Incipience

Chapter 19

Before every presentation I've ever given, I've always paused to think about what all might go wrong. Today that streak ends as I stand here contemplating what can actually go right in this sour situation.

For the first time I can remember, my wonders have been swapped out for outright woes because I do not know if I can pull this off. I don't think I've ever been this ill-prepared for a project before which has my nerves shooting through the roof because this is not the time for rookie mistakes.

"Good morning, Charlotte-Amalie. N'vir."

I look up from my holotablet to see Firodi taking a seat next to me on the hallway bench. I get up to give her a proper half-bowed greeting before going back to my device. I'd ordinarily stop to make small talk with her, but N'vir and I are up next and I need all the time I can get to go over my notes.

"Are you ready to present?" Firodi asks while not so discretely looking at the contents of my screen.

"I am as ready as I can be," I reply as I continue reviewing my notes.

"Good. I am curious to see how well you do with last minute assignments."

I pause. "Did you wait that long just to see how I handle pressure?"

The smirk she gives me makes me think her answer is 'yes' even if she's shaking her head 'no'. Before I can comment on her obvious bluff, one of the resource committee's interns pops her head out of the chamber room and tells us that we'll be starting in five minutes.

I sigh. Firodi and N'vir smile.

The two's level of contentment makes me feel a tinge of irritation. Now I'm typically not the type to want people to share in my misery, but just this once I wish they could feel a percentage of the actual turmoil I'm experiencing because she put me in this situation to begin with and he's been virtually useless to me all day.

One of the very, very few things N'vir and I readily agreed on while putting together this proposal is that I shouldn't be the one presenting it. I'm learning Inovarian fairly quickly, but I haven't made enough progress to give the eloquent presentation that the resource committee is expecting. I was originally planning to just read the slide titles and captions from our visual aids, and say a few words at the end, but that's apparently too hands-off for Firodi's taste. She called me at eleven last night to tell me that I have to speak for at least half of the presentation or else I won't be allowed to head the project since only presenting members of a team are able to organize events. Within five minutes, I went from being the Vanna White of this presentation to having half of its success riding on me.

As soon as I got off the phone with Firodi, I had a mini-melt down. In all honesty, I'm not sure if I cried or cursed more in those few minutes I allowed myself to freak out. It took a while for me to calm down enough to call Vorem (who was still in his office) to explain the change of plans and get N'vir's number from him. I was tempted to ask Vorem to come help me figure out what to do, but he sounded just as swamped as I was, so I decided to leave him to his work and dialed N'vir.

It took a while for N'vir to answer, but once he did, the two of us spent an hour on the phone together. The first five minutes were spent going back and forth over the fact that I woke him up and the rest was spent divvying up the bullet points and slides so that I get the simplest topics to explain.

Of those fifty-five minutes, at least ten of them consisted of passive aggressive remarks about how I'm going to screw things up and not-so-subtle encouragement to let him take over the project. I wanted nothing more than to turn off my translator app so I wouldn't have to listen to him or, better yet, hang up altogether, but I didn't have the time for that so I sucked it up and took the jabs for productivity's sake.