I showed this to my wife to see if the cartoon worked with an educated but not-technical person. She subconsciously glossed over the (n LETTERS) part of Meg's requests as just an annotation on the cartoonist's part, not realizing that it was actually part of the request.
Once I rephrased the final request as "Server, reply with the 500 letters of HAT", we finally had that light-bulb moment.
And don't forget to immediately revoke your old marriage certificate, reissue a new one, and invalidate all your old keys and cookies, or else your relationship is vulnerable to a man in the middle attack, like Dr. Frank-N-Furter did to Brad and Janet! [1]
Once I rephrased the final request as "Server, reply with the 500 letters of HAT", we finally had that light-bulb moment.