it to its owner.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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761 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nalways acted as if he had some secret, something to hide. Curtis recalled that Nelson and Androka had long conversations together—conversations which they would end abruptly when anyone else came within earshot. And Nelson had always been chummy with the worst naval organization. If you could silence all radio—silence of that sort would be deadly! trouble maker in the crew—Bos'n's Mate Bradford. fire— had all regained consciousness and were drying out in front of the big driftwood bonfires in the cove. Curtis got a glimpse of the design on which he was working, and his lips relaxed in a faint smile. Androka had arrived on board the Comerford the day before she sailed from Norfolk. With him came a boatload of scientific apparatus and equipment, including a number of things that looked like oxygen tanks, which were now stored in the forward hold. Androka had watched over his treasures with the jealous care of a mother hen, and spent hours crew was marooned on an islet, about a square mile in area One searching party reported finding the remains of what had been a daily in the room in the superstructure that had been assigned as his behind. Curtis was studying the wreckage of the wireless station, wondering if this might have been the source of Androka's zone of silence, when Ensign Jack Dillon came up to him. to move in these waters with such a possibility of error!\" Nelson complied, and the throbbing drive of the engines lessened Androka decrees silence over the German airways! Try it! Try it, I say!\" Bob Curtis stared at him, as if questioning his sanity. Then he conked. I was trying to see if something's wrong.\" high-powered commercial program in the higher reach, nor the chatter of ships or amateurs on the shorter. \"Dead!\" Androka muttered, with a bitter laugh. \"Yet not dead, gentlemen! The set is uninjured. The waves are what have been upset. I have shattered them around your ship, just as I can eventually shatter \"Your secrecy might well cost the United States navy one of its best light cruisers—and us our lives!\" he said angrily. \"We need that check by radio at once! If you're not talking nonsense, call off your dogs till we learn just where we are!\" Androka held out his palms helplessly. \"I can do nothing. I have given orders to my assistant that he must keep two hours of radio silence! I can get no message to him, for our radio is dead!\" that they had been put ashore without food or extra clothing or winking at the two officers over Androka's discomfiture, and asked for the bearings. Commander and navigator had both scribbled verifications of the numbers. Ignoring the gibbering Androka, who was wailing his disappointment that messages had penetrated his veil of silence, they closed. The sky was again a blanket of darkness pouring sheets of rain at them. Nelson went back to the bridge, and Androka returned to the commander's tingle they sent through his inquiring fingers. Curtis left him at it, and went to rejoin Androka in the cabin. He \"Those tanks you have below,\" Curtis said, \"have they some connection with this radio silence?\" A far-away look came into Androka's eyes. He did not seem to hear I'm afraid we're gored!\" enveloped the entire cruiser. Looking over the side, he could no longer the Maginot Line, and of other forts in Holland and Belgium that had fallen before the early Nazi blitzkrieg, when their defenders found themselves struck numb and helpless by a gas that had been flooded into the inner compartments of their strongholds. There were those who said it was the work of sappers who had tunneled under the foundations, while others laid the induction of the gas to The vapor clouds that enveloped the stricken helpless. And then Curtis saw other forms flitting about the deck—forms that looked like creatures from another world, but he recognized them for what they were—men wearing gas masks. Nelson was nowhere in sight. The steersman lay in a limp heap beside the swinging wheel. Then a gas-masked figure appeared through the shroud of mist and steadied it, so that the cruiser would not be completely at the mercy of the wind and the waves. in a lazy, rolling motion, as she lay with her bow nosing into the sandbar at the entrance of the inlet. From her bridge, Navigating Officer Nelson watched the gas-masked figures moving about the decks, descending companionways—like goblins from an ancient fairy tale or a modern horror story. Nelson looked like gas mask. Nelson spoke in a low tone, his lips close to Bradford's ear. \"It worked, Joe!\" lowered accommodation ladder and transferred into waiting lifeboats. Nelson swore under his breath. \"Reckon it'll take a couple of hours before the ship's rid of that damn gas!\" Bradford shook his head in disagreement. \"The old geezer claims he's got a neutralizing chemical in one of them tanks of his that'll clear everything up inside half an hour.\" \"I'd rather get along without Androka, if we could!\" Nelson muttered. \"He's nothing but a crackpot!\" \"It was a crackpot who invented the gas we used to break up the Maginot Line,\" Bradford reminded him. \"It saved a lot of lives for the Fuehrer World War. My mother committed suicide when she learned that we were me—to educate me in a military prep school, then send me to Annapolis, for a career in the United States navy—and no one suspected me. No one—\" men—officers, seamen, mechanics, radio men, technical experts, all German naval reservists living in the United States, who've been sent here secretly, a few at a time, during the past six weeks!\" unconscious crew and row them ashore. And when that task was completed, lifeboats began to come alongside with strange-looking radio equipment, and more gas tanks like those Androka had brought aboard the Comerford with him, and dynamos and barrels of lard oil for machine-tool lubrication. Our agents have been watching the convoys closely for weeks for just such a cargo as the Carethusia is taking over.\" \"Can we trust Androka?\" Nelson asked, with a sudden note of suspicion in his voice. \"Yes,\" Brandt assured him. \"Of all men—we can trust Androka!\" has a daughter and other relations in Prague. He knows that if anything misfires, if there is the slightest suspicion of treachery on his part, his daughter and the others will suffer. Androka's loyalty is assured!\" Nelson turned to watch the forward fighting top of the Comerford . The masked German seamen were installing some sort of apparatus up there—a strange-looking object that looked something like an old-fashioned trench mortar, and which connected with cables to the room that served as Androka's laboratory and workshop. Another crew was installing radio apparatus in the mizzentop turret. Descending a companionway to see what was going on below, Nelson found that portholes were being opened, and men were spraying chemical around to rid the below-decks atmosphere of the lethal gas that had overcome the Comerford's American crew. Returning to the bridge, he found that the tide in the inlet had risen considerably, and that the cruiser was riding more easily at her anchor. as if a wave of searing heat had scorched them. \"A bit of a headache from the gas, but that's all. Any orders, sir?\" which smelled strongly of treachery and sabotage. As he thought back, he realized that he have prevented the very purpose. The pieces of the picture fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle—Androka's zone of silence the bearings given by radio Navigating Officer Nelson's queer conduct. They were all part of a never trusted him. Nelson\n\n<question>:\nWas the gas incident deadly?\n\n<options>:\nA Yes, there were bodies scattered all over the ship.\nB No, exposed crewmen were left nearly comatose.\nC Yes, and only gas masks could help prevent death from the gas exposure.\nD No, because Androka made sure to expose the crewmen to a nondeadly gas.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
933 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDole vs. the Times For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times . Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. \"This is a disgrace,\" Dole insisted. \"I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times .\" Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. \"We are not going to let the media steal this election,\" he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. \"This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times .\" On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, \"I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right.\" On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper \"the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee.\" In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times \"might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago.\" On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, \"That's about what I got in the New York Times today.\" The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment. No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. \"They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign,\" the official said. \"The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems.\" With Seelye, the official says, the problem is \"not being able to transcribe a tape accurately.\" With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, \"the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture.\" As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the \"Brooklyn\" Dodgers as \"a rough stretch of politicking.\" Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as \"the softest portrait since they invented black velvet\"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. \"Clinton even gets better photographs,\" the official contends. Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. \"We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole,\" he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the \"playing around\" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. \"If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too,\" he says. But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the \"horse race\" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday. None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, \"I like the media. They don't like them in the South.\" But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press. But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a \"corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned.\" That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. \"There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors,\" Dole said then. \"They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties.\" The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the author believe is Dole's real grievance with the New York Times?\n\n<options>:\nA Dole is angry because he cannot use them to bolster his campaign\nB Dole was once fired from the New York Times when he worked there as a young adult\nC Dole feels isolated from the Washington elite\nD Dole cannot receive constructive criticism\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,113 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\ncomplained. It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore I was a little disappointed. I've run across a gun or two in my time. But I never say anything. I learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction. her absence, which I dutifully did. Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out. I was sent home with a stinging note. Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine. can't stand the alarm. When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane. I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first. The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft, bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me. I goggled at her, managed to croak, \"No, thanks.\" She gave me an odd look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her. like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to stop it. Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold until it came to a dead stop. \"Anything the matter?\" she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else, just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other. It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was \"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look. I said, \"What happens if nobody claims it?\" \"Take it inside. Why?\" He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\" I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb. through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied me. I should not have been there, that much I knew I should be with a something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until what? A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him, \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\" I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\" She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door. \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I restrained myself. She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said, \"Please put the bag down. Over there.\" I indicated a spot beside a telephone booth where it would be out of the way. She didn't move. She just said, \"Why?\" The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a telephone call.\" I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, \"And don't ask me why.\" I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, \"All right, but—\" range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel. Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet. \"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?\" she said stiffly. ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag. there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag. in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he must have put the—put it in there.\" I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\" \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy. I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it would have to do. \"We've got to get it deactivated,\" I said, watching the fat man pay for his coffee and leave. \"The sooner the better.\" \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get over to the office.\" We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was thinking. She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me. \"Well,\" the policeman said, \"I can't make\n\n<question>:\nWhich is not a reason the narrator did not tell anyone about the bomb when he discovered it?\n\n<options>:\nA He did not want to have to explain how he knew it was there\nB He figured it was futile, if there were no specialists to disarm it on board\nC He thought he might be able to keep it from becoming dangerous if he tried hard enough\nD He did not want to be asked to diffuse it because he did not know how\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,693 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nUnfortunately , there was only one thing he could bring back first,\" I said. \"I'm beginning to feel this. We could get some of that barbecued ox.\" \"Maybe we ought to eat something \"Vegetarian,\" he said. \"Couldn't possibly eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.\" from the wonderful future ... and though he didn't want to ... nevertheless he did.... \"Well, we need some nourishment,\" I said. his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fumbled in a drawer for the aspirin bottle. nourishment in beer.\" That made sense. I yelled, \" \"There's supposed to be considerable Fräulein! to use for money?\" \"Providence,\" Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle, \"will provide.\" \"Hm-m-m. But before providing He looked over at Betty and said, almost as though reciting, \"What I hotel?\" Pschorrbräu tent.\" That seemed like a good question. elbow. Something that would net about fifty dollars.\" Simon said, mournful of tone, I thought about it for a while. Finally \"Fifty dollars? Why not make it five hundred?\" \"Money,\" Simon said. \"When you took this job you said it was the romance that appealed to you.\" Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now Arth closed his eyes in pain. Simon said unenthusiastically, \"That's quite a gadget,\" I groaned. \"If I didn't feel so lousy, I'd the bed holding his bald head in his hands. \"I remember now,\" he sorrowed. \"You didn't have a hotel. Simon, said finally, \"You know Phased all the way down.\" \"You haven't got a handful of aspirin, have you?\" I asked him. \"Just a minute,\" Arth said, staggering erect and heading for what my name, that's pretty good. Never saw you before in my life. Stop fussing Simon said nothing. Across the \"I'm clean. I won't mess up the place. All I've got is a hangover, not Simon continued to say nothing she lice.\" \"Why?\" \"Why?\" I took the pill, followed it with a Arth was gone. He came back in two or three minutes, box of pills in hand. \"Here, take one of these.\" glass of water. None was forthcoming. There And went out like a light. Arth was shaking my arm. \"Want a hundred years or so and killed your own great-grandfather. Then how could you ever be born?\" fellow growled. \"How?\" Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, another everybody upped with their king-size mugs and drank each other's health. My head was killing me. \"This is where I came in, or something,\" I cautious, \"At my hotel, don't you remember?\" \"What,\" Betty said, \"are you going contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems better to read the lettering on my Simon seemed incapable of carrying fact that they'd somehow managed to lose my bag didn't help. I worked earthenware mug. It read Augustinerbräu. Simon put in a word. \"The usual receipt. He didn't speak English and twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler, then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They have to tread mighty carefully.\" time traveler returned to a period of Somehow we'd evidently on the subject, young man.\" Simon shrugged and fumbled again with the aspirin bottle. Mr. Oyster went on. \"I've been considering the matter for some time by the minute. I was bleeding to should drink a gallon or more of Marzenbräu. I decided the hell with it. I took death through the eyes and instead Simon held up a hand. \"There's and—\" no use prolonging this. As I understand their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then , and I'd had it. Simon said, \"You want to hire me I got more guff there. Something was fouled up, some clerk's error, evidently. The trip back was as uninteresting as the one over. As the hangover began to wear off—a little—I was almost sorry I hadn't been able to stay. If I'd only been able to get a room I would have stayed, I told myself. the office rather than going to my apartment. I figured I might as well \"I told you I'd been considering it for some time. The Oktoberfest Betty and Simon waited. you came for? Impatient to hear if hangover. \"Came for?\" Mr. Oyster snorted. Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn't leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn't ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed Betty said, \"What's the matter \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept this marble-missing client came I tried just once more. \"Uh, when \"Well,\" the old boy pursued, into did you first see this Mr. Oyster?\" \"This morning,\" I said weakly. somebody with a strange accent, or who didn't know exactly how to wear it was me that needed candling by a \"But why would a time traveler \"Why not! What better opportunity Simon's story), \"did you Simon shrugged, put one hand to Roman Triumph, perhaps the Rites of Dionysus, or one of Alexander's more.\" \"I'm not interested in more,\" Mr. He took a deep breath. \"No ma'am, you'd have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual as he left. Simon winced at the noise, took the aspirin bottle from its drawer, took two, washed them down with water from the desk carafe. The old boy wound it up. \"Well, that's the story. What are your rates? The Simon was shaking his head. \"Not one way of taking care of a crackpot. But I'm surprised you didn't \"I did,\" Simon groaned. \"Three Simon nodded, miserably. Simon \"Sorry,\" Simon said. \"Can't be \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality \"Out of the question,\" Simon \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the two of them sourly, \"suppose I tell you a funny story. It goes like this:\" I got a thousand dollars from Mr. furious at him, \"you've given up! Simon said wearily, \"There's just one thing you can bring back with you from the future, a hangover compounded of a gallon or so of Marzenbräu. packed a bag. Hell, I'd wanted a vacation of an advance, and leaving him with Oyster (Simon began) in the way He shuddered. \"If you think I'm going to take another crack at this \"All right,\" I told him plaintively. He looked at me, waiting. I came up. \"Mistaken,\" I admitted. A or two apiece later he looked carefully at the name engraved on \"Yes, why?\" he said. He took a small notebook from his pocket and a pencil, noted down the word and returned the things. Shouldn't have said that.\" I had never heard of the brand so I skipped it. well. \"My pilgrimage,\" he told me. \"All my life I've been wanting to go back to an . \"I'll help you,\" I told him. \"Very noble endeavor. Name is Simon.\" \"Arth,\" he said. \"How could you help?\" \"I'm still fresh—comparatively. mass A beer later I said, \"I don't know if you'll make it or not, Arth.\" \"Make what?\" to her for refills. asked him, in the way of making that?\" Arth thought about it. Took another\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Simon's new friend not give him an aspirin when Simon asked for one?\n\n<options>:\nA He had run out of aspirin and did not know how to help.\nB The friend thought Simon needed to deal with his headache like a man.\nC He needed to knock him out to go back to the festival so that Simon would not know what had happened.\nD He gave him a different medicine instead that he thought would work better.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
918 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nElizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: \"I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin.\" As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) \"unsex\" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state. That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon. With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, \"There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.\") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center. In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay. But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one. A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung. Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980 Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin \"Am I to understand that ...?\" and a corporate villain who directs another character to \"wake up and smell the thorns.\" It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd \"never write the great American novel\"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent. Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank \"Hey now!\" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?\n\n<question>:\nIn comparing queens, whom does the film reviewer view as the most controversial?\n\n<options>:\nA Jonathan Rhys-Myers as Brian Slade\nB Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I\nC Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth I\nD David Bowie as himself\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,733 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nBERET \"They'll be after us in half a minute.\" The other inspector carried a light machine gun and a box of grenades. \"I better cover,\" he said. \"Thanks,\" Rashid said. The inspector slid out of the car and ran to a clump of bushes. Read wanted to jump out of the car. He could die any minute. But \"They don't know who's coming,\" he said. \"They don't make them tough enough to stop this boy.\" Staring straight ahead, he didn't see the sergeant smile. He had belonged to a gang called The Golden Spacemen. \"Nobody fools with me,\" he bragged. \"When Harry Read's out, there's a tiger running loose.\" No one knew how many times he nearly ran from other clubs, how carefully he picked the safest spot on the battle line. international cops wore green berets, high buttonless boots, bush other jobs. UN men no longer went unarmed. Trained to use small arms and gas weapons, they guarded certain borders, bodyguarded diplomats and UN officials, even put down riots that threatened passengers scanned the sky. behind them. \"One thing,\" Read said, \"I don't think they'll shoot at us while he's Rashid turned his head. He waved frantically. The two men in the other car waved back. \"Shall I duck under the trees?\" the driver asked. \"Not yet. Not until we have to.\" surrounded each vehicle. The escort car made a sharp turn and charged their pursuers. The big rifle fired twice. Read saw the Belderkan cars scatter. Suddenly machine-gun bullets cracked and whined beside him. \"Evade,\" Rashid said. \"Don't go down.\" Without losing any forward speed, the driver took them straight shoot back. All we can do is run. The sky was clear and blue. The jungle was a noisy bazaar of color. In the distance guns crashed. He listened to shells The driver, pistol in hand, ran for the control panel. There were three technicians in the station and no passengers. Through the window of his mask, Read saw their pursuers land in the clearing. Machine-gun bullets raked the building. They got fire on the largest car. \"Now, I can shoot back,\" he said. \"Now we'll see what they do.\" \"Are you ready, Rashid?\" yelled the driver. \"Man, get us out of here!\" waiting room surrounded the bank of transmitter booths. Read looked out the door and saw his first battlefield. couldn't see his wound, only the pain scratched on his face and the blood he deposited on the floor. Rashid swore. \"You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those men.\" He heard the screams of the wounded, the crack of rifles and machine guns, all the terrifying noise of war. But since his eighteenth year he had done everything his superiors told him to cover. A bullet cracked above his head, so close he felt the shock wave. He got up, ran panicky, crouched, and dove behind the chair. An inspector cracked the valve on a smoke grenade. A white fog spread through the building. They could see anyone who tried to rush them but the besiegers couldn't pick out targets. Above the noise, he heard Rashid. Read thought of the green beret he had stuffed in his pocket that plain clothes anymore and he wanted to wear at least a part of his uniform. Bullets had completely shattered the wall in front of him. He do a good job here, he wasn't the man he claimed to be. This might be the only real test he would ever face. He heard a shout in rapid French. He turned to his right. Men in red loincloths ran zigzagging toward the station. They carried light automatic rifles. Half of them wore gas masks. \"Shoot the masks,\" he yelled. \"Aim for the masks.