13. In the ruins of Georgetown, Washington D.C. you may have come across the residence of the McClellan’s, who unlike any other family in the area actually have a sign bearing the address of their home: 2026 Bradley Place, which is also occupied by their dog Muffy and a Mister Handy unit. This is a reference to the short story There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, which is about a robotic house that continues to operate unaware that its owner was killed in a nuclear war.
The unit can be instructed via computer terminal to walk the dog, at which point the unit will exit the house, find Muffy dead outside in the backyard, and instruct it to sit up. This is a reference to the sole living creature in the short story, a dog slowly dying of radiation poisoning whose body is swiftly cleaned up by the house’s robots. The Mister Handy unit can also be instructed to read a poem to the McClellan children, There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale, which inspired the short story.
The post-apocalyptic poem speaks to the indifference of nature to humanity, and how it will not take notice once mankind is long gone from war. In the McClellan house, Mister Handy will speak to a dog that is diseased and read a poem to a child it doesn’t know is dead.