Section C – Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

 

Analyse the following transcript (from the movie Matrix) and provide an appropriate answer for the questions 77 through 78 that follow:

 

Neo: Morpheus, what’s happened to me? What is this place?

Morpheus: More important than what is when.

Neo: When?

Morpheus: You believe it’s year 1999 when in fact it’s closer to 2199. I can’t tell you exactly what year it is because we honestly don’t know. There’s nothing I can say that will explain it for you, Neo. Come with me. See for yourself. This is my ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. It’s a hovercraft. This is the main deck. This is the core where we broadcast our pirate signal and hack into the Matrix. Most of my crew you already know.

 

(Next scene: Construct)

Morpheus: This is the construct. It’s our loading programme. We can load anything from clothing to equipment, weapons, training simulations, anything we need.

Neo: Right now we’re inside a computer programme?

Morpheus: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your hair is changed. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.

 

Neo: This … this isn’t real?

 

Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

 

… This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo. …This is the world as it exists today. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marvelled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.

 

Neo: AI? You mean artificial intelligence?

 

Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU’s of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn’t believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

Neo: No, I don’t believe it. It’s not possible.

 

Morpheus: I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.

Neo: Stop. Let me out. Let me out. I want out.

 


77.  The innate factor responsible for the status of human beings in later part of 22nd century is

A.    Due to human beings living in a dream world and being happy about it.

B.    The ability of human body to generate bio-electricity.

C.   The decision to scorch the sky.

D.   The development of artificial intelligence by human beings.

E.    Due to human beings developing the ability to hack into the matrix.

 

Solution:

The question seeks the ‘innate’ (intrinsic) factor responsible for the status of human beings in the later part of 22nd century. This status obviously means the present status of humans in the context of the passage, which is that of ‘sources’ of more than 120-volt power each to the machines. This is so because humans can generate bio-electricity and the machines are said to ‘grow’ humans for this power as there’s no alternative. The correct answer, thus, is B. Now, C is not the correct answer. The decision to scorch the sky may have deprived the machines of solar power thereby creating the need for an alternative source, but if the humans were incapable of generating energy, there would be no ‘use’ of them for the machines and could’ve been destroyed for all that the machines care. For a similar reason D can’t be the answer. A and E are irrelevant.    

                                                                                                                                                   Choice (B)

 

78.  Choose the option that cannot be inferred from the idea discussed in the transcript:

A.    Morpheus and his crew have developed an ability to hack into the matrix.

B.    A war between human beings and machines is going on for some decades.

C.   The sources of power for human beings and machines were different.

D.   Machines require human beings for their survival now.

E.    Morpheus and his crew are not entirely controlled by the matrix.

 

Solution:

A can be inferred. The last part of the para tells us why Matrix has been developed: to control humans. In the 7th line, Morpheus talks about their hacking into the Matrix. There’s no mention of humans other than the ones being grown. This means Morpheus and his crew must have developed the ability to hack into the Matrix. B can be inferred too. In line 21 to 28, Morpheus refers to the war or the start of it. And then, there’s reference to Morpheus and his crew having a hovercraft, sending pirate signals, hacking into the Matrix, loading equipment, ‘weapons’, training simulations etc. All these indicate that humans are still at war with the machines. C cannot be inferred as, although in lines 26 to 28, there’s a mention of the sun being the only source of power for the machines, there’s nothing to indicate that the sun wasn’t the source of power for humans as well, and that there may or may not have been other sources. D can be inferred from lines 26 through 33. E can also be inferred from the same lines that form the basis for statement A.                                                                     Choice (C)