2. A family lives in a house called "The Happylife
Home," filled with machines that do everything
for them from cooking meals, to clothing
them, to rocking them to sleep.
3. The two children, Peter and Wendy, become
fascinated with the "nursery", a virtual reality
room that is able to connect with the children’s
minds to create any place they imagine.
4. The parents, George and Lydia, soon realize that there is
something wrong with their way of life. They are also
worried that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with
lions in the distance, eating the dead carcass of an animal.
There they hear strangely familiar screams.
5. Wondering why their children are so concerned
with this scene of death, they decide to call a
psychologist.
6. The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they
turn off the house, move to the country, and
learn to be more self-sufficient.
7. The children, totally obsessed with the nursery, beg
their parents to let them have one last visit. The
nursery has replaced their real parents. They live for
the nursery.
The parents give in and agree to let them spend one
more minute there. When the parents come to the
nursery to get the children, the children lock them in
from the outside.
8. Locked in the room, George and Lydia (the
parents) see the lions coming toward them.
They scream. At that point, they realize that
what they had seen the lions eating before was
not an animal, but their own virtual dead
bodies.
9. When David (the psychologist) comes by to look
for George and Lydia, he finds the children
eating a picnic lunch on the veldt and sees the
lions eating something in the distance.
10. We the readers then realize that George and Lydia
died at the hands of their own children, who had
obsessed so much about the lions eating their
parents that it came true in the virtual room.
Wendy, the daughter, casually asks the psychologist if
he would like a cup of tea.
