A

Step 1: According to the first law of thermodynamics, the change in internal energy of a system depends only on the initial and final states of the system, not on the process taken to get there.
Step 2: This is because internal energy is a state function.
Step 3: State functions depend only on the properties of the system at equilibrium states and not on how the system arrived at those states.
Therefore, the change in internal energy is independent of the pathway or the process, which means the correct answer is that it is independent of the specific process or route taken.