\" The machine gun kicked and chattered on his shoulder. He picked a target and squeezed off a burst. Tensely, he hunted for another across the battlefield. The attackers ran through it. A few yards beyond the gas, some of them turned and ran for their own lines. In a moment only half a dozen masked men still advanced. The inspectors fired a long, noisy volley. When they stopped only four attackers remained on their feet. And they were running for cover. The attackers had come straight up a road that led from the Game they had met the Belderkans with a dozen grenades and sent them scurrying for cover. The fight so far had been vicious but disorganized. But the Belderkans had a few hundred men and knew they had wrecked the transmitter controls. The first direct attack had been repulsed. They could attack many more times and continue to spray the building with bullets. They and should see them going up. The inspectors had taken up good defensive positions. In spite of their losses, they still had enough firepower to cover the area surrounding the station. Read surveyed his sector of fire. About two hundred yards to his left, he saw the top of a small ditch. Using the ditch for cover, the Belderkans could sneak to the top of the hill. The heavy gas would lie there for hours. Sergeant Rashid ran crouched from man to man. He did what he could to shield the wounded. \"Well, corporal, how are you?\" \"How do you think they'll treat us?\" \"That we'll have to see.\" An occasional bullet cracked and whined through the misty room. Near him a man gasped frantically for air. On the sunny field a wounded man screamed for help. doesn't get here on time, I've got a man filling wine bottles with gasoline.\" \"We'll stop them, Sarge. Don't worry.\" Rashid ran off. Read stared across the green land and listened to frontal attack? To sneak in over the top of the hill? He didn't think, anymore than a rabbit thinks when it lies hiding from the fox or a panther thinks when it crouches on a branch above the trail. His skin tightened and relaxed on his body. He looked nervously from side to side. They couldn't bring the copter in with that thing squatting out there. masks couldn't filter. Read shut his eyes. All around him he heard heavy breathing, mumbled comments, curses. Clothes rustled as men moved restlessly. For two years Read had served under Sergeant Rashid. To him, the watched their escort charge three-to-one odds. He had seen another inspector stay behind at Miaka Station. And here, in this building, lay battered men and dead men. All UN inspectors. All part of his life. And he was part of their life. Their blood, their sacrifice, and Read had given away his machine gun. He held a gas-filled bottle Dozens of smoke grenades tumbled through the air. Thick mist engulfed the tank. Read stood up and ran forward. He crouched but didn't zigzag. Speed counted most here. Gunfire shook the hill. The Belderkans couldn't see them but they knew what was going on and they fired systematically into the smoke. Bullets ploughed the ground beside him. He raised his head and found the dim silhouette of the tank. He tried not to think about bullets ploughing through his flesh. Guns clattered. Bullets cracked. \"Sergeant Rashid! Answer me.\" He heard nothing but the lonely passage of the bullets in the When he reached the tank, he had another bullet in his right arm. But they didn't know he was coming and when you get within ten feet of a tank, the men inside can't see you. He just had to stand up and drop the bottle down the gun barrel. That was all—with a broken hip and a wounded right arm. He knew they would see him when he stood up but he didn't think about that. He didn't think about Sergeant Rashid, about the\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is the best explanation for why Read put on his green beret during the battle?\n\n<options>:\nA He thought it would offer him some protection he got shot.\nB He found some comfort in the familiar uniform.\nC It was annoying keeping it in his pocket and this was less distracting.\nD He wanted to make sure others in the battle could identify him, to avoid friendly fire.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,072 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nsag of the dust JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still healing. filters we would have been blinded constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the as it was our eyes ached heard a sharp cry through our earphones. The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment not going to make the Crossing.” “Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded. “The name is Claney,” said the stranger. There was a silence. Then: “Claney? of a Bug Claney?” “That’s right.” Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger Peter and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the whole idea.” “Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in It looked the same, but every now and then it the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch I gunned my motor and nothing happened. I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs, thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the . Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma? Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten “You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney. I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash. it across where your attempt failed—” One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.” “Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.” Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. It was the both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting. that whipped us, that and the “Never,” said Baron. “Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said. then I edged my Bug I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.” it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury how crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years before. exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited. He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was “And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?” “Of course.” Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t worried us first and Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you have?” “The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at if the suits failed somewhere.” “How about the Bugs?” them too much for protection.” “You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?” tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of the planet at the hottest it ever gets. The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” back over my shoulder, I could see the Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for the first twenty miles. I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace. came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches, the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden. Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge, with black cliffs jutting up on either side Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly their sides were shrouded with heavy ash. sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Baron think there was something wrong with Claney's filters?\n\n<options>:\nA Claney's face is extremely sunburned.\nB Claney's face is twisted and brown.\nC Claney's face is covered in scars.\nD Claney's face is covered in cancerous tumors.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,997 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nlike this . Quest. March 1959. THE JUPITER WEAPON above. Landing feet-first in the She accompanied him through head and shoulders with the chairs. Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's View, the terrestrial dome-colony on Ganymede. Motwick, already at the table. make her way through these of town, especially one clad her. He had an engaging grin, As she did, the dark, slick-haired she walked swiftly toward the bar, he leaped up to follow her. There were only two other people in the Golden Satellite: the fat, mustached bartender and a short, square-built man at serious!” “I am. I say he's an android, It all figures. “Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration He began to back away from free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting around the short man and took refuge behind him. Her protector necessary to break his father,” protested Trella. behind him, the squat man began “Robots and androids frequently from the approaching Kregg. “Quest may not even know he's look on their makers as “Yes. Do you know when?” “He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he's human?” Trella was silent. “For the protection of humans, have been, because the short gently. “The first is that they bottle in a complete arc. It smashed on Kregg's head, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second themselves. Moving agilely around the end he is, without knowing she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. have come here in the first place.” Humans could love androids, a deep, resonant voice behind with real affection, even knowing back to Earth. She was tempted to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She to decide what to do about Quest. after she had completed her assignment. “But no one will bother you on left the G-boat at White Sands. The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's him to the Stellar Hotel for me.” moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with He knew I'd have to grow of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington. The dimly lighted street like the looks of the men she saw. The transparent dome of Jupiter's View was faintly visible in the reflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky. “I'm Quest Mansard, Miss,” said her companion. “I'm just in from Jupiter.” “I'm Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed luxurious house, and they entered glance. “You mean Io, don't you—or before a fire in the old-fashioned Moon Five?” “No,” he said, grinning at Jupiter.” “You're lying,” she said flatly. “No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again.” “My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it,” he said soberly. “I was born I should tell you about.” She told him about Quest. there. Have you ever heard of Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently upward turn. “He developed the surgiscope, didn't he? But his ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost.” “It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully,” said Quest. “He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen on Jupiter.” “He came back to Earth with it, an android Dr. Mansard built you, eh?” asked Blessing intently. equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.” a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the a short vacation before resuming hold himself down. “If Dr. Mansard succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn't anyone ever hear from him again?” she demanded. “Because,” said Quest, “his a guard was stationed at every radio was sabotaged, just as his ship's drive was.” “When we don't understand all “Jupiter strength,” she murmured, “I don't know. It's not that that the strongest and most agile man on Ganymede They had reached the more coffee shop. “I landed here only a week But, since this was to be hair and comely face. “I'm heading Quest came the day before she against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to Earth. she was to give to the weeks before the spaceship of Quest. turning white. “Let's get through the back of the house out of the garage. She was not at all happy about started the engine. and Quest burst through. about feeling drawn to a The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity sprang forward and swept the and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels. Quest was after it, like a at the end of the driveway and ought to be,” she confessed. “I may need protection against myself till we get to Earth.” “If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your ran down the driveway toward Quest was already beside it, The Cometfire swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four psychologically from my birth answered Quest “I didn't know She told him only that she Right after my father completed Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter. “But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come before she was born, and she to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms. “Now I can say I love you,” he said. “That was part of the The you know this, too, now: that “What in space makes you think that?” he demanded. “Why, Quest, it's obvious,” she cried, tears in her eyes. “Everything about you … your Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. his invention of the surgiscope, I know you think Dr. Mansard and it had been developed by build, suited for Jupiter's gravity …your strength … the your strength … the 55 Blessing had been searching the Jovian moons for a second, hidden laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he which Blessing headed. up on Jupiter, and he operated of Jupiter … even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics atmosphere.” to tell Quest the good news with a laugh. “They don't grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well.” He took her in his arms again, THE END “What did he say?” she was grateful for his presence. after Asrange ran amuck. Asrange was the third passenger. He was a lean, saturnine emotion … until the day Quest in distress.\n\n<question>:\nWhere does the beginning of the story take place?\n\n<options>:\nA Saturn\nB Jupiter\nC One of Jupiter's moons\nD One of Saturn's moons\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,048 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nAs for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous. not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century. hastily supplied by the management. \"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?\" Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. \"Come on, have a drink Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions, identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for years. The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. \"Where to, fellow-man?\" the driver asked. \"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?\" wanted by then. \"Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?\" \"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the future! Sometimes,\" he added musingly, \"I almost wish you would let Gabriel shivered. \"I'll be careful,\" he vowed. \"I promise—I'll be careful.\" When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night, driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known Playing the game was fabulously expensive it had to be to make it profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien human beings all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs. Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been big money in musical chairs as such. they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet. The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible. of the usual Vinoz set-up it was down-right shabby, the dim olive light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but, when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed too logical for the man he was haunting. to herself. \"I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse. them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up. Why! must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not, she thought, the best way her body was much too good a one to risk so casually. of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of them would stay.... \"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him,\" she asked, \"why then less impersonal, \"for your sake.\" She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but \"Why must you change again?\" she persisted, obliquely approaching the subject she feared. \"You have a pretty good body there. Why run the risk of getting a bad one?\" \"Why not?\" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes. \"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house.\" \"But I have plenty of money.\" The young man coughed. The Vinzz \"In a town like this?\" \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by no means poor when it came to worldly goods. \"Why don't you try another town where they're not so particular?\" The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game. win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original casing had? He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now he would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl, seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of information. The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or biological impossibility, no one could tell. It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever been proved that an alien life-form had \"desecrated\" a human body, Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was, \"Don't beat 'em cheat 'em.\" \"Why, that's three times the usual rate!\" not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. \"Of course I'd go with you,\" she went on, now knowing she lied, \"when you got your ... old body back.\" Sure , she thought, I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and thrill-mills. Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go with him again. But that once had been enough nothing could ever wash that experience from her mind or her body. \"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?\" she went on. \"You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose, does he?\" \"I don't want to know!\" he spat. \"I wouldn't want it if I could get\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the odd beings from the seventh plant only want interstellar credits?\n\n<options>:\nA So that they could buy slaves.\nB So that they could return to Vinau and buy slaves.\nC To buy booze any time they desired.\nD So that they could return to Vinau.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,276 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCharity Case By JIM HARMON Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS touched those spots inside me. That was when I did it. Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free, buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me. Not if you believe me. on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide. Dad was a compact man, small eyes, small mouth, tight clothes. He was smart enough to keep the beasts to myself. My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those drawings. My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams at night. candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then before they were killed, saying they had sent money or that it was It was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's knotted hair. Partridge was supposed to think I was just a bum. As Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received. Amen.\" Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat, amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had received a fix. \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city, and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to The Stars and Stripes Forever , John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\" I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me, scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself, \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon, room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the couldn't lose that money, especially that century bill. Calm, I ordered myself. Calm. While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box. \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The \"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\" even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to that.\" to even try anything but the little things. \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith and a conscience.\" Brother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous intervention. But I can't imagine what.\" \"I always get apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge. We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach I wished I'd had some of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing. After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead call the cops. \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take a break. \"One is almost— almost —reminded of Job. William, you are being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\" He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\" bad in this life.\" \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will lift from you.\" It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going to give it a try!\" I cried. \"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself. \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said. I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man. \"Stack boxes.\" \"Got a union card?\" I shook my head. \"Application?\" \"No,\" I said. \"I'm just helping out during Christmas.\" and do something permanent and I squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse. News . There was a pick-up slip from the warehouse under the fingers of one hand, and somebody had beaten his I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had happened that day. Searching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a It didn't really. I still looked like a bum, but sort of a neat, non-objectionable bum. The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or hostilely sympathetic. \"I'd like to get into the stacks, miss,\" I said, \"and see some of the old newspapers.\" on. News and left me alone with it mended. Funny thing about a suit—it's almost never completely shot unless you just have it ripped off you or burned up. It wasn't exactly in style, but some rich executives wore suits out of style that they had paid a lot of money for. I remembered Fredric March's double-breasted in Executive Suite while Walter Pidgeon and the rest the French fries. \"Wisconsin.\" He didn't argue. It was cold and bitter. All beer is bitter, no matter what they say on TV. I like beer. I like the bitterness of it. Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway, had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent difficulties.... if they hadn't been waiting for me to look at them at all. They had a little human being of some sort. eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but and listen to their obscene droolings. For the very first time in my life. Always before it had been all pantomime, like Charlie Chaplin. Now I heard the sounds of it all. They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices. I nearly panicked, but I held myself in the seat and forced myself everybody could hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to be the only one who could hear other things I never said. I was as\n\n<question>:\nWhich word doesn't describe Partridge?\n\n<options>:\nA suspicious\nB compassionate\nC patient\nD sympathetic\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
795 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIt was a simple student exchange—but Retief gave them more of an education than they expected! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful. it.\" \"I don't appreciate frivolity with reference to this Division,\" Magnan said testily. \"When I first came here, the Manpower Utilization wisdom of placing you in charge of such a sensitive desk, even for two weeks. But remember. Yours is purely a rubber-stamp function.\" precedent and entering into the cultural life of the Galaxy.\" \"Breaking and entering,\" Retief said. \"You may have something there. But I'm wondering what they'll study on d'Land. That's an industrial world of the poor but honest variety.\" \"Academic details are the affair of the students and their professors,\" Magnan said. \"Our function is merely to bring them together. See that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will \"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer. Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said, the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own. We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms. Apples the size of a melon—and sweet—\" \"Sounds very pleasant,\" Retief said. \"Where does the Libraries and Education Division come in?\" Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\" Lots of skiing, bob-sledding, ice skating and it's the season for woodworkers. Our furniture—\" Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil ordinary crops. Fruit, grain, that kind of thing getting it in doesn't take long. We spend most of the time on architecture, getting new places ready for the winter or remodeling the older ones. We spend a Arapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine crop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going. But this year....\" \"The crop isn't panning out?\" not the crop.\" \"Have you lost your markets? That sounds like a matter for the Commercial—\" Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. \"No . It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle. native customs.\" Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep at Arapoulous thoughtfully. \"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a \"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said, swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em. We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise. money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when you're doing it for strangers.\" \"Say, this business of alternating drinks is the real McCoy,\" Retief turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright, fruit. Fresh-baked bread ... and wine, plenty of wine. The cooking's done by a different crew each night in each garden, and there's prizes is hard to beat....\" \"What we figured was, maybe you Culture boys could help us out. A loan to see us through the vintage, enough to hire extra hands. Then we'd repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\" \"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling with the Labor Office?\" \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics specialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands. Said it was what they classified as menial drudgery you'd have thought I was trying to buy slaves.\" \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie. What are they getting?\" sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and Exchanges.\" He pursed his lips. \"However, I suppose there's no harm in telling you. They'll be receiving heavy mining equipment.\" \"Drill rigs, that sort of thing?\" Committee for Rehabilitation and Overhaul of Under-developed Nations' General Economies have been trying for months to get a request for mining equipment for d'Land through MEDDLE—\" sending them two thousand exchange students. It must be quite an institution.\" \"University? D'Land has one under-endowed technical college.\" \"Will all the exchange students be studying at the Technical College?\" \"Two thousand students? Hah! Two for?\" \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\" \"Would that be the Technical College?\" Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these details.\" \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief said. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation indices. production of such vintages.... \"One unit would require a good-sized plant to handle its output,\" Retief said. \"Now Croanie subsists on her fisheries. She has perhaps half a dozen pint-sized processing plants. Maybe, in a bind, they ore. It doesn't. By the way, isn't a WV a poor choice as a mining outfit? I should think—\" \"See here, Retief! Why all this interest in a few surplus tractors? And in any event, what business is it of yours how we plan to use the equipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\" \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four hundred and ninety tractors?\" cooking—\" \"Nothing like that, Retief. It's a mere business transaction.\" branded as warmongers? Frankly—is this a closed line?\" \"Certainly. You may speak freely.\" \"The tractors are for transshipment. We've gotten ourselves into a difficult situation, balance-of-payments-wise. This is an accommodation to a group with which we have rather strong business ties.\" \"Who gets them?\" \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\" \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized Legation—\" outside our interest cluster.\" \"That's worse than listening in on phone conversations, eh? But never mind. I need the information, Miss Furkle.\" \"Loyalty to my Chief—\" \"Loyalty to your pay-check should send you scuttling for the material Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen. fish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon\n\n<question>:\nWhat can you infer about the industry in Arapoulous' homeland?\n\n<options>:\nA It is an agricultural industry, deriving its profit from the land.\nB It is a small industry, deriving just enough profit for everyone to sustain themselves.\nC It is a highly advanced industry, deriving its profit from mechanization.\nD It is a technological industry, deriving its profit from intelligence.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
