Author's note: This is a novelette that will be broken up into several pieces due to its length. It is a humorous glimpse into the societal rules of a futuristic culture where everyone has something to hide.  This section continued from:

The Naked Truth- Part 1

Quickly, he activated external sensors on his EE and the air outside was checked for poisons, pollutants, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or other unwanted elements and was found to be within acceptable norms.  He then checked temperature, moisture content and for life forms and received an “okay” status on each of these.  He then splayed out the arms of the EE and leaned backward until they rested on the bed to stabilize its pose.  He did the same for the legs on the floor.  He quietly thanked his parents for covering this process with him over and over.

Standing inside his EE, Biko hurriedly removed all connections to his person including his form fitting neural body suit, taking the portion that covered his head off last.  Fear gripped him like a giant mantuk (fortunately fear, unlike the mantuk would not suck out his life juices).  He was, in the local vernacular, “unenhanced” although he was still within the EE.  The slang for this was, “going yowee”.  Sight, hearing, smell, taste, strength, etc., were now left to what he had received at childbirth and these qualities were kept from atrophying with constant electronic stimulus from the neural body suit.  The EE would no longer do his bidding and he was prone to any negative event that occurred within his personal horizon.

Like diving into cold water, he activated the control for the hatch on the back of his EE and it opened slowly, as though it were opening onto a funeral scene.  The hatch was located on the back of the EE and looked down upon his bed which now resembled an enormous purple lake.  A platform below the hatch slid out for him to stand on and serve as his means to navigate to the knee joint.  He stepped onto the cold, metal platform with his two bare feet and quickly glanced around his bedroom realizing that he stood in a pool of bright light.  He noticed tiny dust particles floating through the light beam and covered his mouth. 

He jumped as he caught his reflection in the full length mirror that was attached to the wall at the foot of his bed.  His pale, blue-white flesh covered minimal musculature and the face that looked back at him was a scrawny replica of the strong visage provide by his EE.  The pale grey of his company-issued underwear stood out against his flesh.  His blondish-brown hair remained at close cropped for his entire life through chemical enhancements. He remembered that being unenhanced and outside your EE was referred to as “the big yowee.”

The illumination came from the window above his bed that allowed the light reflected from the local planet being orbited to brighten up his quarters.  The brightness held him now like an accusation.  The room that had been warm and inviting only moments before now became cold and forbidding. 

This was the 3rd time in his life that he had experienced the “big yowee”.  He gave the mental “push” and was startled when he realized he could not call up the stats from his previous visits.  He did recall that his longest trip was somewhere around three minutes.  Mothers frightened their children with stories of being in the middle of nowhere and having to go “outside”.  One of the first revelations one made to your selected life mate was the number of trips “outside”.  This was corroborated by downloading only that portion of one’s personal incident database to the public official (sworn to secrecy) who oversaw the life mate process.

The air smelled slightly stale with a chemical undertone.  He shivered from fear and being cold.  Despite having scanned the area for foreign creatures he quickly threw glances around the area to confirm their non-existence.

Once he looked around, Biko grabbed his tool kit from inside the hatch of the EE and activated the platform so that it would exit the EE completely and hover while he stood on it.  Shifting his weight to guide his conveyance, Biko rode it over the edge of the bed and down just below the nonfunctioning joint.  His height was that of a typical Neluan which meant if he stood next to his EE, the top of his head would be about halfway up the calf.

He turned and looked up at the EE, immediately experiencing what Neluan psychologists referred to as the “Leviathan Effect”:  Biko admired the EE and what it made him, feeling a sense of power and awe that he could really be that tall and powerful.  The EE appeared to be a colossal carved image of him sitting on a huge bed with a large frown.  The holographic projection that covered his EE was set to his work body dressed in the stolid gray coverall of his department replete with dark gray work shoes.  He managed a quiet laugh amid the coldness of the raw feelings that engulfed him as he realized that as he had activated the projection this morning before going to work, he had neglected to include socks.  That would have been a small fine but he justified it as a quiet act of rebellion.  It was about as close to nonconformity as Biko had ever entertained.

Maneuvering the platform over the floor covering synthesized to resemble the fur of a wild tikanga, Biko moved it to where he could easily access the joint.  Using his foot, he found and activated a switch on the side of his board that froze its movement, providing a stable platform for him to begin his work.

He felt utterly alone with no link to the world.  The databases, the environmental filters, the size and power, were all gone.  He glanced around as if he expected to be jumped at any moment by a wild creature out of a children’s story.  He remembered the tales of a giant horned creature with a shiny black carapace and red glowing eyes that carried a swift and deadly poison within small, sharp fangs.  It was nothing to him inside the EE but outside he was as vulnerable as a cheap fuse.  Almost as an afterthought, he quickly looked under his bed and received a cold chill when he realized how dark it was.  Fortunately, there were no glowing red eyes staring back at him.