family in to see Hathaway, but Hathaway stops him. Hathaway says they won't understand and wouldn't want them to understand, and then dies. Wilder converses with Hathaway's wife and concludes that she and the children are all androids, created by Hathaway to keep him company after his wife and children died. The crew buries Hathaway in his family's graveyard. As Wilder prepares to depart, Williamson asks Wilder about what should be done about the android family and specially asks whether they should be deactivated. Wilder rejects taking them to Earth and says deactivation never crossed his mind. Wilder hands Williamson a gun and tells the crewman that if he can do anything it is better than anything he can do. Williamson goes into the hut and returns to Wilder reporting that he pointed the gun at an android daughter, who responded by smiling, and that he felt shooting them would be "murder". Wilder speculates the androids could operate for up to two more centuries. The rocket departs, and the android family continues on with its endless routines, that includes, for no reason at all, the android wife nightly looking up at Earth in the sky and tending a fire. August 2026/2057: There Will Come Soft Rains Publication history First published in Collier's, May 6, 1950, and revised for inclusion in The Martian Chronicles. Plot An unoccupied, highly automated house of the McClellan family that stands and operates intact in a California city that is otherwise obliterated by a nuclear bomb, and its destruction by a fire caused by a windstorm. The story marks the end of the United States as a nation. The story also commemorates the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 5, 1945 (US time) during World War II. The title of the story was taken from Sara Teasdale's anti-war poem "There Will Come Soft Rains" originally published in 1918 during World War I and the 1918 Flu Pandemic. October 2026/2057: The Million-Year Picnic Publication history First published in Planet Stories, summer 1946. Plot "The Million-Year Picnic" is the story of William Thomas, a former governor of the state of Minnesota and Alice, his wife, and three sons, who traveled to Mars to escape war under the parents' pretense that the family is taking a fishing trip. Alice is not noticeably pregnant with a girl. The family enjoys a warm Martian summer day in and along