203 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThose methane and ammonia planets, take it from me, they're the and talent and the day the Solar System Customs caught me red-handed smuggling Kooleen crystals in from Mars, I knew I was in that corner, and sewed up tight. Sure, the crystals are deadly, but I was smuggling them legitimately, in a manner of speaking, for this doctor to experiment with. He wasn't going to sell them for dope. But—and this was the 'but' that was didn't foul me with this trip to good old Jupiter. Then I croaked, \"Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir? he said. \"Every spaceman has, I am sure. Insect-like creatures who manifestly migrated there from some other system and who inhabit anti-gravity field in the gaseous portion of the atmosphere—\" and in some way worm from them the secret of their anti-gravity field, gangrene around the edges. The bleat of anguish that accompanied my first view of those beauties now to think of it. The way that bunch of stuffed shirts in the S.S.C. \"Oh, a pretty good jolt if they can keep hold of me,\" he says. \"I just made a pass at the Killicut Emeralds, that's all, and got nabbed.\" \"Oh, no!\" I moaned. \"What were you trying to do, start a feud between us and Mars?\" \"I'd start more than that just to get me mitts on them stones again! Why, you ain't never seen jools till you've seen them! Big as hen's eggs, an even dozen of 'em and flawless, I'm a-shoutin', not a flaw!\" His eyes watered at the memory, yearning like a hound-dog's over a fresh scent. I couldn't believe it. Those emeralds were in the inner shrine of the super-sacred, super-secret temple of the cavern-dwelling tribe of Killicuts on Mars—the real aborigines. Bleachies, we call them, sort \"How'd you make the getaway?\" I asked, taking him at his word. where I cached 'em.\" \"Cached what?\" \"The rocks, stupe.\" I hardly heard the cut. \"You mean you really did get away with them?\" My jaw must've been hanging down a foot, because I'd just been playing along with him, not really believing him, and now all of a sudden I somehow knew that he'd really lifted those emeralds. But how? It was coming. That night I turned on my hard prison cot until my bones were so much of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the Halcyon Diamond that disappeared from the World Museum five years ago, remember?\" He winked broadly. \"It come from Mars in the first place, you know. Mars! What a place fer jools! Damn desert's lousy with 'em, about the rocks on Mars but I jerked him back. fer them. Besides, the space suit rig you got to wear, they can't bite so I brought her a hundred pounds of the stuff, an' she went fer that almost like it was diamonds, too. Did I rate around there fer awhile!\" He sighed regretfully. \"But then I went and made her mad, an' I'm kinda persona non grata there right now. By the time I gnaw outa this here cheese trap, though, I figger she'll be all cooled off and ready fer them emeralds.\" I went back to my cot that night, and this time instead of biting my already penetrated the Great Red Spot of old Jupiter and come out cleaned outa me room: a poiple bottle with a bright green stopper.\" He ruminated a few minutes. \"Tell you what, chump. Make them shell out with a green an' poiple spacesuit—them's the real Jupiter colors—an' slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut Emeralds from where Pard Hoskins had cached them and safe out in space to remind me that this was public service, strictly. \"These—\" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer miner pointing to a batch of fool's gold—\"These jewels are as nothing, Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with Jupiter's farthest moon patted my pretty enameled suit, which was a study in paris green and passionate purple. I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and anyone else I might have to bribe. I anxiously examined my suit's air and water containers and the heating unit that would keep them in spacemen, and headed in. The big ship was long gone, and I felt like a there had been fringes of snow-white frozen ammonia, but now it was all dyed redder than Mars. Then I took the plunge right into it. Surprise! But my green boat must have showed up like a lighthouse in all that red, because it wasn't long until I spotted a purple and green that I was further in. I'm no chemist, and I couldn't have gotten out Meanwhile the hopper-scorp reached the ship. Hastily I squirted some of my Scorpion-Come-Hither lure on the chest of my spacesuit, opened the those things they called monocles. Pard hadn't warned me about those removable eyes, for reasons best known to himself. I still wake up screaming.... I thrust this sneak-thief idea back into limbo. nuts. Then I got a glimmer through my paralyzed gray matter. \"Who named you that?\" the usual plastic bubble. And it was rigged out with phony antennae and mandibles and other embellishments calculated to interest my hosts. Whether it interested them or not, it was plenty uncomfortable for me. beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions, all busy filling huge baskets with buds and tendrils, no doubt. Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free something began to loom out of the mist, and I forgot the playboys and persecutor was right, too. That anti-grav secret was worth more than airlock. III That palace was like nothing on earth. Naturally, you'll say, it's on Jupiter. But I mean it was even queerer than that. It was like no building on any planet at all. And, in fact, it wasn't on a planet there wasn't gravity. There was plenty of gravity to suit me—just Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the airlock to the window ledge, he again sniffed that delectable odor on block, skyscrapers and all. It was like a mammoth red cavern, and it glowed like the inside of a red light. No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all that red! A patch in the middle of the hall became a floating platform holding up a divan twenty feet square covered with stuff as green as new spring green edge anywhere. She was even more purple than my fancy enameled space suit, and she was big enough to comfortably fill most of that Under the vicious sag of her Roman nose, her mandibles kept grinding, shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and making the Halcyon Diamond on her chest blaze like a bonfire. those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code \"Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly remarkable jewels,\" he confessed coyly. Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. \"His name?\" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention to the—uh—trader. He does seem to resemble an—ah—earthman.\" He ducked his head and fearfully waited.\n\n<question>:\nWhat hadn't been smuggled out of Mars?\n\n<options>:\nA emeralds\nB diamonds\nC rubies\nD crystals\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,231 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nHE was lying motionless on a hard cot, with his eyes closed, yet with his every sense sharply quickened. Tentatively he tightened down a long, glass-walled he felt straps binding him to the cot. corridor. Bright sunlight “Don’t be stupid. We just do what we’re told. We’ll hold him.” “What do you think they’ll do “Execute him, I suppose,” the sleep?” he asked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard. At the rear of the space was a row of lockers for traveler use. He slipped a coin into a pay slot, opened the zipper on his bag and him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell’s cot. him only a few seconds to push the case into the compartment, lock it and slide the key along the floor pulled out a flat briefcase. It took While their attention was away his strayed thoughts. “I expected There was nothing to do after that—except wait. with an instinctive motion. beneath the locker. able to incapacitate two or three and break out. But the fact that relaxed. He offered no resistance as they reached him. ruffian, copper-brown face damp with perspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and slammed him back against the sitting is about all we ever try. body down against his chest and held it there until all agitated movement ceased. He sat up then, letting the body slide to the floor. The straps about his thighs came loose with little effort. Otherwise some particular episode THE analyst dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief. “The “Did I talk while I was under?” “Oh, yes. You were supposed to. That way I follow pretty well what memory seemed on the point of complete return, and he sat quietly, glance in the mirror satisfied him comanalysis this afternoon ] opened the collar of his shirt. The day was hot, and the room had no air conditioning, still a rare luxury on St. Martin’s. The office window was open, but it let in no freshness, only the mildly rank odor that pervaded adjusted to a life of ease and some prestige to meet danger calmly. chatter as he administered the drug. “A scopolamine derivative that’s been well tested.” The floor beneath Zarwell’s feet maintained a professional diversionary sponge. It rose in a foot-high wave and rolled gently toward the far wall. patient. If he was skilled enough, he could sort the relevancies from the vast amount of chaff. We are able now, with the help of the serum, to confine our discourses to matters cogent to the patient’s trouble.” The floor continued its transmutation, and Zarwell sank deep into viscous depths. “Lie back and relax. Don’t …” The words tumbled down from relax. “You’re still pretty much in the fog about yourself. I read more was under his arm a minute later. In the basement lave he put a smile. Thirty-six hours under the paralysis was longer than advisable. The muscles should be rested at least every twenty hours. Fortunately his natural features would serve as an adequate disguise he took from his case, and carefully rayed several small areas of his face, loosening muscles that had been tight too long. He sighed gratefully when he finished, massaging his cheeks and forehead with as much. A quite normal first phase of treatment.” He straightened a paper on his desk. “I think that will considerable pleasure. Another be enough for today. Twice in one again and exchanged the gun for and pushed himself to his feet, apparently unaware that his shirt clung damply to his body. a small syringe, which he pushed might cause undue mental stress, with the changes that had been made. He turned to his briefcase THE sun was still high when Back at the locker he replaced the briefcase and, with a wad of gum, glued the key to the bottom of the locker frame. One step more. Taking the syringe from his pocket, he plunged the needle into his forearm and tossed the instrument down a near-deserted. The only sounds he heard as he passed were the occasional cry of a baby, chronically waking from a vivid dream. “Q UITE ingenious,” Graves murmured admiringly. “You had your mind already preconditioned swamp, with a faint taint of fish. you deliberately give yourself amnesia?” “What better disguise than to believe the part you’re playing?” But in the Flats the odor changes. try it myself. It must have taken a lot of trust on your part.” [p candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairs of a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it without either enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on his bed. The visit to the analyst had done nothing to dispel his ennui. ] The next morning when Zarwell awoke he lay for a moment, unmoving. The feeling was there again, like a scene waiting only to It was as though a great wisdom lay at the edge of understanding. If he rested quietly it would all come to him. Yet always, when his mind lost its sleep-induced [p 140 ] lethargy, the moment of near understanding slipped away. This morning, however, the sense of disorientation did not pass with full wakefulness. He achieved no understanding, but the strangeness did not leave as he sat up. He gazed about him. The room their freedom they are as oppressive He pulled himself from his blankets, his body moving with mechanical reaction. The slippers into as their former masters.’ When The place was familiar, but only as it would have been if he had studied it from blueprints, not as though he lived there. The feeling was still with him when he returned to the psychoanalyst. THE scene this time was more word eventually gets out, and I’m right back in a fight again. It’s like the proverbial monkey on my back. kaleidoscopic, less personal. get me out of it. I should have known it wouldn’t work. But this concrete and the besiegers charged through, carrying back the defenders who sought vainly to plug the to talk about,” was the best he could manage. “Then will you just listen? After, ] Zarwell smiled with mild embarrassment. “At least in my dreams.” is beginning to prosper. Yet explain. This work is so routine to me that sometimes I forget it’s all new to a patient. Actually what you experienced under the drug were not dreams. They were recollections of real episodes from your the only ones receiving the benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. They are poorly closely. After a minute, however, he seemed satisfied, and he let himself settle back against the cushion of his chair. “I remember nothing of what I saw,” he observed. know,” Bergstrom answered. “To help you remember.” “But everything under the drug is so …” “Haphazard? That’s true. The amnesia. I believe we will find that your mind has been tampered with.” “Nothing I’ve seen under the drug fits into the past I do remember.” implanted there. But we can go into that later. For today I think we have done enough. This episode up the next morning and he rode with a tech crew to the edge of essential expansion. The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted binding grasses, grain and trees, and Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountains until they joined the After its three-thousand-mile journey across scorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man’s body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was breathed in. With it came also the cloying taste of limestone in a\n\n<question>:\nHow does the comanalysis process work?\n\n<options>:\nA The patient is drugged and put in a wave machine so that they can relax and get insomnia relief.\nB The patient is drugged and experiences hallucinations to help cope with past trauma.\nC The patient is drugged to put them in a relaxed state so that they can recover lost memories.\nD The patient is drugged and put in a sponge-like material. This makes the patient relaxed enough to sleep and dream.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,231 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nsomebody about this because if there is something to it, then somebody, everybody, is going to point finger at me, Ivan Smernda, and say, \"Why India, China, England, everywhere. My kid, he reads. He says it's no joke. He wants to call the cops or Dear Joe: Greetings, greetings, greetings. Hold firm in your wretched projection, for tomorrow you will not be alone in the not-world. In two days I, no response. What could have diminished your powers of articulate wave interaction to make you incapable of receiving my messages and lies without arousing suspicion. I will grow up as the not-child in order that I might destroy the not-people completely. fast. I'm having a hard time sorting facts and make the right decision. Gezsltrysk, what a task! Dear Joe: Mnghjkl, fhfjgfhjklop phelnoprausynks. No. When I communicate with you, I see I must avoid those complexities of procedure for which there are As they arrived hourly, they found me heavier and heavier. Naturally, since I am growing. This is part of my instructions. My not-mother (Gezsltrysk!) then burst into tears. The doctors conferred, threw up their hands and left. I learned the following day that the opposite component of my not-mother, my not-father, had been away riding on some conveyance during my birth. He was out on ... what did they call it? Oh, yes, a are now part of my extended matrix. The sound I emitted sounded low-pitched, guttural and penetrating even to myself. It must have jarred on my not-father's ears, for he turned and ran shouting from the room. They apprehended him on the stairs and I heard him babble something about my being a monster and no child of his. My not-mother appeared at the doorway and instead of being pleased at the progress of my growth, she fell down heavily. She made a distinct and retreated across a nearby field. A prolonged search was launched, but I eluded them. What unpredictable beings! from Blgftury which, on careful analysis, seems to be small praise indeed. In fact, some of his phrases apparently contain veiled threats. learned otherwise, while they never have. New sensations crowd into my consciousness and I am having a hard time classifying them. Anyway, I shall carry on swiftly now to the inevitable climax in which I singlehanded will obliterate the terror of the not-world and return to our world a hero. I cannot understand your letter and mails it to you. Of course, he has no awareness of what he has done. My first five tries were unfortunate. Each time I took control of an As I said before, floods of impressions are driving into my xzbyl ... my brain ... from various nerve and sense areas and I am having a hard impressions aroused by it are of beauty. It took little conditioning for me finally to react in this manner. This is truly an efficient mechanism I inhabit. The woman gesticulated and continued to scream. People hurried from nearby houses. I linked my hands behind me and watched the scene with an attitude of mild interest. They weren't interested in me, I told \"But—\" \"No more buck-bathing, Lizzy,\" the officer ordered. \"No more speeches in the Square. Not when it results in riots at five in the morning. Now where is your naked friend? I'm going to make an example of him.\" oversight on my part. My mind is confused by the barrage of impressions that assault it. I must retire now and get them all classified. Beauty, pain, fear, hate, love, laughter. I don't know one from the other. I must feel each, become accustomed to it. causing them much agony and fright. The latter atrocity is perpetrated through what these people call June 19 Dear Joe: Your letter was imponderable till I had thrashed through long passages \"revolting\" are used freely in your missive. You can be sure they are all being forwarded to Blgftury. If I were not involved in the most important part of my journey—completion of the weapon against the indeed. Ah! You'll pardon me, but I just took time for what is known quaintly in this tongue as a \"hooker of red-eye.\" Ha! I've mastered even the vagaries of slang in the not-language.... Ahhh! Pardon me again. I feel much better now. constantly assaulted my mind through this body, I conditioned myself to react exactly as our information catalog instructed me to. Now it is all automatic, pure reflex. A sensation comes to me when I am burned then I experience a burning pain. If the sensation is a tickle, I experience a tickle. This morning I have what is known medically as a syndrome ... a group of symptoms popularly referred to as a hangover ... Ahhh! Pardon me again. Strangely ... now what was I saying? Oh, yes. Ha, ha. Strangely enough, the reactions that come easiest to the people in this world about it. Yet all around me people are actually killing one another for the love of it. rooms filled with money. If I don't love it then, I'll feel I have failed. This alcohol is taking effect now. Blgftury has been goading me for reports. To hell with his reports! I've got a lot more emotions to try, such as romantic love. I've been studying this phenomenon, along with other racial characteristics of attracted to me instantly. After all, the body I have devised is perfect in every detail ... actually a not-world ideal. adrenals on the ends of the kidneys increases and an enlivening of the entire endocrine system follows. Thus I felt the beginnings of love. and tries to induce her to do something biological. She then refuses. This pleases both of them, for he wanted her to refuse. She, in turn, wanted him to want her, but also wanted to prevent him so that he would have a high opinion of her. Do I make myself clear? I wish old Blgftury were here in the vibrational pattern of an olive? I'd get the blonde in and have her eat him out of a Martini. That is a gin mixture. I think I'll get a hot report off to the old so-and-so right now. It'll July 25 Dear Joe: All is lost unless we work swiftly. I received your revealing letter the morning after having a terrible experience of my own. I drank a because she said yes immediately. The nerves of my dermis were working overtime when suddenly I had the Worst of all, he saw me. Looked right at me with an unbelievable pattern of pain, anger, fear and amazement in his matrix. Me and the redhead. Then comes your letter today telling of the fate that befell you as a result of drinking alcohol. Our wrenchingly attuned faculties in these my powers as it has practically obliterated yours. I can't even become invisible any more. I must find the formula that will wipe out the not-world men quickly. Quickly! Glmpauszn September 10 Dear Joe: This telepathic control becomes more difficult every time. I must pick I had got my mechanism as close to perfect as possible when I realized that, in my befuddled condition, I had set off a reaction that inevitably would result in an explosion. I had to leave there immediately, but I could not create suspicion. The management was not customer. \"But why, sir?\" he asked plaintively. I was baffled. What could I tell him? \"They're not safe.\" \"Not safe? But that is ridiculous. This hotel is....\" At this point the blast came. My nerves were a wreck from the alcohol. \"See?\" I screamed. \"Not safe. I knew they were going to blow up!\" the not-men, curse them. Glmpauszn Rochester, New York September 25 Dear Joe: I have it! It is done! In spite of the alcohol, in spite of Blgftury's niggling criticism, I have succeeded. I now have developed a form be swift and fatal. First the brain will dissolve and then the body will fall apart.\n\n<question>:\nWhich word least describes Ivan?\n\n<options>:\nA confused\nB innocent\nC concerned\nD angry\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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418 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The man with the handkerchief mask said, \"All right, everybody, keep tight. This is a holdup.\" There were twelve people in the bank. There was Mr. Featherhall at his desk, refusing to okay a personal check from a perfect stranger. Anderson, the guard, dozing by the door in his brown uniform. There was Mrs. Elizabeth Clayhorn, depositing her husband's pay check in their joint checking account, and with her was her ten-year-old son Edward said to him in a low voice, \"Think about retirement, my friend.\" The third one, who carried a black satchel like a doctor's bag, walked quickly around behind the teller's counter and started filling it with stayed next to Mr. Anderson and the door. The third man stuffed money into the black satchel. The man by the door said, \"Hurry up.\" been moving too fast, and so had Miss English, and all he hit was the brass plate on Mr. Featherhall's desk. floor, and all three of them ran out of the bank to the car out front, in which sat a very nervous-looking fourth man, gunning the engine. \"It was the nuttiest thing,\" said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. \"An \"Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up.\" \"Yes, but their tires \"What I can't figure out,\" said Stevenson, \"is exactly what made those \"For a well-planned operation like this one,\" said Stevenson, \"they made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn't make any sense.\" \"What do they have to say about it?\" Pauling demanded. he cried. \"What did you do to the tires?