PLEASE NOTE, I DO NOT OWN THIS STORYLINE. ALL CHARACTERS AND PLOT ARE BASED ON THE SHORT STORIES "THE POWER OF KNOWLEDGE" THAT BELONGS TO ISAAC ASIMOV AND "THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS" THAT BELONGS TO RAY BRADBURY.
Before the Aftermath
Their days were numbered. The Denebian War had been happening for the last three months, but during the last three days, matters got complicated. Still, all of Earth's population was living each day of their lives to the fullest, unaware of the exact day that everything would instantly disappear.
In a three-story house, the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, eight o'clock, time to go to school, time to go to school, eight o'clock! The McClellan children were among the few students whose sought knowledge for entertainment. Going to school had become an irregularity, those who acquired information became the living definition of bizarre. Although the McClellan family was commonly acknowledged as the anomaly of the neighborhood, they continued embracing their individuality by standing tall and proudly representing the humane principles they knew by heart.
Ella, the youngest, had an older brother named Mason, and both siblings were so loved and cared for by her parents that they never felt any type of void in their hearts. She was a happy nine-year-old child that enjoyed every single moment life could grant her, grasping the most knowledge she could from her various teachers. He was a moody, introvert thirteen-year-old adolescent that was currently going through his intensely emotional phase. However, both chose to see life with a "glass half-full" kind of perspective. At least that was what they were taught since they can remember. The rest of society acted differently as if controlled by a computer.
When Ella and Mason came back from school, their parents had a big feast waiting for them in the dinner table. This was the McClellan's usual daily routine, but as the children walked home that day at 2:30 P.M., the neighborhood kids that regularly played eagerly outside were nowhere to be found. The animals that once roamed free were now looking for shelter in the amenity of the forest's trees. They carried on with their day as if nothing catastrophic was bound to happen. It seemed as if nightfall had overtaken the city of Allendale, California at just 2:35 P.M.
When it was indeed nightfall, Mom was accustomed to reading the same poem to both children every night; the poem was titled "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale. Mom began reading:
"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."
What little Ella didn't quite understand yet was that the poem was the way their Mom cautioned them about the inevitable, total destruction of their planet. The planet they currently lived in would soon become the planet they used to exist in. Mason was so quick-witted that he had understood the true meaning ever since the first time Mom decided to read this to them, yet he decided to keep this information to himself. Mason fully understood how technology had outlived humanity, regardless, his parents made it almost impossible for him to focus entirely on the negative. As soon as he felt that the weight of the world was on his shoulders, his parents quickly stirred him away from the negative thoughts and smoothly shoved optimistic thoughts into his mind.
Instantaneously, the world seemed as it caved into accepting the fact that technology had indeed, outlived humanity. Even though the McClellan family was best known for cavorting through life, this particular devastating phenomenon sucked the life out of every citizen in the world, including them. Planet Earth had been bombed by Planet Deneb. In an instant their lives were forever within the walls of the house, slowly decaying with the rest of humanity. The same people that had impinged their faulty destinies onto themselves.
In the living room, the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty.