They call it 'technology'

Regina knew her curse would strip her off all magical power. She figured it was worth Snow's suffering, so she gave up all spells and witchcraft. She traded dark dresses for suits and her castle for a mansion - sacrificed her queenship, too.

The misery written into the faces of the citizens of Storybrooke makes up for all of that by far.

What Regina hadn't taken into account, though, was that this new place Rumple's curse would send her to, would hold its very own kind of magic:

They call it 'technology'.

Light switches are practical in a land where a flick of her wrist combined with sheer will power fail to set objects on fire. It only takes Regina half an hour and three light bulbs to realize those electric torches work without being touched – or moved – or shattered.

Practical, indeed.

Other devices turn out to be more complicated, but still manageable: She burns herself on the stove, blinds herself temporarily while testing out her camera, almost has a heart attack the first time she finds the on-switch to her vacuum cleaner and finds out that pretty much everything creates noise regardless of if it's working right.

There are cars and buzzing motors, television commercials and radio jingles; there are telephones: a whole nother kind of mystery; beeping and rattling and honking and clicking and tapping and rustling; there's the low humming of electricity everywhere. Regina had no idea that lifeless objects could create such a variety of sounds.

She soon learned that the other magic of this world is called 'Advil'.

Right now she's sitting at her desk, eyes squinted and dry already, brows furrowed and her head pounding viciously. She feels her blood pump fast through her veins and her heartbeat just adds to the orchestra of noise pollution.

'You need an email account.' they said.

'It's an efficient way to communicate.' they said.

'It'll prove to be practical.' they insisted.

Mumbling curses to herself she moves the cursor, clicks, clicks again and – cub! Where is that new beeping noise coming from?

It subsides when the printer spits out an empty sheet and then another. Regina huffs and resumes searching the screen in front of her.

After everything she's worked her way through already, this final task should be simple: Sending that damn email. It should be so simple, but for some reason it's just not and Regina can't understand how a world without magic harbors such dark forces. She's stripped off her equipment, left defenseless to a fiend that seems to feed off her frustration.

Patience: Another practical concept she fails to grasp.

Then the phone goes off and Regina – startled - almost falls out of her chair. She frowns at the devil's device and lets it ring four times before the answering machine records a message:

"It's Graham. I was wondering if you received my email. I don't mean to push, but you requested those documents as an urgent matter. Please let me know if I should resend them."

And there it is again: The dreaded 'beep' every piece of technology seems to make at any given opportunity.

Regina's left eye twitches. She downs a glass of water – her third one within the past thirty minutes. She leans back, breathes a couple of times and finally hammers her fingers onto the keyboard.

It doesn't accomplish anything, which was to be expected, but life is unfair and Regina is exhausted and simply feels like crying.

'Just one more attempt', she tells herself. 'One more attempt and if it doesn't work, I'll call Graham and let him fix this for me.'

When Henry's nanny drops him off after school, he finds his mom with her head on her desk – asleep and still frowning.