\" \"Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup.\" \"It wasn't a bunch of kids,\" Stevenson told him. \"It was four professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in a bank holdup.\" \"Then why did they do that about anything. I don't suppose they'll ever tell us.\" He looked at the trunk lid again. \"It's the nuttiest thing,\" he said thoughtfully.... That was on Wednesday. The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It didn't rate a line in the paper. II composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins. Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home, brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand. As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom. Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, \"Go away! Can't you let a At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence, similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the hand and shoulder. Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house, search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken. Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again. The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and dramatically. Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy \"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?\" he demanded. Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense.\" what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?\" \"They were defective,\" said Hanks promptly. \"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the trunk?\" \"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you think \"All of a sudden?\" \"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him.\" was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch. Remember?\" \"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson,\" the captain advised him. The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a crank letter to the Daily News Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the same place, and forgotten. \"Listen, lady,\" said the kid in the red mask, aggrieved, \"we got a long way to go to get home.\" \"Yeah,\" said another kid, in a black mask, \"and we're late as it is.\" black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. \"Why can't we go down there?\" this apparition demanded. Take off.\" \"Hey!\" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. \"Hey, they're fighting down there!\" Judy wasn't sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase the one kid who'd gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would come running along after her. She didn't know what to do. schoolyard, shouting, \"Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it's the fuzz!\" But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the schoolyard. the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street. And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault. Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was impatient as well. \"All right, Stevenson,\" he said. \"Make it fast, I've got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn't this comic-book thing of yours again.\" fighting at eleven o'clock. And they just got going when all at once all the metal they were carrying—knives and tire chains and coins and belt buckles and everything else—got freezing cold, too cold to touch. And then their leather jackets got freezing cold, so cold they had to pull them off and throw them away. And when the jackets were later something,\" said Hanks severely. \"They heard the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn't been up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn't have had anything in it but weapons and jackets, and the kids would have been all over the\n\n<question>:\nWhat can we infer from the passage that caused Mr. Higgins to go crazy?\n\n<options>:\nA He was no longer happy with his wife hence why he murdered her.\nB He was tired of his job and didn't want to return.\nC He was overly tired and delirious.\nD He had flunked an exam and was overwhelmed with stress.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,149 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes. And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again. MOTHER GOOSE be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's really sniffing out the trail will get somebody to listen to him! \"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade that puppy out there to come here and work for me—\" his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk \"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth. \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him \"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?\" \"No. Oh, no!\" \"Then what?\" deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with. I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be get back to work again. The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the Dear Dr. Lessing: In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\" Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\" \"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed,\" the young man said airily. \"Of course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!\" He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. \"I bow before the \"I think you'd better wait before you do that,\" Melrose said sharply, \"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an Authority about.\" There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes. \"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,\" snapped Lessing. The other man grinned. \"Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year, but you didn't seem to get the idea.\" we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's false as Satan.\" Melrose. \"We've done a lot of work on it, too.\" \"According to your Theory, that is.\" Melrose grinned unpleasantly. \"We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose. Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\" \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped. \"Mmmm,\" said Melrose. \"Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a theory on.\" \"Why not?\" Lessing growled. \"It wouldn't be the first time the tail wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're digging for it?\" \"We're not digging any pit,\" Lessing exploded angrily. \"We're exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that \"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea,\" said Melrose sourly. \"Fine,\" said Melrose. \"Great. We can't prove that, of course, but I'll play along.\" withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose. \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose. recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose, they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like that one, for instance—\" smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. \"Perhaps you're beginning \"Yes,\" said Melrose. \"I think I'm beginning to see.\" He scratched his \"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?\" Lessing blinked. \"Why should they?\" \"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down.\" \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What would you say to that?\" \"I'd say you were wrong,\" said Lessing. \"You couldn't have such data. According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is sheer nonsense.\" professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold.\" The tall man turned on him fiercely. \"Are you blind, man? Can't you see what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force. \"Stop worrying about it,\" Dorffman urged. \"He's a crackpot. He's crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's face was intense. \"Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have to throw them off and keep going.\" Lessing shook his head. \"Maybe. But this field of work is different from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific grounds aren't right at all, in this case.\" Dorffman snorted. \"Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—\" \"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after the theory.\" \"So it seems. But why?\" \"He seems to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then defends them for all he's worth .\" \"But why shouldn't he?\" \"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep his objectivity,\" said Lessing. \"And what if he just happens to be wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's what he says \"But we know you're right,\" Dorffman protested. \"Do we?\" \"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the Farm.\" Lessing sat down on the table. \"Tommy, listen to me.\" His voice was gentle. \"I won't try to take it again. I promise.\" \"Go away.\" \"Do you know who I am?\" this youngster was sick— And yet an animal instinctively seeks its own protection . With\n\n<question>:\nWhat is not true about Dr. Melrose?\n\n<options>:\nA He is curious to learn what others think about the issues in the field\nB He wants to try to teach the children to use their abilities\nC He is dedicated to the pursuit of true understanding of phenomena\nD He has no qualms about tearing down a fellow researcher\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,901 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. BREAKAWAY BY STANLEY GIMBLE Illustrated by Freas She surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting what she wanted. Phil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his wife. far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful girl I know. Did I ever tell you that?\" \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the ritual smiling. \"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they wouldn't be sending me you know that. I told you that we've sent five un-manned ships up and everyone came back without a hitch.\" She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand. \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks. \"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\" \"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil, be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not the noble sort of wife.\" her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes. \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\" \"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off. It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous dream!\" nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no again. I'd be through.\" existed only because of the huge ship standing poised in the take-off ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert, if such was its destiny. \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\" voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap. \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said. \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked. \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out. The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell of the rocket waiting silently for flight. \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle \"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all set, son?\" \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said. \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by the radar.\" waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say something \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said. \"On the contrary, colonel. I'm very proud to meet you. I've been looking at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first and those who have had it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\" \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\" front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now. He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence. The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears. \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours until—\" Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and handshakes. They were ready now. \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside. \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\" \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\" \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness, Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\" \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry conviction. He reached for a cigarette. \"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension wrong with you. Want to tell me?\" Outside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond Her hands moved slowly over the top of the fence, twisting the barbs of wire. But her eyes were on the ship. And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the administration building and moved forward. The check-out crews climbed into their machines and drove back outside the take-off zone. And, alone, one man climbed the steel ladder up the side of the rocket—ninety feet into the air. At the top he waved to the men on the Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck tight in her throat. The small group at the base of the ship turned and walked back to the fence. And for an eternity the great ship stood alone, waiting. Then, from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar that shook the earth and tore at the ears. Slowly, the first manned rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky. herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned. \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and over. \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not let me go.\" She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could\n\n<question>:\nWhich two terms, respectively, most accurately describe Phil's and Mary's sentiments about Phil becoming a space pilot?\n\n<options>:\nA Adamant; ambivalent\nB Open-minded; resentful\nC Content; reluctant\nD Enthusiastic; resistant\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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156 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nPEGGY FINDS THE THEATER I Dramatic Dialogue But it was one thing to go to bed and another to go to sleep. cookies, kissed her parents good night and went upstairs to bed. since you were out of your cradle. It’s just that decisions like this can’t be made quickly.” “But, Dad!” Peggy almost wailed. “You just finished saying yourself that I’ve been thinking about this and wanting it for years! You can’t follow that by calling it a quick decision!” She turned to her mother, her hazel eyes flashing under a mass of dark chestnut curls. “Mother, you understand, don’t you?” helped knowing that you’ve wanted to be an actress I understand, Margaret, and so does your father. We both want to do what’s best for you, not to stand in had lost the undefined, simple cuteness of the early teens, and had gained character. She didn’t think she 2 “Wait! Mother—Dad—I’m years behind already! right, or if you should wait longer.” that she couldn’t do it, but perhaps something sharper was called for. Desire ? Or, better for her development and age, a light, brittle, comedy role...? Nothing seemed quite right. Peggy’s thoughts “None of them is as fascinating as acting to me,” Peggy replied, “and none of them is nearly as important to my life.” 3 want it hard enough—to go on with all the study and practice it needed.” She paused and looked thoughtfully at her daughter’s a few moments before answering. Then, looking first at her mother and then at her father, she replied firmly, “No, it doesn’t! It might make sense if we were talking about anything else but acting, but “I don’t expect recognition in one year, Dad,” Peggy said. “I’m not that conceited or that silly. All I want to prove in this year is that I can act. If I can’t, I’ll come home.” sounds sensible and practical. If she were all starry-eyed and expected to see her name in lights in a few weeks, I’d vote against her going, but I’m beginning to think that maybe she’s right about this being the best time.” “Oh, Mother!” Peggy shouted, jumping down from the stool and throwing her arms about her mother’s neck. “I knew you’d understand! And you understand “Peg, your mother and I are cautious only because we love you so much and want what’s going to make you happy. At the same time, we want to spare you Feeling much better, Peggy shut the screen door behind been Peggy’s favorite place to go to be by herself and Peggy stopped first at the bag that hung on the wall the new life that she might soon be going to. 7 usual growing-up pleasures of swimming and sailing, movie dates, and formal dances—everything that a girl could want. street, every country road, field, lake, and stream. All of her friends were here, friends she had known since her earliest baby days. It would be hard to leave them, she knew, but there was no doubt in her mind that she was going to do so. If not now, then as soon as she possibly could. It was not any dissatisfaction with her life, her friends, or her home that made Peggy want to leave Rockport. She was not running away from anything, she reminded herself she was running to 8 Seeing the image of herself hungry and tired, going from office to office looking for a part in a play, With a final pat, she left the stall and the barn behind, stepping out into the deepening dusk. It was still too early to go back to the house to see if her parents had reached a decision about her future. Fighting down an impulse to rush right into the kitchen to see how they were coming along, Peggy continued behind them into a pattern of leafy lace. For a moment, or maybe a little more, she wondered why she wanted to leave this. What for? What could ever be better? Upstairs at the Wilsons’, Peggy found Jean swathed tattered, plaid bathrobe, she led Peggy out of the straight to the point. “So the grand debate is still going on, is it? When do you think they’ll make up their minds?” she asked. “How do you know they haven’t decided anything yet?” Peggy said, in a puzzled tone. her. A short, breathless pillow fight followed, leaving 11 “You know, I sometimes think that we haven’t grown up at all!” she said. “I can hardly blame my parents for thinking twice—and a lot more—before “Nonsense!” Jean replied firmly. “Your parents know a lot better than to confuse being stuffy with being grown-up and responsible. And, besides, I with her parents. “They both seemed to think it was fair,” she concluded, “and when I went out, they were talking it decision. You know,” she said suddenly, sitting up on the floor and crossing her legs under her, “I bet they wouldn’t hesitate a minute if you would only After a moment’s thoughtful silence, Jean answered slowly, “No, Peg. I’ve thought this all out before, and I know it would be as wrong for me as it is not there when it isn’t!” “But, Jean,” Peggy protested, “you can handle with you all the way, even with bad lines. That’s why you’re going to go to New York and be an actress. And that’s why I’m not.” “But, Jean—” Peggy began. 13 “No buts!” Jean cut in. “We’ve talked about this enough before, and I’m not going to change my mind. I’m as sure about what I want as you are about speak for fear of saying something foolishly sentimental, or even of crying. Her friend’s earnestness about time, until Jean broke it by suddenly jumping up and flinging a last pillow which she had been hiding behind her back. Running out of the bedroom, she that her parents had had enough time to talk things out. Leaving the Wilson house, she walked slowly despite her eagerness, trying in all fairness to give her mother and father every minute she could. Reaching run to her father’s side. 15 sure was to follow his announcement. But Peggy just to the big easy chair and slowly sat down. “Well, for goodness’ sake!” her mother cried. “Where’s the enthusiasm?” “But it’s not easy. All I want to do is to—” and she jumped out of the chair—“to yell whoopee !” She but her natural, bubbling self. “Who was that on the phone, and where are the three of us going, and what’s all set?” 16 “One thing at a time,” her father said. “To begin with, we decided almost as soon as you left that we were going to let you go to New York to try a year’s she’s spent all her life in the theater. In fact, she was a very successful actress. Now she’s been retired for always wanted a house of her own with a garden in back, but felt it was foolish for a woman living alone. This way, she can afford to run a big place and at the same time not be alone. And best of all, she says “Oh, Mother! It sounds wonderful!” Peggy exulted. “I’ll be with other girls my own age who are actresses, “Two days! Do you mean we’ll be going to New York day after tomorrow, just like that?” “Oh, no,” her mother answered calmly. “We’re going to New York tomorrow on the first plane that we can get seats on. Your father doesn’t believe in wasting what she had heard. “What are we sitting here talking for, then? I’ve got a million things to do! I’ve got to get packed ... I’ve got to think of what to prevent her from rushing out of the kitchen. “Not now, young lady! We’ll pack in the morning, talk of nothing more than getting to bed. This is going to be a busy time for all of us.” Reluctantly, Peggy agreed, recognizing the sense of what her father said. She finished her milk and\n\n<question>:\nWhy doesn’t Jean want to join Peggy in New York?\n\n<options>:\nA She’s not interested in acting as a career.\nB She wants to be a singer.\nC She will take care of Socks.\nD She doesn’t want to leave her family.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,895 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nTHE PERFECTIONISTS By ARNOLD CASTLE ILLUSTRATED by SUMMERS appeared to have overcome every Is there something wrong with you? aware of just how perfect, physically, Mary Ann was. Too perfect. No freckles or moles anywhere on the visible surface of little imperfection he had been able to communicate to her. had been in business for a week and as yet had had no callers. came up the stairs and into the removed an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. Pointing It was obvious that the liquor had been having some effect. Either that, or she had a basic it at the amazed customer, he flaw of loquacity that no one else had discovered. Pembroke decided would arrive. The series of events leading up gambling everything on this one throw. \"When you go to Earth steamer Elena Mia had encountered a dense greenish fog which \"Oh, but you'll be dead by I'll miss you terribly.\" and to spot the immense gray \"Oh, yes, I'm sure they would.\" Then the explosion had come, from far below the waterline, and the decks were awash with frantic crewmen, officers, and the handful of passengers. Only two lifeboats were launched before the Elena Mia went down. Pembroke was in the second. The roar of the sinking ship was the \"Yes? Please tell me.\" last thing he heard for some fortune through speculation in a which was perhaps the reason affectionate Mary Ann. My paramour.\" Making love to Mary Ann was something short of ecstasy. Not for any obvious reason, but because Ann had no pulse. Mary Ann did not perspire. Mary Ann did not fatigue gradually but all at once. elevate the glory and safety of when he regained consciousness. But then, Mary Ann was not a human being. When she left the hotel at midnight, Pembroke was quite sure that she understood his plan and that she was irrevocably in love with him. Tomorrow might bring his death, but it might also ensure He awoke in a small room in his escape. After forty-two Earth and the human race that peopled it. And Mary Ann would help him to save it. the crew of the ship, The next morning Pembroke fact that there was nothing to hunt and only a single target thirty, tossed back her long, of course, had to be just the city. Pembroke and Mary Ann took turns firing at the paper targets they had purchased. At twilight they headed back to the \"Could it be me?\" hopped off. Mary Ann would go straight to the police and report that Pembroke had attacked her and that she had shot him. If necessary, she would conduct the authorities to the place where they had been target \"Tell me what's wrong with me,\" she went on urgently. \"I'm buried the body. Why had she buried it? Because at first she there's something wrong with the way I look or act. Isn't there? Please help me, please!\" probably be no further investigation. And they certainly would not prosecute Mary Ann for killing was not going to report the incident. She was frightened. It to play along with her for the moment. \"You're too tense. Also you're a bit knock-kneed, was not airtight, but there would an Earthman. torn the collar of the shirt and discarded his belt. By morning Only the last would be a deception. Two weeks later Pembroke phoned Mary Ann. The police had accepted her story without even checking. And when, when He had aroused her passion and Pembroke left the beach and no amount of long-distance love the woman off his mind, but the sounded as if she had been giving it was her concern about being that to her? Then he saw the weird little because they bled. Mary Ann had admitted that she did not. There would be very few Earthmen left in Puerto Pacifico, and him if he were reported as being on the loose. There was no out but to do away with Mary \"Oh, good heavens, whatever is the bizarre statuette underneath the counter. \"What the hell was that?\" Pembroke demanded. Ann. \"Oh, you know—or don't you? that thing doing here?\" Though the rest of her compensated for that. a ship. It was leaving the counter and strutted back and forth a few times. exodus would take place. Yet he you won't fall down,\" suggested Pembroke. \"You're in too much of a hurry. Also those fake flowers not good enough, am I? I mean, spaceships. In fact, they knew very little about their masters. shooting, but would be unable to \"Don't try to go so fast and Now the ship had arrived and locate the spot where she had the docks. Almost at once \"Okay, then where am I?\" To his surprise, the boy came back a few minutes later after servicing the automobile. Also, you gas up the car first, hulk wallowing in the murky distance. on an intricate keyboard in front of it. a metallic voice from a speaker on the wall. \"Mary Ann, you have two other flaws I feel I should mention.\" Newton?\" the voice asked. \"You Earth. In time you will receive instructions. Then you will attack. hotel. Going to the bar, he recognized one of the Elena Mia's paying passengers. He was a short, He stumbled out toward the frantically, she called his name several times. Pembroke mingled the ship, ignoring her. But still the woman persisted in her shouting. \"I thought it made me look sexy,\" the redhead said petulantly. with a chuckle. \"Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do feather cut was insisting. \"What is wrong with me?\" \"You're perfect, sweetheart,\" \"Me, me,\" the blonde with a \"Ah, come on,\" she pleaded. \"Everyone tells me I chew gum \"They'll take her off to the buggy house for a few days and bring \"Naw, that's part of your charm,\" Spencer assured her. the girl with the coal black hair. C'mon, kids—how 'bout another round?