Ari follows cheerfully. This is looking like a very good night.

"I can't offer much in the way of hospitality, I'm afraid. Lost all my worldly possessions in the vampire cult incident."

"That happened to me one time. Worldly possessions are overrated anyway."

"Yeah? Where'd yours go?"

"Left in the hell dimension where I grew up when I was unceremoniously dumped into Southern California. Showed up naked, covered in fresh burns, and without a penny or a word of English to my name. Fortunately one of the cops at the time was a demon who knew a bit of Ak'Kal'shak, so he was able to get me a passport saying I was from a tiny post-Soviet country and teach me enough English to get taught the rest. Nice guy. Pity he got killed by that rampaging Daklon Beast."

"That sounds arguably even less fun than how I got here, and that's bloody saying something."

"Bonus points: My mom had just died. It was quite an affair. I'm doing well nowadays, though."

"Yeah, you might have me beat. I showed up in a dark room full of ominously chanting people who wanted to present me to their false god as a ritual sacrifice, but I was wearing clothes and hadn't suffered any recent losses to speak of."

"Dark rooms full of ominous cultists are still unpleasant. Also, I included the fact I was naked less because it was traumatic and more because it was hilarious. And to make you think about me naked."

"I imagine it was still inconvenient. But yes, well done, I am definitely thinking about you naked now."

"Hilariously inconvenient. And you can't see it, but in my head I'm doing a little victory dance now. Naked."

"I can picture it very clearly."

"I'm glad! You have a usefully vivid imagination. Hopefully a generous one, too."

"Is accurate an acceptable alternative?"

"Synonymous, in fact."

He laughs.

Ari laughs with him. He's pretty sure this is the "what a charming human" laugh, not the "what an amusing joke" laugh. He'd go with the latter too, but he might feel impelled to defend his honor.

It is, it is the what-a-charming-human laugh! Ari is a very charming human. At least to Mark.

Ari likes to think he's universally a charming human! A charming mostly-human, at least. Perhaps a mostly-charming mostly-human. Some proportion of charming to human, at least.

"Oh, happens from time to time. Generally it's the other direction, though, some idiot reads aloud from the wrong book and gets sucked into some hell dimension or other. I was born here, so it was easier to send me back. Getting somebody into this world usually takes a convergence or a prophesy or something. Your cult may have been taking advantage of something of the sort, if what you're implying is you're from some other world."

"In my home universe, it's the thirtieth century and there are neither demons nor magic. But apart from that, this Earth's history is recognizable. I can't think of a reason why they might have been aiming for me specifically, and they definitely seemed surprised at what they got, but maybe it wasn't that sort of prophecy-or-something."

"Sounds more like a convergence, then. Thirtieth century, nice! Do you have lasers? Robots? Clones?"

"You have lasers," he points out. "And I'm not sure you don't have robots, although ours are probably better. I'll give you the third one as a legitimate future advancement, though. I'm a clone myself."

"Ooh, nice! There's probably a whole thing about respectful terminology and I just called you some horrible slur, didn't I. I mean no offense, I am a primitive barbarian etcetera. Do you know the person of whom you... are... of? And I meant laser guns! Or laser swords, I guess. And our most advanced robot, as far as I can tell, can climb stairs."