What happens
This episode of X Minus One, first broadcast on December 5, 1956, presents two stories by Ray Bradbury. In the first, a fully automated house in the year 1980 keeps running its routines for a family that is no longer there after a nuclear blast. Its mechanical servants continue preparing meals, cleaning and playing poetry while the ruined town burns outside. The second story is set in a quiet suburb in 1985, where children play an elaborate game called Invasion, and the adults around them begin to notice that something strange is happening. The transcript breaks off partway through this second story, so the outcome of the children's game is not known from this recording.
A house built in 1980 in a town destroyed by nuclear blast, and a suburban town in 1985 on a summer day.
Characters: The Family, The Automated House, Mrs. McClelland, Mink, Peggy Anne, Henry, Mary, Helen
Listen for: The house's mechanical routines continuing after its family has died, and the children's game of Invasion.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.