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On the last day Mrs. Baker walked through her house smashing all the machines. She used her son’s aluminum baseball bat, and Erda, the android maid, walked along behind her picking things up and saying, over and over again, “This is irrational behavior, Mistress, please stop.”
But Gloria Baker wasn't about to stop. "The machines are responsible," she replied. "The hell with the machines. And the hell with you, too, Erda." She reared back with a blue fire in her eyes, her tawny hair disheveled, and swung at the television set — the bat went through the screen which imploded and began sparking.
By the time Erda pulled the plug Gloria had advanced upon the peecee and demolished it and the printer, too. A circuit tripped somewhere in Erda's system and she stopped her activity suddenly. She stood buzzing and watching. At last her photocells wandered even from the domestic destruction and she noticed that it was a beautiful day out of doors. That didn't surprise the android, for it was always a beautiful day. Seldom was it allowed to rain except at night, and then only enough to keep everything green.
The sun shone brightly on a semi-rustic scene, for the neighborhood was composed partly of some comfortable-looking homes and gardens, and partly of woodlands and fields. Birds sang in the trees and bushes — Erda could hear them through the sonic system of the house, above the whispering of the conditioning equipment. Then the whisper stopped, and the birdsong as well, for Erda could hear Gloria Baker in the central machine room now, taking out her rage on the larger devices.
Erda moved to the basement door and went down the stairs. Her mistress was clubbing the water heater with a wrench. "You will scald yourself, mistress," Erda said. Mrs. Baker hesitated, then moved on to her husband's power tools hung upon the pegboard wall. She pried the pegboard from the wall with a wrecking bar.
"He won't need those anymore," she said standing amid the debris, her arms akimbo. Then she spun on her heel and went upstairs, stamping each small foot as angrily as she could on each stair, but she made little noise even so.
"Where is the master?" Erda said, following her. "And where is the boy?"
"They've gone on ahead. I'll join them as soon as I've finished here," Mrs. Baker said.
"Why are you leaving?" Erda still did not understand, even though it had been
explained to her several times. "Why is everyone leaving? What is wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong," " Mrs. Baker replied. "That is the problem."
"Mistress, that is irrational." The android was experiencing peculiarities in her aural network. There were minute surges of electrical activity that caused momentary dysfunction in some of her sensory transducers. "I am not programmed to respond positively to illogical behavior."
"No, of course not," Gloria said, staring at her maid. She leaned on a chair. "That's part of the problem."
"You said, I believe, that there is nothing wrong." If Erda could have frowned, she would have been doing so. "If there is nothing wrong, how can there be a problem?"
"Ah," Gloria said, slumping into a chair which began to massage her back so subtly she didn't at first notice it. "That's just it. The problem is that there's nothing wrong."
Erda's temperature sensors told her that the house was beginning to grow too warm, but her mindclock told her also that repairs to the household apparatus were underway and would soon be effected. Even as she prepared to speak the birdsong began again, and she felt the cool air of the conditioning come back on. "Where are the humans going?" Erda asked.
Gloria glared at her. "Away from here. There is nothing left to do here. The human race has reached a dead end on earth." She got up, turned around twice to look at the lovely room with its Oriental carpets and burnished furniture, the prints and paintings upon the walls, the ornately or simply bound books upon the shelves of the tall cases. She sighed. "It's useless. If we found another world we'd just do the same thing all over again."
Erda watched her mistress slip into a light jacket and open the door. "Goodbye, Erda. It's up to you now." Gloria closed the door and Erda saw her get into the autotransport and be carried away down the road to join the others.
The android did not move for the rest of the day, for there was nothing for her to do. She stood at the window as the sun seemed to rise to its zenith and decline toward evenfall.
Shadows came out from among the flowering bushes and the large-leafed trees and spread over the lawns and patios of the neighborhood. Now and again a pet — a cat or a dog — would sit before a door and ask to get into one of the houses.
And then the shadows were the owners, not only of the fields and woods, but of the street full of homes as well. Erda remained at her station, looking in the direction Gloria Baker had gone. When the darkness was complete, except for an occasional streetlamp, or a tablelamp automatically turned on in one of the houses, Erda saw a sudden glow on the horizon burst into columns of fire. A great cloud formed against the stars and was shot through with irradiations. Erda's sound sensors automatically reacted negatively to the tremendous roar that engorged the night.
When the lights and the cloud and the resonances were gone, Erda's hearing and sight came back to normal. She felt, somehow, that there was a great new emptiness lying upon the sphere of the Earth. She turned up all her sensory devices, but she could hear only the normal sounds of the house machinery. Erda went out of doors and stood. She looked about her and saw, sitting at her feet, the family dog. It looked at her and made a sound in its throat.
Erda held the door open. The creature was hungry. It was time to feed it — past time. How was it possible that she had forgotten? The maid followed the dog into the house which had healed itself while she stood watching throughout the last day.
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