Early in the story, what evidence are we given that the Happylife Home system has not made either of the adults particularly happy? What message...

That the Happylife Home system has not made George and Lydia Hadley particularly happy is evinced in their anxieties about the nursery.

"It's just that the nursery is different now than it was," Mrs. Hadley tells her husband because she is anxious about this room in which the children play. When she and George enter the nursery, a virtual reality exists inside: The ceiling becomes "a deep sky with a hot yellow sun," and an...

That the Happylife Home system has not made George and Lydia Hadley particularly happy is evinced in their anxieties about the nursery.

"It's just that the nursery is different now than it was," Mrs. Hadley tells her husband because she is anxious about this room in which the children play. When she and George enter the nursery, a virtual reality exists inside: The ceiling becomes "a deep sky with a hot yellow sun," and an African veldt appears, complete with odors and sounds. Over their heads a shadow is cast and George notices that it is caused by swooping vultures. Lydia points to lions going to a water hole to drink after they have apparently been eating something. She, then, asks her husband if he has heard a scream.

And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand,...and the yellow of them was in your eyes...the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide....

Lydia, then, screams, "Watch out!" as the lions charge them. They bolt for the door. Outside Lydia tells her husband, "They almost got us!" But, George patronizes her, saying that the walls are crystal and everything is "all odorophonics and sonics." Still, Lydia is frightened, and she urges George to tell the children not to read any more on Africa. And, she asks that George lock the nursery for a few days.