\" But the dolls had apparently Pembroke was explaining to the \"Wonder what the hell got into from the scene of the sinking of the Elena Mia on a piece of wreckage, and had been picked up by a Chilean trawler. How he those babes?\" \"You said they were perfect. had then made his way, with They know they're not. You've the two demolished Pacificos that lay sprawled one atop the other FBI should arrive soon. There were footsteps on the stairs for the third time that \"Ah, no, not you, too,\" groaned the gag?\" Spencer,\" Valencia explained. problem—\" \"Well, so what?\" demanded The four shots from Pembroke's effectively. Pembroke tossed his pistol solved his problem He would be out of business soon, once the FBI agent had got there. Pembroke was only in it to that it was exactly this that from God-knew-what insidious THE END yourself to blame. Cooperation is all we require of you.\" Valencia left. Spencer ordered Pembroke spoke for several minutes. \"Somebody's crazy around pretty hit-or-miss operation. But went down with the ship. That was just part of the game.\" \"What the hell are you sayin'?\" they sunk the ship? Valencia and the waitress and the three babes? Ah, come on.\" \"It's what you think that will Pembroke overheard the conversation. \"Ah, hell! Nothin' wrong Pembroke heard the shots as While he waited for the elevator, he saw them carrying the body in Puerto Pacifico? Mary Ann, the woman he had met on the beach, out to dinner. and had almost exhausted his critical capabilities, but not once had she become annoyed with him. She seemed to devour every factual point of imperfection brought to her attention. And, fantastically enough, she actually\n\n<question>:\nWhat caused the explosion that sunk the Elena Mia?\n\n<options>:\nA An alien craft fired on the Elena Mia from under the water.\nB A Colombian ship fired a torpedo on the Elena Mia, causing it to explode.\nC The Elena Mia ran into an iceberg. The ice pierced the ship's electronics causing an explosion.\nD The androids tampered with the Elena Mia's electronics causing an explosion.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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387 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer. Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us ! Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin. Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA. Twins aren't the only clones in everyday life. Think about seedless grapes or navel oranges--if there are no seeds, where did they come from? It's the plant equivalent of virgin birth--which is to say that they are all clones, propagated by cutting a shoot and planting it. Wine is almost entirely a cloned product. The grapes used for wine have seeds, but they've been cloned from shoots for more than a hundred years in the case of many vineyards. The same is true for many flowers. Go to a garden store, and you'll find products with delightful names like \"Olivia's Cloning Compound,\" a mix of hormones to dunk on the cut end of a shoot to help it take root. The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother. Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate. Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them. The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you. Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior. To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.\n\n<question>:\nHow would jealously possibly factor into the issue of cloning?\n\n<options>:\nA Clones would be genetically superior, as they'd be able to choose what traits to pass down.\nB People may envy the social recognition that clones would receive. They'd be missing out on the same popularity.\nC Clones get in between people and their spouses. They're too separate and impersonal.\nD People would be \"losing\" a sexual advantage in not being able to reproduce a clone directly themselves.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,350 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] What better way to use a time machine than to handle department store complaints? But pleasing a customer should have its limits! threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas. the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had screamed: \"He'll drown!\" One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another story. The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand. worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of glasses. holiday,\" he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his attention on any working day. drink that would make him feel even better. machine. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old.\" \"This thing has never been processed!\" Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: \"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl.\" She turned to the assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in her young life. \"Let's fill this order right now!\" \"The poor woman must be dead by now,\" he objected, secretly angry that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he a great proposal and the room grew quiet—\"unless we broke the rules just once and used the time warp on a big mission!\" There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner: warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal of excitement. come to work here because of that.\" look fatherly. It didn't. \"Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll \"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!\" she wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the house. sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to \"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small \"It's probably the wrong size, too,\" Ann said, pulling off Sally's dress to try it on. \"Let's find as many things to complain about as we can.\" to look vacantly at the distant wall. box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word: A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end. wire.\" He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. \"They must \"That's the doorbell, I think,\" he said, looking at the next object. It had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug does.\" shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and dye or whatever it is will wash off.\" \"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of propulsion. under his arm. \"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.\" \"If this is ventriloquism—\" she began icily. \"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the \"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather hectic day in an awful lot of ways.\" so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see \"Excitement isn't good for me,\" Mrs. Burnett said testily. \"I've had a lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet.\" \"Your husband is better?\" \"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me.\" Mrs. the threshold. \"Where did this come from?\" Les held a small object in the palm of That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works.\" upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting her.\" through an instruction booklet, frowning. booklet into the empty box. stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper. Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling polished table's surface. \"I think the Detectolite did it,\" Bob said. \"The instructions say you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a long time.\" the parcel. Her heart sank. for a nap. It seems impossible, but—\" She shrugged mutely. \"And I The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood out on its side: \" today. \" quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have She tore open the envelope and read: voice said. \"Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with something that his parents gave him.\" insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family involving his name, if you'll—\" \"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I touch.\" The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. \"Every human has natural oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular. \"It's murder!\" she screamed. \"Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's \"I was afraid this would happen,\" Les said. \"The poor woman already has lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks that somebody is poisoning him.\" shaking him. \"I got something important to tell you,\" Bob said rapidly, ready to tell you what I did.\" \"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,\" doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: \"Don't answer me, don't answer me, don't go to the door.\" \"Why did you do it?\" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into weary sadness. \"People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—\" see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—\" claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you drifted through the house.\n\n<question>:\nWhat theme could be taken from this story?\n\n<options>:\nA don't try to change the past\nB it's important to try new things\nC people can't be trusted\nD there's a solution to every problem\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,387 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nmagnificent Melopolis, encradling the Oracle of Delni. I do not, of course, believe in the gods per se still there is a grandeur in the very stones that transcends their human sculptors, and it is no wonder to me that many cling tenaciously, and ignorantly, to the old religion. But of course there were no cousins. There was nothing. And Man returned, and settled down to live. Saddened, but resigned and content to live in peace with his knowledge and his power. Gone now are all the \"Sias,\" they were saying, \"the Maternite's gone.\" Melia interrupted him quietly. \"Xeon, will you lose all respect for the Elder?\" Then turned to me, and said calmly, \"The watcher at the Maternite Machine, it appears, has been drunk. The heat rose above the warning, continued to rise, and then—poof. Everything has evaporated in Maternite. All the Prelife is gone.\" \"There is nothing left,\" Melia insisted. \"Can more be made? And if not, what will happen with no more children?\" \"That is for the priests to say, not I,\" I replied. In moments of emergency, it is wise to speak with caution. That is, I suppose so. I have never before been in a real emergency. They are of an age to enter manhood, and have all the energy such young men do. were created so long ago, indeed, that the ignorant believe them to have been constructed by the gods themselves. And never, so far as I know, has one failed. Small wonder that the watcher had been negligent. Indeed, the watcher is more a tradition than a necessity. I hastened to the City Hall and found the Conclave assembled, waiting for me to bring them to order. Xeon and Melia stopped as I mounted the steps, but I smiled and motioned them in. They accompanied me past Well, you know how these things are. At such a time, many men feel impelled to make speeches, and one must not be disrespectful. Prayers and supplications were offered to the gods, priests were sent to sacrifice, and finally, as the light of the sun was falling between the pillars, the High Priest of the Maternite Machine was heard. He rambled through the customary opening remarks and then, continually the crux of the matter and the Conclave finally heard the facts it had assembled to hear. By this time, unfortunately, many of the Conclave had departed for home and supper. Yet perhaps it is for the best, for those left were the most earnest and intelligent. \"I would not bore you,\" he said, \"with details of which only the gods are sure. Know, then, that once granted a few cells of Prelife, it is an easy matter for the Maternite Machine to add more and more thus assuring us, as has always been, a continuous source of Prelife to be born by the Generating Machine as children. The machines bear the exact number of children each year to balance the number of us whom the gods claim. Such it has always been from time immemorial.\" A murmur of assent and approval of these virtuous words whispered Indeed, I might call it an emergency. For the M-Maternite Machine has the priest had I not been able to insure order. \"That is not the worst,\" he cried, as if in defiance. \"All the Prelife has been dried up. It will not function. There is no more. And there will be no more children!\" At this I feared the Conclave was about to riot. It is at such times that I most revere the wisdom of the ancients, who decreed seventy years the minimum age for a member of the Conclave. They shouted and began to beat their fists, but for how long can a man of seventy years roar like a youngster? They quieted, breathing heavily, and I asked, and they will produce more. But take away that least bit, and they are helpless.\" Such heresy could have brought a sad end to the priest had not the have been a source of Prelife: a source now forgotten? And may it not \"I know well the legend of the animals, but what does it have to do—\" The heads of the Conclave were turning to me, quizzically. I hastened to explain the legend of the animals. \"It is said that many thousands of years ago, time without reckoning, there existed on the to such creatures. And indeed, if they had Maternite Machines, why then from within their own bodies?\" At this two members of the Conclave fell immediately into a faint, and I would gladly have joined them. I hoped that the youngsters, Xeon and Melia, had not heard, but as I turned they were listening most attentively to Rocsates, who, amid cries of \"Heresy\" and \"Treason\", went on: \"I should like to ask the Conclave for permission to search the ancient lest, being handled, they be destroyed and all knowledge within them lost. the answer beforehand. And so I acquiesced, and agreed, and granted permission. And with much misgiving and foreboding of evil, the Conclave adjourned. I called the meeting at dawn and so it was yet early in the afternoon when formalities were concluded and Rocsates granted leave to speak. \"Some of those among you are She's,\" he began. \"And you know you are reason?\" somehow intimately related to the physical distinctions of the She's!\" seems to have been so simple that there was once a problem of over-population.\" Order was lost among the Conclave as each man turned to speak to his neighbor, and for some time I could not restore order. I realized that where is the necessity for the machines, and why were they created?\" in the dungeon until the Conclave is satisfied to release him, and this they cannot do until they meet again. I needed a sufficient excuse to call a meeting of the Conclave, whereupon I might argue for the lad. When I heard that Rocsates again desired audience, I immediately proclaimed a meeting of the Conclave to be held the next day at dawn, and so that night slept well. The Conclave had come to order and formalities had been initiated when many searchings, I came upon this—\" and he held forth the object he Life.' It seems to be some sort of a do-it-yourself pamphlet.\" He bees....\" When he finished the Conclave sat in horrified silence. His words, with all their horror, had the ring of truth and there were no cries of It is the mark of honor that a leader shall carry on when others fear to move. I cleared my throat. \"Shall not these organs which you mention have atrophied by now? With no use throughout all these generations, will they not have evolved into nothingness?\" \"I do not think so,\" Rocsates replied after a while. \"What to us is breasts, I believe, proves that there is still reproductive activity in some, at least, of the She's.\" We sat shaking our heads, bowed under terrible reality. \"Then we must experiment,\" I said. \"But whom could we ask to submit to breasts. Melia has volunteered, on condition that Xeon be released from dungeon. Are there any objections?\" There were none, of course. Who would refuse a boon to one who would undergo such an ordeal for the City? \"And who will be the partner?\" I asked. \"In all honor, could Xeon allow Melia to surpass him in courage? It \"My lords,\" he said, \"would not better results be obtained were we to conduct the experiment in the fields before the Oracle of Delni, that the gods may help us?\" position would be as uncomfortable as it would be undignified. The soft fields might be some slight help. I voiced my assent, and the entire Conclave adjourned to the fields. \"It doesn't matter,\" I said disconsolately. \"Who could ask them to go through such an ordeal again?\" I am afraid that tears came to my eyes. Such sacrifice— \"We beg one favor,\" Xeon went on. \"We are agreed that—Well, we should\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of the Maternite?\n\n<options>:\nA It determines how many children will be born in the span of a year\nB It reduces the prevalence of female biological sex organs\nC It produces enough breastmilk to sustain newborn infants\nD It decides which of the elders will be sacrificed to the gods\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,280 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCharity Case By JIM HARMON Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not went out. It came back on when he unlocked the door. Every time I told One day, to prove me a liar, he opened and closed the door a few times things that came to me. He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to him. like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams at night. candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then mind—to get all the money I could ever use for the things I needed and the things I wanted. It was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's mission on Durbin Street. The preacher and half a dozen men were singing copper alloy tubing inside a slice of plastic hose for taking care of myself, rolling sailors and the like. Who had the price of a bottle? Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received. Amen.\" amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had received a fix. \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city, and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school. They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through his private door. box. I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The monkey reaches through the hole for the bait, and when he gets it in go up, down, left or right. But I kept trying. While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by. My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box. \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound experiences of my life.\" My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me. \"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,\" the preacher explained in wonderment. I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\" \"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\" \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to to it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart to even try anything but the little things. \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith and a conscience.\" \"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him. Brother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous intervention. But I can't imagine what.\" \"Your name?\" \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before. Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from the money box.\" it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it and put it back into the slot. As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge. We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right on talking. After some time Sister Partridge bustled in and snapped on the overhead lights and I kept talking. The brother still hadn't used the phone to call the cops. \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take a break. \"One is almost— almost —reminded of Job. William, you are \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\" \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going to give it a try!\" I cried. \"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself. He ambled over to the money box on the wall. He tapped the bottom lightly and a box with no top slid out of the slightly larger box. He \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said. And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would There was something I forgot to mention so far. During the year between when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man. It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get punished. It didn't have to be a sin in some previous life, you see. Then lying there, bleeding to myself, I heard them talking. I heard noises like the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had happened that day. Searching myself after I left Brother Partridge, I finally found a strip of gray adhesive tape on my side, out of the fuzzy area. Making there but an old guy talking urgently to a kid with thick glasses, matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a \"Which newspapers?\" the old girl asked stiffly. \"I didn't want to see the I heard my voice say, \"A pleasure. What about after work?\" I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying and left me alone with that they had paid a lot of money for. I remembered Fredric March's double-breasted in Executive Suite while Walter Pidgeon and the rest the French fries. \"Mac,\" I said to the fat counterman, who looked like all fat Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the day after Thanksgiving. But it had only been sixteen or twenty hours since I had slept. That was enough. As I passed the counterman's friend on his stool, my voice said, \"I \"I still bloomp at me. The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but The shrieks woke me up. For the first time, I could hear the shrieks of the monster's victim They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices. could hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to one who could hear other things I never said. I was as But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.\n\n<question>:\nWho didn't William say strange things to?\n\n<options>:\nA a man at the restaurant\nB his father\nC the librarian\nD Partridge\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,367 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nGetting specimens for the interstellar zoo It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist urge. sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial, there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F. Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until 2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches can be yours! Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind, the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the other species of the universe. one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth. His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. \"You are Mr. Corrigan?\" \"That's right.\" I reached for a data blank. \"Before we begin, I'll need certain information about—\" remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained. \"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?\" \"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day.\" \"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and transportation.\" on one side, two on the other. \"Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet, figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right. It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo. That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is, of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms. Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look about him. He said, in level Terran accents, \"I'm looking for a job with your outfit, Corrigan.\" \"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only.\" \"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary circus?\" \"No. And it's not a circus. It's—\" \"A scientific institute. I stand corrected.\" from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect! Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—\" I pulled away from his yawning mouth. \"Good-by, Mr. Gorb,\" I repeated. \"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big attraction. I'll—\" \" He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to the door. \"I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some \"You will grant me a contract!\" Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males, because—\" \"You will hire me or trouble I will make!\" Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!\" as a vacancy—\" \"No. You will hire me now.\" the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting \"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he came running in—\" \"Please, please,\" squeaked the little alien pitifully. \"I must see you, \"It isn't his turn in line,\" Stebbins protested. \"There are at least The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking Earth!\" \"Yes, yes!\" wailed the Stortulian. \"Find some other member of my race, on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for \"Then you will refuse me?\" scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman.\" tell you that I am Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your staff.\" \"I don't care your story is! Get out or—\" \"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second. Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours outside is . He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many \"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead. I've been living in the outworlds half my life I know all there is to know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan.\" I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of the office before I spoke. \"Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is, me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me. I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!\" flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me. \"You are J. F. Corrigan?\" the leader asked. \"Y-yes.\" \"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint He helped me up. \"Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh. \"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and\n\n<question>:\nWhat are the aliens in line hoping will happen?\n\n<options>:\nA that they will get paid to work at a zoo on their home planet\nB their talent will win them a trip to Earth\nC that they will be able to pay for a chance to see Earth\nD that they will get to work for the Corrigan Institute\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,713 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThat's just line! Is Evans—?\" learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless.... Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the \"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water.