"The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury

And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the mechanical genius who had conceived this room.

A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price.

Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery.

Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery.

So George Hadley, bemused, sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire.

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire.

How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon—all the delightful contraptions of a make-believe world.

"It's supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way."

They're insufferable—let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring. They're spoiled and we're spoiled.

If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety—oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China—

“Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"

“Can’t say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing.”

With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.

"I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed with those damn beasts again."