Of course, in an era in which our houses are filled with voice-activated technology, security cameras, electric dishwashers, broadband, and the rest of it (and living, lest we forget, in an age dangerously close to the year in which Bradbury’s story is set, 2026), Bradbury’s vision of a home dominated by such technology has largely come true. A robotic voice reads a poem chosen at random (something it does every day for the mother of the family): today, the poem is Sara Teasdale’s ‘ There Will Come Soft Rains’, a poem about ‘wartime’ which describes what the world would be like if ‘mankind perished utterly’: in summary, nature would not care and the world would carry on. In the afternoon, the automated devices in the house continue to prepare things for its owners, but there are still no humans in sight: the cards laid out for a game remain untouched and are cleared away. The debris is then deposited in an incinerator which the narrator likens to ‘evil Baal’, a ‘false god’ from the Bible. The dog traipses mud into the house, and the robotic mice promptly clean up after him. It is shivering, emaciated, and covered in sores: although it’s not stated, it’s implied that this is a result of the nuclear attack which killed the dog’s owners. At noon, the family dog returns and the automated front door recognises the sound of its whine and opens to let it inside.
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