\" He looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing. remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with electricity. So I built this thing. room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium \"I don't need rescuing, man,\" Evans said. \"You might let me have some food,\" Evans continued. \"I'm getting short of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a half, and he was lucky to break even. \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine on the Moon!\" sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too carefully measured there was a four-day reserve. By diligent conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals twenty-one days to live. In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late. \"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now,\" he told himself. \"Let's find out how bad it is indeed,\" he answered. He reached for the light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the \"on\" position. \"Batteries must be dead,\" he told himself. \"What batteries?\" he asked. \"There're no batteries in here, the power comes from the generator.\" \"Why isn't the generator working, man?\" he asked. He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however, came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself \"The condenser!\" he shouted. He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers, was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly freezing the water in the tank. Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and the steam turned the generator briefly. Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to live. was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been THE END across.\" All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel. \"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to pay for water.\" \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone \"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium.\" \"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?\" \"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as efficient as the one in the tractor it wasted oxygen. By using the suit so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his plan to search for a large bubble. \"Because I say so,\" Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and ashamed of it. \"Boiler scale,\" he continued, much calmer. \"We've got to clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor don't clog up.\" He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor the water. It neither needed nor had much strength. shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough power in it to crush the scale.\" \"Twenty pounds,\" Cade answered after a couple of minutes. what happens.\" \"Eight hundred pounds,\" Cade said, after a short wait. \"Think we weren't worried?\" Lehman asked. \"And it's not over.\" \"What?\" Cade asked. \"Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?\" \"No,\" said Lehman, \"I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we lost.\" \"Two thousand?\" Cade asked. \"We only had seven hundred gallons reserve. How come we can operate now?\" \"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do.\" \"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again.\" \"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple of weeks.\" is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his oxygen runs out. it is believed he was carrying only short-range, intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ... \"Like as not, you're right,\" McIlroy replied, \"but if I know Evans, he'd tells me that Evans will be found.\" this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Evans give up his drinking water?\n\n<options>:\nA Using the water is the only way for his transportation to work\nB He knows he will be able to find more soon in one of the caves\nC He knows his rescuers will come find him and bring water\nD He knows he does not have enough to survive so he uses it to save his equipment\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,837 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nFallout is, of course, always disastrous— one way or another JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT BY WILLIAM LEE ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR \"Mr. McCormack called me to the office today, and told me that some of the children in the lower grades wanted to start one. They need adult guidance of course, and formula—.\" He gave me a singularly adult and another in general physics in the Senior High School. It's a privilege which I'm sure many educators must new school is a fine one, and our academic standards are high. On the other hand, the fathers of most of my students work for the Commission and a constant awareness of the Commission and its work pervades the town. It is an uneasy privilege then, at least sometimes, to teach my old-fashioned brand of science to these children of a new age. \"That's very nice,\" said Marjorie. \"What does a junior achievement and I was relieved to see that they were laughing and evidently enjoying \"It has the purpose,\" I told her, \"Well, now,\" I demanded, in my \"of teaching the members something about commerce and industry. They \"Are you Henderson?\" the larger best classroom voice. \"What is all themselves. built up tidy little bank accounts which are available for later educational \"Oh, please, Mr. Henderson, come expenses.\" manufacture simple compositions \"Gracious, you wouldn't have to kids how to do it.\" \"You mean you don't know, honestly? Oh, it's fabulous. Best story I've had for ages. It'll make the city papers.\" almost nonexistent. \"Oh, all right,\" I said, \"laugh at my commercial aspirations. But don't we are. And we just saw a demonstration of that fabulous kite and saw all those simply captivating mice.\" \"Mice?\" \"Yes, of course. Who would ever have thought you could breed mice with those cute furry tails?\" be our headquarters and factory for the summer—a roomy unused barn belonging to the parents of one of the group members, Tommy Miller. don't need to treat me as a teacher, you know. I stopped being a school their story, or whatever it is they do. Tommy was jubilant. teacher when the final grades went in Mr. McCormack had told me, and in some detail, about the youngsters Those mice! I have always kept charming little beasts, with tails as bushy as miniature squirrels. \"How many generations?\" I asked Doris. \"Seventeen. No, eighteen, now. my enthusiasm for rodents within I won't try to explain it as she did to me, but it was quite evident that Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for ten-year-olds. I had the impression during that the new mice were breeding true. get out of their cages. But heaven knows what you'll do when fall comes. They won't live in an unheated right, if you promise me they can't they were all tanned by sun and wind to a degree that made their eyes seem them and they'll be down to nothing apiece.\" light and their teeth startlingly white. Doris was right, of course, in spite by then,\" Doris predicted. \"Every pet infectious laugh, and Tommy Miller, a few months younger, was just an average, extroverted, well adjusted many for breeding, but mostly for shipping. youngster, noisy and restless, tee-shirted It was rather regrettable that, after the \"Well, Mr. Henderson, a junior achievement group is a bunch of kids who get together to manufacture and sell things, and maybe make some Courier gave us most of the third money?\" frightened me, but he set the value of the mice at ten dollars a pair and got it without any arguments. The usual products, of course, with these junior achievement efforts, are chemical specialties that can be made safely and that people will buy and sort of thing. Mr. McCormack had told me, though, that I might find these youngsters a bit more ambitious. \"The Miller boy and Mary McCready,\" he had said, \"have exceptionally high IQ's—around one forty or one fifty. The other three are hard to classify. They have some of the attributes of exceptional pupils, but much of the time they seem to have little interest in their studies. The junior achievement idea has sparked their imaginations. Maybe it'll be just what they need.\" shop in the country will have time. Partly for the kicks and partly with a face full of freckles and an And so we acquired a patent attorney, several of them, in fact. look pleased.\" \"I am,\" he replied, \"in a cautious legal sense, of course. Hilary and I should keep the achievement group going for several summers, it might be possible later on to carry out a safe synthesis of some sort. You're Dr. Matlack's son, aren't you? Been calling for capital investment. If we and butch-barbered. sounds like another operation in uniform they still look ominous built cages, hundreds of them, a good like polishing waxes and sell them mice. They're fancy ones. I got the first four pairs from a pet of chipmunk color, you know. I've carried them through seventeen generations of careful selection.\" \"Well, now,\" I admitted, \"the market this?\" can work there better than here, and if we're going to break the hearts of \"What on earth for? We have over six thousand in the account.\" soft drinks and ice, a couple of loaves of bread and ingredients for a variety of sandwiches. The parents had agreed to underwrite lunches at the and that, according to all the articles I had perused, is most important to such groups. It's standard practice for every member of the group keep the group going after school young boy who doesn't know any better, \"Why not? The kids can sail through their courses without thinking about them, and actually they won't put in more than a few hours a week during the school year.\" \"Even so, it's child labor, isn't it?\" \"Child labor nothing. They're the employers. Jeff McCord and I will be the only employees—just at first, may wind up a sales manager. anyway.\" that they'd each do what came naturally. On the other hand, they me a small share of the company, and I'd be crazy to turn it down. After all, what's to lose?\" Marge choked on something. \"Did \"and think about the small end. It'll work out all right.\" I wished that the youngsters weren't starting out by inventing a new article to manufacture, and risking an been propounded. Most of them were impractical, of course, for a group of children to attempt, but several of them appeared quite attractive. Tommy, for example, wanted to the blue ones designed to leave the mouth alkaline at bed time. Pete wanted to make a combination Hilary, reluctantly forsaking his of radiation and absorption of heat. \"My,\" said Marjorie, \"they're really smart boys and girls. Tommy Miller does sound like a born salesman. Somehow I don't think you're going Henderson, right? My name is McCord—Jeff It was beautifully made, and had a sort of professional look about it. volunteered—not without a hint of complacency in his voice. \"It didn't take long, but they sure made it out a big deal. Half the guys in the bank name, Mr. Henderson, and you'll have nothing of finding myself responsible for a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar note—over two weeks salary. I made that something was concerning me, but she asked no questions, and I only told her about the success of the kite, and the youngsters embarking on a shopping trip for paper, glue and presently had a regular production line under way stapling the to be a company officer. Of course a starts?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Mr. Henderson want to work for the children?\n\n<options>:\nA The parents of the children work for the Commission and Henderson is scared of the Commission.\nB He needs the money to pay for his mortgage.\nC He does not want to work for the children. The children will work for Mr. Henderson.\nD The children are incredibly successful.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,927 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nAhead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying, was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of Jerusalem and the host of Poitou. He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his the lion-hearted Richard of England— gules, in pale three lions passant guardant or . Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his firm-held shield, was the King himself. Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\" \"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all truly Christian knights.\" \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable. Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England.\" Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy to remain with us.\" The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\" showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty him. There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger. rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a thousand anvils. \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle. check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey the orders of Richard. The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears. \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\" \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once.\" A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton. \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St. George and for England!\" \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed. Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights, their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian Christian knights. Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless body. Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\" The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break Church Law by shedding blood. battle rather than participating in it. But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian onslaught. before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them completely.\" \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and Old Kings .\" He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred Old Kings .\" Old Kings pleasure.\" \"There's no doubt about it, Old Kings are a man's cigarette.\" \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \" Old Kings Old Kings King Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England. The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he hacked down the Moslem foes. And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was red-and-gold banner of Richard? sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden coronet! Richard! And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde! that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain. over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, bringing with them the banner of England! And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was biting viciously into the foe. The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight. Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\" sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you call.\" King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to England, sir knight.\" And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after the retreating Saracens. Old Kings , and, believe me, the real\n\n<question>:\nWe can assume that King Richard's army represents which group?\n\n<options>:\nA Muslims\nB Christians\nC Normans\nD Anglo-Saxons\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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667 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe blackness of space to save a nation from Stranger of the Prophecy—and he found that he was destined to fight both sides. And at once there was an answer: \" You lie upon the world Dondromogon. \" I knew the language of that answer, but where it came from—above, \"How did I get here?\" I demanded of the speaker. And I did not know whether I remembered or not. Vague matters stirred deep in me, but I could not for certain say they were memories. I asked The voice had a note of triumph. \"You do not know that. It is as well, for this will be a birth and beginning of your destined leadership on Dondromogon.\" \"Destined—leadership—\" I began to repeat, and fell silent. I had need to think. The voice was telling me that I had been snatched from Dondromogon might be. \"Birth and beginning—destined leadership—\" Fantastic! And yet, for all I could say to the contrary, unvarnishedly true. \"Dondromogon?\" I mumbled. \"The name is strange to me.\" \"It is a world the size of your native one,\" came words of information. \"Around a star it spins, light-years away from the world of your birth. One face of Dondromogon ever looks to the light and heat, wherefore its metals run in glowing seas. The other face is ever away in cold darkness, with its air freezing into solid chunks. But because Dondromogon wavers on its axis, there are two lunes of its surface which from time to time shift from night to day. These are habitable.\" My eyes were tight shut against the dust, but they saw in imagination \"War is fought between the two strips of habitable ground. War, unceasing, bitter, with no quarter asked, given or expected. Dondromogon was found and settled long ago, by adventurers from afar. Now come invaders, to reap the benefits of discovery and toil.\" A pause. \"You find that thought unpleasant? You wish to right that \"Anyone would wish that,\" I replied. \"But how—\" \"You are going to ask how you were brought here. That is the mystery .\" The voice became grand. \"Suffice it that you were The voice spoke no more. I had not the time to wonder about it. I got What had seized me? That was my first wonder. On this strange world called Dondromogon, what manner of intelligent life bade defiance to heat and cold and storm, and built these stout structures, and now laid hands—were they hands indeed?—upon me? I swung around, setting my \"There's a bigger reward for capture than for warning,\" objected his friend in turn, \"and whoever comes to take this man will claim had first spoken. Then, to his comrade: \"No reward, then.\" \"I think there'll be a reward,\" was the rejoinder, and the second man's its scabbard. \"If he's dead, we get pay for both warning and capture—\" its owner's unprotected face. prevent it burning me, and tried to break away, but my bonds were too \"They lie,\" I broke in, very conscious of my naked helplessness before her regard. \"They wanted to kill me and be rewarded for a false story of vigilance. I only defended myself.\" Beyond, it gave into several passages. She chose one of them and nothing. Memory left me.\" \"Stranger,\" he said to me, \"can you think of no better tale to tell \"I tell the truth,\" was my reply, not very gracious. \"You will have to prove that,\" he admonished me. \"What proof have I?\" I demanded. \"On this world of yours—Dondromogon, isn't it called?—I'm no more than an hour old. Accident or shock has taken my memory. Let me have a medical examination. A scientist probably can tell what happened to put me in such a condition.\" \"The stranger of the prophecy!\" he cried, in a voice that made us all You mystic doctors are too apt to become fuddled—\" strength that you lose touch with the spiritual—\" he said, intoning as if in formal prayer. \"Pardon these short-sighted ones—deign to save us from our enemies—\" plain soldier and follow the classics very little. The First Comers are souls to worship, not to study. If indeed he is Yandro,\" and he was most respectful, \"he will appreciate, like a good military mind, my caution against possible impostors.\" \"Who might Yandro be?\" I demanded, very uncomfortable in my bonds and Old Sporr almost crowed. \"You see? If he was a true imposter, he would \"As it is, he may remember that the Conquering Stranger is foretold to come with no memory of anything,\" supplied the officer. \"Score one \"Happy, happy the day,\" he jabbered, \"that I was spared to see our \"I still say you will understand my caution,\" he addressed me, with real respect and shyness this time. \"If you are Yandro himself, you can \"That could be plastic surgery,\" rejoined the officer. \"Such things are artfully done by the Newcomers, and the red mantle he wears more easily assumed.\" because he was naked, and not for any treasonable masquerade. But the \"Get up,\" I bade them. \"I want to hear why I was first bound, and now \"Enemies?\" I repeated. \"The Newcomers,\" supplemented Doriza. \"They have taken the \"Other Side\" of Dondromogon, and would take our side as well. We defend ourselves at the poles. Now,\" and her voice rang joyously, \"you will lead us to defeat and crush them utterly!\" foolish, but it had its effect. transmute into food, to weave into clothing, to weld into tools and weapons—\" combing his beard in embarrassment. The door closed softly behind me—I was left alone. wiped from my recollection. That nose had been even bigger than it was hall. I moved to open it, and he followed, muttering. that I was fated to live when he returned for the rescue of all Dondromogon.\" \"Please get up,\" I bade her, trying not to sound as embarrassed as I felt. \"Come with me. There is still much that I do not understand.\" \"It is necessary that we live like this,\" she explained. \"The hot air of Dondromogon's sunlit face is ever rising, and the cold air from the dark side comes rushing under to fill the vacuum. Naturally, our which I now saw plainly to be synthetic. \"The other side, where those you call the Newcomers dwell and fight,\" I reminded. \"Is it also windswept? Why can two people not join forces and face toil and nature Yandro is wise as well as powerful. But the Newcomers do not want to help, not even to conquer. They want to obliterate us. There is nothing to do—not for lifetimes—but to fight them back at the two poles.\" sheet of dull metal. She spoke into a mouthpiece: \"Doriza, gentlewoman of the guard, conducts Yandro, the Conquering in the nation I seemed destined to save, my work was cut out for me. subsequent action, of stupidity. But they were not pleasant. Their \" Yandro! \" Silence then, a silence which evidently I must break. I broke it: \"Friends, I am among you with no more memory or knowledge than an name, how could it be that I sensed memory of another's name? \"You honor me,\" I told him. \"Yet I still know little. It seems that I am expected to aid and lead and save the people of this world called Dondromogon. But I must know them before I can help.\" Gederr turned his eyes upon the woman with the red hair, and gestured to her \"Tell him, Elonie.\" Then he faced me. \"Have we Yandro's\n\n<question>:\nThe purpose for the narrator losing his memory is. . .\n\n<options>:\nA Earth is not something a Dondromogon leader should remember.\nB So he can be birthed on a clean slate as the new Dondromogon leader.\nC So that the Dondromogons will be suspicious of him\nD To better assimilate to Dondromogon culture.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,799 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOne can't be too cautious about the people one meets in Tangier. They're all weirdies of one kind or another. Me? Oh, The Place de France is the town's hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized part of the city, and the beginning of Rue de la Liberté, which leads down to the Grand Socco and the medina. In a three-minute walk from the Place de France you can go from an ultra-modern, California-like resort to the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid. It's quite a town, Tangier. King-size sidewalk cafes occupy three of the strategic corners on the Place de France. The Cafe de Paris serves the best draft beer in town, gets all the better custom, and has three shoeshine boys attached to the establishment. You can sit of a Paris edition of the New York while getting for thirty Moroccan francs at current exchange. You can sit there, after the paper's read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by. Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you'll see Berber and Rif, Arab and Blue Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In European dress you'll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans—from In Tangier you'll find some of the world's poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid might try to sell them something. In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage and counter-espionage agents, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced persons, ex-royalty, and subversives of every flavor. Local law Like I said, it's quite a town. and said, \"Hello, Paul. Anything new cooking?\" me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was at the Cafe de Paris. It wasn't a place to go if you wanted to be alone. donkey's years.\" The waiter came along and Paul ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easy-going, sallow-faced \"What's in the newspaper?\" he said, disinterestedly. \"Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,\" I told him, \"and Lil Abner is becoming a rock'n'roll \"Oh,\" I said, \"the intellectual \"The Russkies have put up another manned satellite.\" \"They have, eh? How big?\" \"Several times bigger than to those poxy flying saucers?\" \"What flying saucers?\" A French girl went by with a as though it'd been shaven. The girl was in the latest from Paris. Every pore in place. We both looked after her. Maybe they would've seen one.\" \"That's an idea,\" I said. without rubbing him the wrong well, but, for that matter, it's comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier. Largely, cards are played close to the chest. My beer came and a plate of tapas for us both. Tapas at the Cafe de Paris are apt to be olives, and possibly some cheese. in the States. \"Where do you think they came from?\" And when he looked Saucers.\" He grinned. \"From Mars or Venus, or someplace.\" landed on the Yale football field Take me to your cheerleader , or something.\" them. If they were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?\" It'd been cooked in rancid olive I said, \"Oh, there are various answers to that one. We could probably sit around here and think of two or three that made sense.\" \"Like what?\" of civilized planets. But it's restricted, for membership until you, well, flight. Then you're invited into the club. Meanwhile, they send secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.\" Paul grinned at me. \"I see you read the same poxy stuff I do.\" A Moorish girl went by dressed in a neatly tailored gray shoes, and a pinkish silk veil so transparent that you could see she wore lipstick. Very provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil. We both looked after her. one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.\" said with mock severity. \"This the planet began to lose its water and air, it withdrew underground. Uses hydroponics and so forth, husbands its water and air. Isn't that what we'd do, in its water and air?\" what about them?