There Will Come Soft RainsThere Will Come Soft RainsIt’s August of 2026. A house in Allendale, California, had just woken up. It broadcasts that it is seven o’clock and time to wake up, but the house is silent. The house has started to make breakfast, but there’s no one there to eat it. Soon after, the sprinklers came on and outside on the house, all the paint has been burned off, except for five silhouettes; a woman and a man, doing work in the yard, and two children, a boy and a girl, playing with a ball that never reached its destination. The rest of the neighborhood has been burned to the ground and a radioactive glow shines all over and around it. The family’s dog returns covered with cuts and sores, finds out he’s the only one left, and dies. Little mechanical mice come out from all over the house and clean up the dog’s remains. As it gets dark, the house starts to read the woman’s favorite poem, “There Will Come Soft Rains”.
The residents of Allendale were shocked and horrified to see the power of the radio, not to mention their own lives. They prayed and fought with each other over the noise, the radio. They also prayed for a cure that would save everyone. They held on to the same belief. They made it through this, finally. Over time, they found their own purpose in life. When it occurred to them—or maybe most of the country—they knew a better way to make it to the end and reach the one they loved so much more. They were wrong. They did this all because of the radio they knew, and they are wrong also. They have an idea, a wish, in their heart, that they will be able to come back to what they always thought would be their home. No one in Allendale and all over the state could bring that dream up or come back to what they were after. The idea of returning to their home and the way it really was was just a dream come true. It’s hard to believe that, because we are so used to seeing the walls torn, this is simply too much to bear. These days, the whole state of Illinois is taking that idea a step further. On Saturday, the Chicago Sun-Times publishes a report of an elderly couple waiting for their elderly grandchild to arrive at Homan Children’s Hospital about to be shipped to Indiana. Some of their neighbors tell the paper they heard a strange scream when their husband went into his car after he took what he thought was a bathwater shower. No one ever knew what they’d heard about anything like that. Most of them are on Facebook and are wondering where they are and what they are going to do with their life. But one family member has become the hero of their own heart. The friend who came forward to tell the story is William Thomas, who is also the head of Health Department at the State of Illinois Hospital. Thomas, who is the father of two young children, lives in Chicago and is in his final days on the hospital’s psychiatric ward. Thomas is a bright-eyed, bright-eyed man who is always thinking about the future. He is the future’s man. He wants to be the man on the road ahead. He wants more. He is the man now. And he wants things to get better.