The next morning (Originally by Lord of the Pies)

After leaving his code in place, Sam headed off to the kitchen to check in on the pizza. As expected, it was delicious. During the meal, while his brother had his mouth full, Sam made sure to request Sami's room. Kyle, silenced by cheese, was unable to object.

After dinner, Uncle Mark mentioned that they should begin filling out their profiles when they had time. With quick thinking, Sam was able to derail the conversation by asking if there were any game consoles in the house. Rather than just the conversation, his question ended up derailing the entire evening and late into the night. Mark turned out to be quite an avid gamer, and his custom virtual reality system was years ahead of anything on the market. Nothing held the trio's thoughts that night save for swords, spaceships, and digital brawling. They all found their way to their rooms at nearly three in the morning, where all three quickly fell into deep slumbers.

The next morning, MARCI began her boot-up sequence automatically. This was entirely normal and happened everyday. Diagnostics were run, schedules collated, weather analyzed, and all the other background processes even regular computers did to rev up. However, today the computer discovered an error. As it tried to analyze the profiles of current household members it found itself trapped in a feedback loop. Attempting to access the files on User_Amy redirect its systems to the files on User_Kyle. Accessing the files of User_Kyle in turn redirected back to User_Amy. Finding itself trapped in a loop, MARCI activated the meta-cognitive troubleshooter.

The meta-cognitive troubleshooter was a program still in the testing portion of it's creation. It's purpose was to analyze technical problems from a human perspective (or as best an approximation as the Gladstone family could program) and enact repairs and patches. It was a learning system as well, designed to recognize new or repeating problems and take new actions accordingly. Viewing the trouble code, it analyzed the loop and decided that the it was the result of human programming error. Clearly, a programmer had meant for one file to reference the other, but had instead had made them both reference the other. Now it merely had to determine which file was meant to be referenced by the other. It peered into the contents of the personal accounts. One was full of years worth of personalization, preferences, schedules, and subroutines. The other was practically blank. Making the logical decision, it proceeded to copy relevant data from the first file into all the unfilled sections of the second; namely, everything except name and identification photo. It briefly encounter a roadblock in the form private user-protected files, but the advanced system quickly worked around the lack of authorization leaving scrambled firewalls and passwords in it's wake.

All this took place within a fraction of a second as the meta-cognitive troubleshooter deactivated, as satisfied as a machine can be with it's work. The main computer resumed it's normal initialization sequences. As it's schedule dictated, Amy required a wake-up call for her morning practice. Systems slowly revved to life in room, though their sound was drowned out by the boy snoring in a pile on top of Amy's bed. Noting Amy's absence, the computer nevertheless continued it's processes, since it's systems showed this user to have the same schedule and requirements. The soft voice of MARCI drifted quietly into the room.

"Good morning mistress. It is time to wake up."