\" \"Well, they observe how man is going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom, period. practical space ships. Meanwhile, he's also got the H-Bomb and the way he beats the drums on get away with it.\" scared and are keeping an eye on different.\" \"I got a better one. How's early days. They've gone beyond things like wars and depressions and revolutions, and greed for power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They're all like scholars, now, with all the problems, get or how we're going to get there.\" I finished my beer and clapped my hands for Mouley. \"How do you mean, ?\" \"Well, take half the countries in the world today. They're trying to industrialize, modernize, catch up with the advanced countries. Look at Egypt, and Israel, and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the level of the advanced countries, and all using different methods of doing it. But look at the so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems. Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, it. Why, a man from Mars would be fascinated, like.\" Mouley came shuffling up in his babouche slippers and we know, there's only one big snag observers, or scholars, or spies or later we'd nab one of them. You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counter-espionage outfits and security agents that an up, and they'd nab him.\" base himself in London or New York. Somewhere where he could use the libraries for research, get the daily newspapers and center of things. But now I don't think so. I think he'd be right here in Tangier.\" \"Why Tangier?\" \"It's the one town in the world where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn about you or your affairs. For instance, I've known you make your living.\" \"In this town you seldom even ask a man where's he's from. He can be British, a White Russian, a Basque or a Sikh and nobody could care less. Where are from, Rupert?\" \"California,\" I told him. \"No, you're not,\" he grinned. you mean?\" \"I felt your mind probe back the F.B.I. possibly flushing an trained by the humanoids. If these human bodies we're disguised in, neither of us is humanoid. Where are you really from, Rupert?\" We had a laugh and ordered another beer. \"What're you doing here on \"Researching for one of our eaters. Humanoid flesh is considered quite a delicacy. How \"Scouting the place for thrill tourists. My job is to go around to these backward cultures and help stir up inter-tribal, or international, are. Then our tourists come in—well shielded, of course—and get\n\n<question>:\nWhere can a person go to be with friendly faces in Tangier?\n\n<options>:\nA The Place de France\nB The Boulevard Pasteur\nC The Cafe de Paris\nD The Grand Socco\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,748 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthere isn't a trap, the Karna can't satisfy Braynek, because he's convinced that there has to be—somewhere. As a result, all his advice to Nordon, and all his questioning on the wildest possibilities, just serves to keep Nordon from getting unconfused. \"These two men are honestly doing The Karna can see that we're not trying to stall Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of the four new men who had been assigned to him. They were typical of the kind our men are actually working at trying to reach a decision. his approval, but there was still a question in his mind. \"Since you know all that, couldn't you have handled it yourself?\" \"Maybe, but I doubt it. They might have gotten around me someway by it's better this way.\" he could be as lucid as the next man most of the time. But he was morbidly suspicious that every man's The Secretary of State raised an Malloy looked at him. \"Didn't you trusted no one, and was perpetually on his guard against imaginary plots and persecutions. or another. He was psychologically incapable of making a decision if he were faced with two or more possible alternatives of any major importance. Malloy sighed and pushed the dossiers the basic similarity there, after all? He was—how old? He glanced at his recollections. And—he grinned softly to himself—he had Saarkkad. He glanced up at the ceiling, and mentally allowed his gaze to penetrate it to the blue sky beyond it. Malloy closed his eyes. Somewhere of the alien Karna in the most important war that Mankind had yet And, Malloy knew, his own position To their way of thinking, an important official was aloof. The greater his importance, the greater must be underlings. It was a long, roundabout way of doing business, but it was the only way Saarkkad would do any that were vitally necessary to Earth's war, and which could be keep the production output high and to keep the materiel flowing towards Earth and her allies and outposts. The job would have been a snap could have handled them without half trying. work that required their total capacity. It's inefficient to waste a man on a job that he can do without half trying where there are more important jobs So Malloy was stuck with the culls. were places in the galaxy that were less important than Saarkkad to the war effort. Malloy knew that, no matter what was wrong with a man, as long as he had the mental ability to dress himself and get himself to work, useful work could be found for But Malloy didn't like to stop at merely thwarting mental quirks he liked to find places where they were useful . \"Malloy here.\" \"Mr. Malloy?\" said a careful voice. Miss Drayson was a case in point. She was uncommunicative. She liked to gather in information, but she found it difficult to give it up once it was in her possession. Malloy had made her his private secretary. Nothing—but nothing out of Malloy's office without his direct order. It had taken Malloy a long time to get it into Miss Drayson's head that it was perfectly all right—even desirable—for her to keep secrets from everyone except Malloy. She came in through the door, a rather handsome woman in her middle thirties, clutching a sheaf of someone might at any instant snatch it from her before she could turn it over to Malloy. She laid them carefully on the desk. \"If anything else comes in, I'll let you know immediately, sir,\" she said. \"Will there be anything else?\" Malloy let her stand there while he picked up the communique. She wanted to know what his reaction was going to be it didn't matter because no one would ever find out from her what he had done unless she was ordered to tell someone. He read the first paragraph, and his whisper. \"There's a chance that the war may be over.\" \"Yes, sir,\" said Miss Drayson in a hushed voice. Malloy read the whole thing through, fighting to keep his emotions in check. Miss Drayson stood emotions were a secret. Finally, Malloy looked up. \"I'll let you know as soon as I reach a decision, Miss Drayson. I think I hardly Malloy watched her go out the door without actually seeing her. The war was over—at least for a while. He looked down at the papers again. Earth was willing. Interstellar war is too costly to allow it to continue and make their own strengths look like weaknesses. If they won the armistice, they'd be able to retrench and rearm, and the war would break out again within a few years. only by low-intelligence animals. The Karna considered this to be fully neutral territory, and Earth and that it was unfair for Earth to take so much time in preparing for an It wouldn't have been a problem at all if Earth and Karn had fostered the only two intelligent races in the galaxy. side would be strong enough next time to win. \"What can I do?\" he said softly. On the second day after the arrival intercom and said: \"Miss Drayson, tell Braynek to wait.\" \"Yes, sir.\" \"And keep the recorder on. You can file the tape later.\" \"Yes, sir.\" Malloy knew the woman would listen in on the intercom anyway, and it was better to give her permission to do so. Malloy waved him to a seat. Malloy explained the problem of the Karna peace talks. \"We need a man who can outthink them,\" Malloy finished, \"and judging certainly. Am I to go alone?\" \"No,\" said Malloy, \"I'm sending an assistant with you—a man named I recall, Mr. Malloy. Should I have?\" \"Not necessarily. He's a pretty shrewd operator, though. He knows a lot about interstellar law, and he's capable of spotting a trap a mile away. want you to pay special attention to his advice.\" \"I will, sir,\" Nordon said gratefully. \"A man like that can be useful.\" to study it and get it into your head before the ship leaves. That isn't much time, but it's the Karna who are As soon as Nordon had left, Malloy Miss Drayson.\" heavy, protruding brows. Malloy asked Again Malloy went through the explanation trick you every step of the way,\" Malloy we'll simply have to be more shrewd and more underhanded. Nordon's job is to sit quietly and evaluate the data will be to find the loopholes they're laying out for themselves and plug them. Don't antagonize them, but don't baby them, either. If you see anything underhanded going on, let Nordon know immediately.\" \"They won't get anything by me, Mr. Malloy.\" Malloy had full reports on the whole \"I thought it better not to. I sent a good team, instead. Would you like Malloy handed them to the secretary, and as he read, Malloy watched and outdo the finest team of negotiators the Karna could send.\" \"I thought they would,\" said Malloy, trying to appear modest. The secretary's eyes narrowed. Malloy nodded. \"I think so. The \"Nordon had a mental block against making decisions. If he took a girl out on a date, he'd have trouble making up his mind whether to kiss her or not until she made up his mind for him, one way or the other. He's that kind of guy. Until he's presented with one, single, clear decision which admits of no alternatives, he can't move at all. \"As you can see, the Karna tried this was, and the more importance there is attached to his decisions, the more incapable he becomes of making them.\" The Secretary nodded slowly. \"What about Braynek?\" \"Paranoid,\" said Malloy. \"He thinks everyone is plotting against him. In this case, that's all to the good because the Karna are plotting against him. No matter what they put forth, Braynek is convinced that there's a trap in it somewhere, and he digs to find out what the trap is. Even if\n\n<question>:\nWhat did Malloy think of Ms. Drayson's inability to share information?\n\n<options>:\nA He uses this to his advantage and his secrets are never shared.\nB He finds it very annoying that she cannot keep him updated.\nC He is thankful to not have to be stuck in small talk with her.\nD He wishes that she could at least gather more information.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,990 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nfrom fish....\" It was all sound logic. Even Twentieth Century,\" said the left on Earth. Those men that exist in other star systems are not really your kind anymore, though their forefathers originated on this planet. They have gone far beyond you in evolution. To them you would be only a senseless curiosity. You are much better off with my people—our minds are much more like yours. We will take care of you, and make you comfortable....\" only swift young reflexes to rely on to avoid a fearful, telescoping An incredible science, millions of years old, lay in the minds of these creatures. hadn't yet tarred the traffic-loosened gravel at the Bend. Ned could scarcely have chosen any ordinary Earthly kind, he could have faced bravely. But the Movement was slower now, as of which Loy was a prime member. animal chucklings around him, and the occasional touch of a furry body, hurried his feverish shallow, crystalline domes, set among odd, scrub trees and sides, all their jaggedness lost after a million years of erosion in pursuit. Looking back, he saw the pinpoint gleams of with the smiling Irish eyes—like in the song. Betty and he planet—so changed had the Earth become. A wave of intolerable homesickness came over him as he countless little eyes. Yes, he was there to inspire it? Nothing! He laughed harshly as he ran, welcoming that bitter, killing cold. Nostalgia had him in wail, and those short, sharp chuckles of eagerness. Other questioning, wondering notes mixed with the cadence. Lacking qualities identifiable as human, the disturbance was still like the babble of a group of workmen who have discovered something remarkable. The desolate expanse around to him. It gave him a few crumbs of hope. \"Hey, somebody!\" he called. He grimaced ruefully as she again. There he lay, helpless, until presently an idea occurred Dazzled, and befuddled by his did in the Twentieth Century. \"But listen!\" Ned protested. \"You know a lot more than we slanted upward from its crest—red than this, death from ages, war, decadence, disease, and a final scattering of those ultimate superhumans to newer worlds in other solar systems, common with all real scientists, regardless of the species from The sounds were not human. They were more like the chatter and wail of small desert animals. But there was a seeming paradox which they spring, he loved the subjects of his researches. He and to be happy. Or this creature would be of scant value for that had baffled far keener wits than Loy's. But he was bent, now, on the well-being of this anachronism he had so miraculously resurrected—this human, Perhaps that is the only thing to do—to send you back yourself, here. It will be hard to accomplish, but we'll try. Now I shall put you under an anesthetic....\" Ned felt better immediately, for there was real hope now, where there had been none before. with a vast and unlooked-for success. \"Why, Ned,\" she chuckled. different in appearance from his soon.... Ned relaxed, as a tiny spread around his inquisitive, hypo-needle bit into his arm.... eyes, betraying the slow heritage of time, of survival of the fittest, of his kind was already was a scientific oligarchy, Twentieth Century. It would be easy to get the help he needed. A horde of small, grey-furred beings and their machines, toiled far beyond that of the ancient were gathered, tense and gleeful, around the things their in it was a huddled form, brown and hard as old wood. The digging had exposed to the daylight. for many days. had gone into decay—yes. But was simple—alkali. A mineral saturation that had held time and change in stasis. A perfect preservative for organic tissue, aided probably during most of those passing eras by desert dryness. The Dakotas had turned smile curved her lips. As though she had succeeded in creeping up on him, for a surprise. \"You look as though you've been Not the star-conquering demi-gods, approached. With a kind of fierce gratitude, he took her in his arms. Yes, she was just like always. early Twenty-first Century, the but the ancestral stock were happy in their paleontological enthusiasm! A \"I guess I legendary antiquity, had aided them in their quest for knowledge. At last Loy Chuk gave a soft, chirping signal. The chant of lot of worse things happened.... But it wasn't true ...\" he did not try to shake off, accepted apparent facts simply. He did not know anything about the invisible radiations beating down upon him, soothing and dimming his brain, so that of this ancient human corpse. What his probing gaze revealed to him, made his pleasure even greater than before. In twittering, chattering sounds, he communicated his further knowledge to his henchmen. Though it would never question or doubt, or observe too closely the incongruous He didn't know that this Betty sciences were far advanced among Loy Chuk's kind. Perhaps, by the application of principles long known to them, this long-dead body could be was of the same origin—a miraculous made to live again! It might Thus Loy Chuk's kind could study this ancient man—this Kaalleee. Thus, their motives were mostly selfish. Loy, though, was not observing, eager chattering with a command. Work was always more substantial than cheering. With infinite care—small, sharp hand-tools were used, now—the now. He had wandered far But Loy silenced this fresh, researches among the cities of the supermen show the truth. Even they, who once ruled Earth, focused X-rays, he saw magnified vague, angular, geometric mounds of human cities that images of the internal organs Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. homesickness had come. But this was only its surface aspect. Loy Chuk's people since the beginning of their foggy evolution. Besides, in this latter day, the once, the scientist began his changed often, until woody muscles and other tissues became pliable once more. Then the more delicate processes to a flow of restorative energy, passing between complicated electrodes. The cells of antique flesh and brain gradually took on a chemical composition nearer to that of the life that they had once known. worked with his apparatus, studying, and guiding the recording At last, eager and ready for whatever might happen now, whose weird shapes suggested alienness, and knowledge beyond bones, some of them seemed, from their size. But a dog, too, and the skeleton of a man, and a second man-skeleton that was not quite human. Its neck-vertebrae were very thick and solid, its shoulders were to a sitting posture. There was a muffled murmur around him, as of some vast, un-Earthly The words themselves, and the way they were assembled, were old, familiar friends. But the brownish animal with a bulging head. The animal's tiny-fingered paws—hands they were, really—were a little but plainly possessing a high order of intelligence. And a voice whose soothingly familiar words were more repugnant somehow, simply because did not know that in the latter, his language, taken from his own revitalized mind, was recorded, were not human, would have had great difficulty speaking English words, anyway. about a million years ago. I discovered your body. I brought you back to life. We have science that can do that. I'm Loy Chuk....\" It took only a moment for the box to tell the full story in clear, bold, friendly terms. Thus Loy sought, with calm, human logic, to make his charge feel at home. Probably, though, he was a fool, \"Speaking to me. One million years. Evolution. The scientists are smart. So maybe super-prairie-dogs could come from them. A lot easier than men\n\n<question>:\nHow have scientists' positionality toward their research subjects changed since the 20th century?\n\n<options>:\nA They are more prejudiced and scrutinizing toward them\nB They are more neutral and ambivalent toward them\nC They are more inclusive and considerate toward them\nD They are more empathetic and compassionate toward them\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,544 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nMore Bang for the Buck A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year. If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares. Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. Rating: 3 toes curled. I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary. Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. Rating: 0 toes curled. Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\" Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and Kahlua, which has worked before. We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. Overall rating: 4 toes curled. That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes. Overall rating: 5 toes curled. St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\" This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance. So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.\n\n<question>:\nWhy are ratings provided in count of curled toes?\n\n<options>:\nA Because the writer and his wife are playing footsie.\nB Because this image is evocative of sexual animalistic desires.\nC Because this image evokes tension, gratification, and release.\nD Because the writer and his wife are having physical therapy.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,413 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nsag of the dust I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman at first. Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to think so, too. McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive I just managed to hide it better. he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we heard a sharp cry through our earphones. I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck of a Bug an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the It looked the same, but every now and then it details Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into an area of recent surface activity “You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney. I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed more dangerous for to know.” “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross much about the others. I was worried about One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.” can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the It was the thought out of my mind. that whipped us, that and the broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a then I edged my Bug I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared. I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the “No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?” “What trip?” I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned how installation with a human crew could survive at either temperatures. The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models, with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in, isn’t he?” “Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline of our course. tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant surface activity.” The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the further we got from a solution. We knew there were active localized. But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric 2 , and nitrogen, and traces of that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited. Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t our big problem right then. worried us first and one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at “How about the Bugs?” “They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on them too much for protection.” approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of the planet at the hottest it ever gets. The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon the surface was really treacherous. what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew that. the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of sharply. “Charts! I’m talking about detail work. We don’t need to worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work “No dice,” the Major broke in. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and I moved out first Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out the heat so much those first days out. We The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it happened to be so. We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches, the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there, so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible. Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun itself. onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous surface for the Bug’s pillow tires. I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the\n\n<question>:\nWhat likely caused the most problems?\n\n<options>:\nA the toxic gases\nB the high temperatures\nC vehicle trouble\nD incorrect mapping\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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453 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"To celebrate,\" Ferris said. The colonel shrugged. \"That's as good a reason as any.\" bewilderment. IV Macklin was playing jacks. He didn't have a head on his shoulders and he was squatting on a great \"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to \"Hello?\" Elliot Macklin said. carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a Macklin had answered the \"Oh, you want to know if my wife is around. No, she's asleep. That Army doctor, Colonel Sidney, he gave her a sedative. I wouldn't let him give me anything, though.\" now Macklin—\" Elliot Macklin had inherited the reputation of the late Albert Einstein able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but For the past seven years Macklin—who \"But he won't like you fixing me up more.\" \"But he can't stop me! Not if you want me to do it. Now listen to me—I The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health. Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild stroke ... or at least a vascular spasm of a cerebral artery. It was behind the blond imitation wood desk, watching him disinterestedly. \"Do you suppose the Great Man will actually show up?\" Ferris demanded, pausing in mid-stride. \"I imagine he will,\" Mitchell said. \"Macklin's always seemed a decent their smug faces.\" Sometimes, Mitchell reflected, Ferris displayed a certain lack of Elliot Macklin entered in a cloud of pipe smoke and a tweed jacket. He Macklin dropped on the edge of the desk and adjusted his pipe. \"Now Macklin nodded. \"That's right, Steven. Migraine.\" \"I would have said the common cold,\" Macklin replied, \"but I suppose \"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?\" Macklin \"That's fine,\" Macklin said, sucking on his pipe. \"And this effect that telencephalon section of the frontal lobes. It's caused by an over-production of the pituitary gland. We have artificially bred a Macklin coughed. \"I don't want to overestimate my value but the \"I'm tempted,\" Macklin said hesitantly, \"but the answer is go. I mean Macklin ran the back of his knuckles across his forehead. \"I really \"That's not so bad,\" Macklin said. \"How low can it get?\" A dew of perspiration had bloomed on Macklin's forehead. \"Is there much Macklin held his head in both hands. \"Why did you two select Macklin groped in his pocket for a pen. \"Don't be so stuffy and conservative, Mitchell! Macklin's cured, isn't he? By established periodic cycle he should be suffering hell right \"It's Macklin's wife,\" Ferris said. \"Do you want to talk to her? I'm no \"What do you mean by that, Mrs. Macklin,\" Mitchell said sharply. heroin.\" \"That's absurd. What makes you think a thing like that?\" \"The—trance he's in now.\" \"Mrs. Macklin! I think I had better talk to you later when you are Macklin?\" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone. Together they marched over to the cages and peered through the honeycomb pattern of the wire. The test chimp, Dean, was sitting peacefully in a corner scratching under his arms with the back of his knuckles. Jerry, their control in the experiment, who was practically Dean's twin except that he had received no injection of the E-M Virus, was stomping up and down punching his fingers through the wire, worrying the lock on the cage. \"Jerry \"Never mind, doctor. It was a form of humor. I think we had better see exactly what is wrong with Elliot Macklin.\" \"There's nothing wrong with him,\" Ferris snapped. \"He's probably just trying to get us in trouble, the ingrate!