The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing. At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup. In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl ofsparks leaped up the chimney. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wallstood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: "Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."
Bradbury's short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, describes the extinction of mankind after a nuclear holocaust in the year 2026. The story follows the actions of an artificially intelligent house that continues along its daily duties despite the death of the owners. This futuristic story has no characters but centers instead on the single house left standing after a nuclear blast has destroyed the remainder of Allendale, California, in the year 2026. It is the story of one day in the life of the house: the day the house finally dies after having lived on for days after its inhabitants were killed in the blast. All that remains of the couple and two children who once lived there are four silhouettes in paint on the otherwise charred west exterior wall of the house. Such is the technology of Ray Bradbury’s twenty-first century world, however, that the house continues to go about its daily business, oblivious to the total destruction around it and to the total absence of human life: “The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.”
The skunk taught Brian that food needed to be protected. The smell in the shelter, in his clothes, and in his hair was still there now, almost a month and a half later. And he had nearly smiled.
