História identificada: Haverá chuvas suaves por Ray Bradbury
The story begins by introducing the reader to a computer-controlled house that cooks, cleans, and takes care of virtually every need that a well-to-do United States family could be assumed to have. The reader enters the text on the morning of August 4, 2026, and follows the house through some of the daily tasks that it performs as it prepares its inhabitants for a day of work. At first, it is not apparent that anything is wrong, but eventually it becomes clear that the residents of the house are not present, and that the house is empty. While no direct explanation of the nonexistence of the family is produced, the silhouettes of a man, a woman, two children, and their play ball are described as having been burnt into one side of the house, implying that they were all incinerated by the thermal flash of a nuclear weapon.
– Plot summary from Wikipedia
Confirmado pelo conteúdo da coleção de histórias curtas fornecidas na parte "Informações Adicionais" da pergunta, elas parecem corresponder ao conteúdo de Histórias de nós mesmos: Exames da Universidade de Cambridge Internacional Antologia de Histórias em Inglês (Cambridge Learning) , que contém as seguintes histórias curtas (entre muitas outras):
- The Signalman, by Charles Dickens
- The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- How It Happened, by Arthur Conan Doyle
- There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury
- Meteor, by John Wyndham
- The Lemon Orchard, by Alex la Guma
- Secrets, by Bernard MacLaverty
- The Taste of Watermelon, by Borden Deal
- The Third and Final Continent, by Jhumpa Lahiri
- On Her Knees, by Tim Winton