I remember reading a story about a kid who lives in an old Frank Lloyd Wright house after mankind has returned to Earth after leaving for a time. He meets another boy whenever he sleeps, this other boy believes he is a machine and that robots (who order the child around) are the ones who have families and they created him. It is actually a plot by the robots to figure out how to make more of themselves by studying a human child. In the end, the kid realizes he was time traveling into the past to help the other child after his father tells him how all the robots broke down, allowing mankind to reclaim Earth.
I can't remember who wrote it but I read it in a high school sci-fi anthology collection in 1979, or maybe 1980.