I do not own Chaotic nor anything related to it. It belongs to TCDigital.

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The Art of Public Speaking

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I normally feel relaxed at the bathhouse. Usually I'm there early in the morning, before the sun rises, so the heat inside is a pleasant contrast to the cold night air. Putting the cleaning oil on my body and removing it myself wakes me up and makes me feel ready to begin the day.

Today, though, I'm trudging into the bathhouse out of the blistering heat of high noon, and the transition from the heat of the sun to the heat of the room is aggravating. The invisible servants immediately undress and begin cleaning me as I enter the heated room, and the lack of control over the pace and my own exhaustion combined ruin my ability to enjoy it. Seriously, it's not relaxing for some unseen hand to scrub your privates, it's terrifying!

The invisible servants dress me in my robes while ignoring my protests that I can do it myself. Afterwords, a loaf of bread, about the size of a sandal, is put into my hand. My stomach reminds me that I missed breakfast, and I take a bite as I head for my room. Hm, small chucks of meat were baked into the bread. It's actually pretty good.

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Isis is reading along with me as I examine the papers left on my desk. She has a hand on each of my shoulders, and if I leaned back a bit my head would touch her stomach. It's a little distracting.

I flip the paper I'm holding over. On the back is a column of words, each associated with a number. I glance down the page and mutter, "Isis, why has your father given me a list of taxes collected? Doesn't he control that?"

"It might be a good thing for you to know," Isis says, not sounding sure herself.

I shrug, set the paper down, and return my attention to my list of tasks. The first item is basically a listing of the various people wanting an interview with me, along with a suggestion from Theb-sarr to not give interviews until I've been at the palace a while. That item was resolved with a few quick rejection letters. The second item was to familiarize myself with the documents, which that tax paper had been a part of. Check.

The third item is a little baffling. "Water quality speech?" I ask nobody in particular.

Isis crouches until her jaw is touching the upper tip of my ear and says, "It's not that difficult. You need to give a speech to an interest group. They've been complaining about the restricted access to the oasis proper. You'll simply need to explain to them why the water's off-limits."

My attention had been focused more on the fact that Isis was pressing her breasts against my back as she looked at the list. "...Oh, right," I say after a pause. "That's at five o'clock, right?"

Al Mipedim, and apparently most of Perim, had started to adopt the Human way of naming the time. Traditionalists like Mudeenu still insisted on naming the time by the position of the sun, but even they now know what a Human means by "o'clock".

"Correct," Isis says. "You'll need to put a speech together. I can show you where you can find the information."

"That would be nice." I feel my voice tremble.

Isis definitely heard the change in my voice. "Well, we... do have several hours before then." Her hands trail off my shoulder and onto my chest. "Maybe you just want to unwind? ...Enjoy a little alone time together?" She sounds hesitant, like she has to take a moment to think about whether she really wants to say what she's saying.

...She thinks I want to sleep with her right now. Is that really what I sounded like? The truth is, all of this hanging onto me, all this touching... it's starting to make me anxious. I mean, I don't really know Isis! We spoke once before this arranged marriage, and all I gathered from that conversation was that she knew who I was because I made an impression on King Theb-sarr.

"I... uh... Isis..." I mumble. Great, I'm stammering like an idiot.

Isis's hands slip under my robe and drag down my stomach. "It should be better than our first time..." There's that voice again, the one that sounds like she's trying to reassure herself as well as me. "That Underworlder isn't here, my father's not here, and I'm not a virgin anymore, so it shouldn't hurt this time."

I cringe. Hearing it like that doesn't make me feel much better. My posture feels stiff and awkward.

Isis must have misunderstood the cringe. "Oh, you want to... um..." Her hands trail lower down my body. "I guess we can try something different-"

Too much! I wrap a trembling arm around my stomach, catching her hands before they can move any further. "Wait!" I say with an edge of panic to my voice. "I... I really should be using this extra time preparing... I've never actually written a speech before... so..."

Isis withdraws her hands. "Y-yes, of course. I understand." She sighs, and I can't tell if it's relief or disappointment in the sigh. "I-I'll show you where the records are kept."

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The question on the special interest group's mind is, "Why can't we get near the oasis?" Turns out the answer is pretty scary.

"I have a question," I say to the crowd of maybe two hundred Humans seated in front of me. "Who here has had a major illness since we arrived in Perim? If the answer is yes, raise your hand."

There are no raised hands. I speak again, "If the answer is no, raise your hand."

This time everyone raises a hand. I raise a hand myself and say, "Neither have I, and we have these restrictions the Mipedians placed for us to thank for it."

Someone in the crowd speaks up, "You aren't talking about the restricted access to the oasis, are you?"

"Yes," I say firmly, "and before you say anything else, that water's not as clean as you think it is."

The same voice speaks up, "Yeah, tell that to the Mipedians that are always in it."

I lean forward over the pulpit. "Mipedians who grew up in Al Mipedim have spent their whole lives building up an immune system capable of handling what's in that water. If the situation was reversed, if Mipedians ended up on Earth, they'd have to live in sterilized bubbles."

The man shuts up, but another person stands up to speak. "What do you mean by that?"

I resist the urge to press my forehead into my palm. "All right, who here knows what the immune system is?"

Everyone raises their hands. I continue, "Imagine having no immune system at all. Any pathogen that got you would have free reign over your body, and you could die very quickly. I don't know of any Earth equivalent, but imagine your brainstem slowly melting."

Several people wince. I place my hands on the pulpit. "There's stuff like that in that water. It's why the dew farms suddenly needed so many new workers when we Humans arrived. There's stuff in there that Humans have never been exposed to. An unlucky Mipedian might run a fever after catching it, but a Human might actually die."

Someone hesitantly raises a hand. "I-if there are bacteria or whatever that deadly to us in Perim, then why haven't any of us gotten sick at all?"

"Good question," I say. "Everyone should have received a stack of papers. I see that nobody has looked through them. Solve that now and look at..." I glance at my notes, "and look at page eight."

The sound of paper being handled. "What's this?" somebody asks.

"That is a list of where those taxes everyone moans about is going," I say. "Notice where the most money is going to?"

There's silence for a while. Then someone mutters, "Uh, research in Human medicine, treatment, and preventive measures. Forty-one percent of Al Mipedim's taxes go into there."

"Did everyone notice that last part of the project's title?" I ask. "Preventive measures. Measures such as separating Humans from the water that could possibly kill them."

Maybe I was a little heavy-handed there. Maybe I could have handled the matter more delicately. What's important, though, is that nobody with a brain is going to complain about the restricted access to the oasis water anymore, and I did it all in less than an hour.

"Mic- I mean, Prince Osiris, could we see the research that's been done so far."

...It's going to be a long night...

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It's maybe nine by the time I make it back to my bedroom. There's a tray with dinner on it outside my door, and I eat it. I don't even know what I ate, I paid so little attention to it.

Inside my room, Isis is lying curled up on the bed. The sheets are wrinkled, the blanket is facing the wrong direction, and Isis looks exhausted. She doesn't react as I sit down on the bed.

I'll worry about whatever this means later. I just want to sleep.

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Up next: The Eroding Days

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Like I said before, Chaotic belongs to TCDigital.

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