As he absentmindedly nibbled on his still rather warm slice of pizza, Vince couldn’t help but notice a soft buzzing. He frowned for a moment, trying to recall what he was hearing. It had been so long since he’d last set foot on Earth, all of noises felt almost...foreign to him. The soft whirr of his AC cranking on full blast as it struggled against the oppressive Texas heat. The soft whirr of electrical lights, illuminating his dirty apartment.

BZZZZT. BZZZT.

His eyes shot down to the table, and suddenly everything became clear. No further than a hands reach away was a cellphone of all things, an in bright white letters the message, “Incoming call: MOM” was displayed. Frowning, he snatched the object up and quickly slid the green circle to the right, answering the call.

“Hello?” The word left him uncomfortable, as if this act were as alien to him as magic when he’d first set eyes of magic in Althanas.

“Happy birthday Vinny!” A voice half yelled half screeched over the phone. The scholar winced, pulling the phone away from his ear.

“Oh, uh...thanks mom.” He simply nodded along, almost instinctively tucking the phone between he ear and his shoulder to free one of his hands as he plopped down on the couch and reached instinctively for the remote, always resting on top of the couch. With a couple button presses he’d not only whirred the flatscreen to life, bathing the room with a bright blue light, but to the untrained eye he had summoned forth illusory moving pictures accompanied with sounds.

“I’m sorry about the fight we had earlier, I hate to ruin your special day…” The woman sounded apologetic, but Vince hardly had time as he flipped through channels, looking for the news. “It’s not every day your young man turns 20!” Vince had to stop himself from chuckling at that, he’d had many a birthday come and go since this moment in time.

“It’s fine ma, hey listen I hate to cut you off but I have a guest over and I don’t wanna be rude.” He could hear the woman over the line gasp. She would have replied with some sort of comment about her son being social and how that was a rarity, but he’d already clicked off the line.

“It appears we have come back to the very moment I left for Althanas…” He stated rather frankly as he flipped through several idle screens on his phone. It was amazing, how years away from these sorts of things rob one of their most basic skills. It was even more amazing to feel how quickly the muscle memory came back to him. “How the hell we managed to do that, I have no fucking clue, but pop a squat and get comfy because I’m going to have to google how the fuck magic works in this world.”