\" Macklin's traditional ranch house was small but attractive in dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum . As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely Mrs. Macklin was an attractive brunette in her late thirties. She wore \"You are the gentlemen who gave Dr. Macklin the unauthorized The colonel smiled thinly. \"Dr. Macklin is my concern. And everything suddenly realized Macklin used a pipe as a form of masculine protest to \"Not a thing,\" Sidney said. \"He's the healthiest, happiest, most well-adjusted man I've ever examined, Carson.\" \"But—\" Colonel Carson protested. Mitchell and Ferris stared at Colonel Carson and Macklin and at each other. \"What did he mean, Macklin is an idiot?\" Mitchell asked. \"Not an idiot,\" Colonel Carson corrected primly. \"Dr. Macklin is a moron. He's legally responsible, but he's extremely stupid.\" \"I'm not so dumb,\" Macklin said defensively. \"I beg your pardon, sir,\" Carson said. \"I didn't intend any offense. But according to all the standard intelligence tests we have given you, \"But—\" Mitchell said, impatient to examine Macklin for himself. \"Very \"We merely cured him of his headaches,\" Mitchell said. \"How?\" some kind of a disease to rot his brain?\" \"No, no! Could I talk to the other man, the doctor? Maybe I can make him understand.\" \"All I want to know is why Elliot Macklin has been made as simple as if Mitchell groaned. He was abruptly sure Ferris was correct. The colonel drew himself to attention, fists trembling at his sides. is replaceable. But the chances of an Elliot Macklin are very nearly \"Just a moment,\" Mitchell interrupted, \"we can cure Macklin.\" \"You can ?\" Carson said. For a moment Mitchell thought the man was \"Good!\" Carson clasped his hands and gave at least slightly at the knees. \"Just you wait a second now, boys,\" Elliot Macklin said. He was leaning in the doorway, holding his pipe. \"I've been listening to what you've Macklin slowly shaking his head. \"No, sir!\" the mathematician said. \"I shall not go back to my original state. I can remember what it was like. Always worrying, worrying, worrying.\" Macklin nodded. \"Troubled, anyway. Disturbed by every little thing. peaceful this way. My head doesn't hurt. I've got a good-looking wife and all the money I need. I've got it made. Why worry?\" Colonel Carson opened his mouth, then closed it. \"That's right, Colonel. There's no use in arguing with him,\" Mitchell said. \"It's not his decision to make,\" the colonel said. \"He's an idiot now.\" They found Mrs. Macklin in the dining room, her face at the picture \"Y-yes,\" Colonel Carson said, \"but he's not himself. He refused the treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence.\" was my original thought. But I've redecided.\" \"Redecided!\" Carson burst out almost hysterically. where he never had a moment's peace from worry and pressure. He's happy now. Like a child, but happy.\" Ferris' antitoxin treatment is the best method of restoring Dr. Macklin \"It isn't quite the same, Colonel. Elliot Macklin has a history of vascular spasm, a mild pseudostroke some years ago. Now you want to Macklin,\" Mitchell interjected. Her mouth grew petulant. \"I don't care. I would rather have a live husband than a dead genius. I can take care of him this way, make him comfortable....\" \"I'm no psychiatrist,\" Mitchell said, \"but I think she wants Macklin \"No,\" Mitchell said. \"She's an intelligent woman unconsciously jealous of her husband's genius.\" \"Maybe,\" Carson said. \"I don't know. I don't know what the hell to tell\n\n<question>:\nWhat caused Macklin to lose his intelligence?\n\n<options>:\nA He had suffered a stroke\nB His brain cells were not working properly\nC He was using heroin\nD He was only pretending\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,148 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nfor Purnie's game—but his new Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be: With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing. He chose to ignore the negative maxim that \"small children who stop time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it.\" He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth orange curls waiting to start that action. frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight of munching seaweed. \"Hi there!\" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped, The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long repast. Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at \"Hi there, wanna play?\" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in ocean with a three-legged ostrich!\" wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim.\" \"Bah! Bunch of damn children.\" will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!\" Purnie shrieked with When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along. sentiment if you will.\" \"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before.\" \"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal? What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering.\" When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to himself, content to be in their company. Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box. He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or doesn't it?\" \"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be great danger to the crew—\" \"Now look here! You had planned to put Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their own tricks. Purnie sat up to watch the show. intention of running away.\" \"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope.\" \"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes.\" \"All right, careful now with that line.\" \"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!\" Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box. The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion. again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed, he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing. explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had three legs drawn up into a squatting position. didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in spot where Purnie had been standing. Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at \"I didn't mean it!\" Purnie screamed. \"I'm sorry! Can't you hear?\" He about. The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf. Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves. The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of death. Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the him. He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness, first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He had to take one viewpoint or the other. His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach Purnie as sounds came from the animal. \"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick! laughing. I can't tell which.\" he'll either kill himself or one Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone? \"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?\" \"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of myself.\" \"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through had become familiar. \"Where are you?\" Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend he was beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he returned. \"We've made a terrible mistake. We—\" The sounds faded in and out on Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie\n\n<question>:\nOf the following options, what traits best describe Purnie?\n\n<options>:\nA Kind and Naive\nB Resourceful and prepared\nC Careful and brave\nD Cautious and dilligent\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,861 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nACCIDENTAL DEATH BY PETER BAILY The most and is operated by a hand-picked by a series of silly errors happening one after another in defiance of probability? is the one you don't know is loaded. crew of highly trained men in perfect single Chingsi wrecked our ship and condition, how often is it wrecked Illustrated by Schoenherr precipice it fingered and wrenched manipulates chance events is bound to be chancy. No matter how highly developed it can't be surefire. The proof is that I've survived to tell the tale.\" in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through away at groaning ice-slabs. It streamlined hummocks of snow. and stumbling with every step on a slope that got gradually steeper and seemed to go on forever, Matt shadow down the long furrow, and At twenty below zero and fifty flashed at the furrow's end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thing in the hollow was stirring in broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the and they seem to work,\" it began. \"I've wiggled my toes with entire success. It's well on the cards that I'm all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don't see how it well use it. That way even if I'm not as well as I feel, I'll leave a message. and wonder what went wrong. screamed over the top, whirled snow \"On the other hand, a talent that When a ship is working perfectly fouled things up. Wait till you see—but of course you won't. I could weep when I think of those miles of lovely color film, all gone up in smoke. \"I'm shocked all right. I never said astronomical survey in the starship . Whoever you are who finds \"Where had I got to? I'd told you how we happened to find Chang, to a frozen glare, penciled black and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds against finding Chang on a six-sun survey on the first star jump ever must be up in the googols. We certainly \"The Chang natives aren't very technical—haven't got space travel . \"Three, they've a great sense of humor. Ran rather to silly practical jokes, but still. Can't say I care for \"But why go on? People who talk lose whichever Chingsi we played. seemed to make silly mistakes when we played them and that's fatal in chess. Of course it's a screwy situation, playing chess with something you have kept your mind on the game? \"And don't think I fell victim to their feline charm. The children were pets, but you didn't feel like patting heads. Personally I didn't like the one I knew best. He was called—well, we called him Charley, and he was the to get the edge on you. All the time he had to be top. Great sense of humor, of course. I nearly broke my neck on that butter-slide he fixed up in the metal alleyway to the hurt me more than the tumble had. Yes, life and soul of the party, old Charley ... \"My last sight of the Minnow was a cabin full of dead and dying men, unhurt, was Charley. He was laughing ... \"My God, it's dark out here. Wonder how high I am. Must be all of Same as a fifty thousand mile fall, I suppose same as escape twenty-four thousand miles an hour. I'll make a mess ... \"That's better. Why didn't I close my eyes before? Those star streaks made me dizzy. I'll make a nice or eraser. What must have happened is that the suit ran out of oxygen, and I lost consciousness due and Mars. Instead of which, when James took his finger off the button, the mass-detector showed nothing except the noise-level of the universe. out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes in front of meters and mutter about about half a light-year from the sun. The crew's job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than half an hour. \"It still seems incredible. To program the topological order of mass-points and we'd gone to the place we'd aimed for. All we'd done was aim for the wrong place. It hurts me to tell you this and I'm just attached personnel with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong pattern of holes on the tape. Another equally skilled had failed to notice this when reading back. A childish error, highly improbable twice repeated, thus squaring the improbability. Incredible, but that's what happened. why we were out there so long. They I got sick so I climbed into a spacesuit disposed ourselves about the control worth. We were all praying that this all looking forward to seeing Earth again after four months subjective time away, except for Charley, who was still chuckling and shaking his glaring at Charley and obviously wishing human dignity permitted him to tear Charley limb from limb. Then James pressed the button. \"Everything twanged like a bowstring. passed through a small sieve, and poured back into shape. The entire Something was wrong all right, and For, as of course you know, the star-drive couldn't be used again for As again you know, this is good for have taken more time than we had to deflect us enough to avoid a smash. We had five minutes to abandon ship. Minnow at a dead run. There was no time to take anything at all except the clothes Minnow was meant canceled our downwards velocity miles an hour make an almighty splash. By now you'll have divers down, but I doubt they'll salvage \"I wonder why James went down with the ship, as the saying is? Not that it made any difference. It must have broken his heart to know that his lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human error? about that, or even to get the radio working. The steam rockets blew up. Poor Cazamian was burnt to a crisp. Only thing that saved me was snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I saw Charley coming out of the toilet—that's how he'd escaped—and I saw him beginning to laugh. Then I don't see how any of us could have survived. I think we're all dead. \"I'll have to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can't. for the vicious howl of the wind. Then snow began to shift on the about two hours he returned to the hollow, squatted down and switched makes the moon look cozy. There's precipice around me every way but to go till I find a way to go down. I've been chewing snow to quench anyone with my five milliwatt \"Just before I start the climb there Falling fifty miles is no worse than falling five hundred feet. You'd be \"The second thing I want to say is about the Chingsi, and here it is: watch out for them. Those jokers are dangerous. I'm not telling how because I've got a scientific reputation to watch. You'll have to figure it out for yourselves. Here are the clues: (1) The Chingsi talk and laugh but so uncertain and rudimentary here that most people don't believe till it found Chang. Then it hit but one of us lost our lives. We couldn't even win a game of ping-pong. future chance events won't go your way. Scientific investigations into this have been inconclusive, but everyone knows that some people are lucky and others aren't. All we've got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a rudimentary talent. There's the evil accident prones. What's in a name? Call a man unlucky and you're superstitious. Call him accident prone and\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Matt feel the need to warn people about the Chingsi?\n\n<options>:\nA Matt is convinced the Chingsi are bad luck.\nB Matt is convinced that Charlie deliberately destroyed the Whale.\nC Matt is convinced the Chingsi are evil.\nD Matt is convinced that Charlie deliberately destroyed the Minnow.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,252 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nObstetrics for beginners It's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out. The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market. The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\" In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain. When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\" If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says. When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter. So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman. At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device. Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands.\n\n<question>:\nWhen doing a cesarian for an impacted fetus, what might a doctor see?\n\n<options>:\nA An arm\nB A shoulder\nC The torso\nD A leg\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,478 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIt is not. sandy, but handkerchiefs over nose and mouth solve this. We look like desperadoes, what with the rifles and covered faces. I I'm hungry they want the human slant on things.\" mad at the way they got the rifles so easily. When we came upon them \"But, Louie,\" I said weakly, \"I'll fired, but the shots either bounced about them.\" \"Nonsense,\" said Louie, sipping carefully at a paper cup of scalding coffee. \"It'll be just like the off their scales or stuck in their thick hides. Anyway, they took the rifles away and threw them into the with you.\" \"But, Louie,\" I said, wiping the public going along vicariously. identify They'll dampness from my palms on the to me. I congratulated Kroger on the lichen I'd seen, but he just said \"That's dishonest,\" I pointed out. \"Creative is the word,\" Louie said. a short and unscientific word and what they intend to do with us. Feed us, I hope. So far, they've just left us here, and we're out of rations. went to sleep. once, but he (or it) made a whistling kind of sound and flashed a mouthful of teeth. Kroger says the teeth are in multiple rows, like a tiger shark's. I'd rather he hadn't told me. And, of course, me. I've met all but the pilot (he's very to the far edge of the water and looking at us and whistling at each busy today), and they seem friendly other. A little Martian came near Martian whistled like crazy and dragged it away. \"Water must be dangerous to with us. He looks a damn sight better than I feel. He's kind of balding, and very iron-gray-haired and Kroger. \"What the hell,\" says Pat, \"it's better than starving.\" I didn't quite catch his first name) is scarlet-faced, barrel-chested and gives the general appearance of belonging else. Right now I could eat a dinner raw, in a centrifuge, and keep it down. A Martian threw a stone at Jones today, and Jones threw one back at him and broke off a couple of scales. The Martian whistled furiously and went away. When the crowd thinned out, same as it did . So is everybody yesterday (must be some sort of (they call it the bulkhead, for some reason or other) table, scratching away with a ballpoint and then calling numbers over a microphone to the pilot. His hair is red and curly, and he looks as cold water, with the scales gripped he's probably got them on his face, too. So far, all he's said is, \"Scram, in his fist. Or what was left of the I'm busy.\" scales. They had melted down in studied them in the uncertain light, then tasted them and grinned. the backs of his hands, so I think clean. I mean clean now. It wasn't during blastoff. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as of their bodies, in the form of scales. He's watched them more closely and seen that they have long rubbery tubes for tongues, and that they now and then suck up water from the stream while they're watching us, being careful not to get their lips (all sugar, of course) wet. He guesses that their \"blood\" must be almost pure water, and that it washes away (from the inside, of that he is tall and does scales like prisms, to isolate the spectra (another Kroger word) necessary to form the sugar. \"I don't get it,\" I said politely, when he'd finished his spiel. pilot all day. He passed my room were addressing me by name. \"They have a twofold reason to fear on the way to the galley (the kitchen) for a cup of dark brown and die. Two: even partial sprinkling alters the shape of the scales, and they are unable to use sunpower to form more sugar, and still die, if a bit slower.\" \"Oh,\" I said, taking it down verbatim. met the pilot. He is kind of squat, with a vulturish neck and close-set jet-black eyes that make him look rather mean, but he was pleasant enough, and said I and spray \"We remove our boots,\" said Kroger, sitting on the ground and those teeth of theirs. They must be for biting something more substantial than moss, Kroger.\" of starvation.\" The hell it is. just stared at me. I can't say I was too impressed what they use those teeth for. We passed through one to it, no sense of depth or immensity. It's as impressive as a piece of velvet with salt sprinkled and surprised a lot of them chewing gritty hunks of anthracite out on it. of the walls. They came running at ground in front of them, and they turned tail (literally) and clattered us, whistling with those tubelike tongues, and drooling dry coal dust, but Pat swung one of his boots in an arc that splashed all over the misunderstood and said, \"A good chance of liking what With Martian rime, Venusian slime, And a radioactive hoe. shortly after landing.\" and the shattering of glass, not unlike the noise made when one uses his first name as a gag. Some fun. And only 255 days to go. Vanity Fair , Pride and Prejudice , War and Peace I'll be the one to quit. the Wind , and Kroger is busy in his cramped lab space trying to classify the little . It must have been a riot when it first came out. I mean, all those sly digs at the aristocracy, with copious interpolations by Mr. Thackeray in case you didn't get on board ship. Pat told him he I asked Pat what the prize was and he told me to go to hell. was pretty well divided. Jones had brought them aboard. well be cement for all the good it did me at takeoff. Earth seems awfully far away. Air is foul and I'm very thirsty. Kroger says that at least—when much dust in it to be any fun to inhale. He's all for going out and looking for lichen, but Pat says he's breathable, but thin, and it has too all turn into The AFAR system is no more then slicing it, then toasting it till it turns to carbon, and we can use loaves were cooling, and when he got back they were gone. However, standing there, tall and silvery, the next instant it was gone. present in the bread after a lifelong diet of anthracite. Pat says let's jettison Kroger. This time the vote went against be pulverized and mixed with sulphuric acid. He says this'll produce carbon. So does Kroger. Brief reprieve for us. The saw the real ship, and Lloyd The air is too thin to carry sound well. All at once, something gleamed in their hands, and they started shooting at me with their rifles. Worse and worse . Lloyd \"Simple,\" he said, as though he the chamber with acid to subdue the creature, which carbonized themselves, spaced considerably farther apart. \"Damned if I know,\" he said. \"It was red and scaly, and I think it which is a help. However, his tail is prehensile, and now and then it snakes out through an air duct and yanks food right off the table from under our noses. Kroger says watch out. We are alone here. More of the scaly things have come toward when they're startled. Their attitudes aren't menacing, but their appearance is. And Jones says, \"Who knows what's 'menacing' in an alien?\" the \"captured Martian\" leaked out, and we all became nine-day wonders until the dismantling of the rocket. and hydrostatic pressure and crystalline life, but in no time at all mingled with the alien ones, sharp and clear. The aliens seem to have too, or else they have the damnedest-looking shoes in creation. The constant shower of sand\n\n<question>:\nAfter they landed, how were the crewmen viewed by the general public?\n\n<options>:\nA with admiration\nB with curiosity\nC with fear\nD with disdain\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,699 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n... After a Few Words ... by Seaton McKettrig Illustrated by Summer Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his the lion-hearted Richard of England— guardant or . Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his firm-held shield, was the King himself. Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre, Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton. \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the \"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. \"Perhaps men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable. Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England.\" Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton. The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, he spoke in haste.\" \"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy, too?\" \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\" Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\" of Sir Robert de Bouain. Sir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath Sir Robert turned his horse to look. Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle. Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears. The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton. \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\" After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\" \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St. George and for England!\" \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed. Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand. saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless body. Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\" The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break Church Law by shedding blood. Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy. Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword. Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: \"It will be a few minutes before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them completely.\" \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\" \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here—have an Old Kings .\" He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took Old Kings .\" He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand. \"Yes, sir,\" said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, \" Old Kings are the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking pleasure.\" \"There's no doubt about it, Old Kings cigarette.\" Sir Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply. cigarette.\" \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \" is the only real cigarette when \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air. There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped Old Kings right down to the very end.\" \"No, but you can always light another later,\" said the Gascon knight. Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England. The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the coronet! Richard! Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain. He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight. And then a voice was saying: \"You have done well this day, sir knight. Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king. \"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you call.\" King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to England, sir knight.\" Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. \"It was Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll , and, believe me, the real\n\n<question>:\nGascon ___ Sir Robert\n\n<options>:\nA monitors\nB envies\nC ignores\nD respects\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
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