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 8

“Well, Biko, I want you to know that I like your style! Hell, people! Look at this!” The Chief turned his EE around and, after a moment, the hatch door on the back opened and a skinny, naked, wrinkled old man came out to stand on the hoverboard, throwing his arms up in celebration.

Sheer pandemonium struck the crowd. All around him Biko saw people dancing with delight and focusing their attention first on the Chief and then on him. Andela’s face came into his side view and he turned to see her smiling a smile that contained no reservations. Biko almost fell over as he recognized that the smile contained some respect. Even Phlegamon was smiling and gave Biko a brief salute as they gazed upon one another.

The Chief had reached inside his EE and pulled out a headset with microphone and slipped it on,

“Attention, folks! Why don’t we get this thing started! Biko! Come up here with me, boy!” The Chief jumped onto the podium and sent his hoverboard over to where Biko could board it. Dazed and still a little raw from the night’s swing of emotions, Biko unsteadily mounted the board and it carried him up to where the naked elder waited.

The crowd had taken up shouts of “Bi-ko! Chee-eef! Bi-ko! Chee-eef!”

As the board neared the podium, Biko stepped off and the Chief offered a gnarled, leathery hand which Biko took giving the crowd another reason to cheer. Besides his mother and father, the Chief was the only other person he had ever touched. The Chief slipped his headset off and spoke into Biko’s ear, “Thanks, son. I’ve wanted to do that for over fifty years! These shows have been getting bigger and better every year and I didn’t know how I was going to top the last one! I owe you, boy!” Biko just grinned and the Chief winked at him, “This better be my last report because there is no way in the roots of Hades that I could top this one!” Biko laughed and the Chief made him turn around and they both waved to the crowd.

The night turned into a total success for Biko. The Chief’s presentation went like clockwork even with the saucy old coot jumping up on the top of the podium and shaking his privates or baring his backside at the crowd to emphasize key points and the crowd loved it. The Chief did as well.

Before he began his closing remarks, he took off the headset and leaned over to Biko,

“Son, I looked up your records before I exited my EE and they’re not half-bad. Hell, you got as much going for you as I had when I became the Sector Chief!”

Biko’s eyes grew wide, “When you became the Sector Chief! What are you saying?” The old Chief’s eyes took on a sparkle, “You’ve already guessed it, boy! I’ve decided to make you my replacement. Of course, it’ll take ten years to get you to where you feel comfortable doing this sort of thing but hell, all anyone cares about is this blasted party anyway! And you have already shown that you can make an entrance!”

While the Chief had given his presentation, Phlegamon had reluctantly given Greb the fix for his bug and Greb had brought Biko’s EE back to a board full of green lights. At the end of the celebration, Greb took the remote control for Biko’s EE up to the podium and Biko gratefully nodded and took the small remote from Greb’s massive hand and directed his EE towards the podium, managing to elbow Phlegamon and make it look like an accident as the EE left his old table.

The partying had begun in earnest by now and the thousand or so Neluan Research employees were letting off a year’s worth of steam. Some of those at the front noticed that Biko’s EE had arrived up front and that Biko was preparing to enter it. A chorus of boos started lustily up front and the crowd refocused its attention on the podium and took up the booing. Biko smiled and waved, popping the hoverboard out of the back and rode it around to the front, inserting it into the chest where he climbed up to sit on the EE’s shoulder. He made the EE smile and then had it reach up to pat him on the head and the crowd went wild.

Eventually, the Chief called Biko over, pulled out a remote keypad and completed a quick online upgrading of Biko’s status, reassignment of Biko’s projects and set up an appointment to meet in the Chief’s office in two weeks to start his training. He then turned to Biko, “Listen, Biko! I’ve already been contacted by my lawyers, my publisher (who wants you and I to co-author a book about this crazy event), some woman’s magazine that wants to do a nude pictorial of me, and my wife who is not happy about me sharing my nakedness with the rest of the known galaxy. That means I’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!

“I need for you to get away from your peers, the press, and the public. Find someplace secretive and refocus your brain! I want you to take the two weeks before our meeting as vacation so you will be well rested and hopefully beyond the “trauma” of tonight’s hoopdelolly!” Biko numbly agreed, still amazed at how quickly his fortunes had gone from good to horrible (very briefly) to fantastic. The Chief clapped him roughly on the shoulder and began to enter his EE to leave for home. Biko winced, adding the sensation of pain to his catalog of data inputs from that night. He did miss being able to create a database “on the fly” and mentally populating the fields as he would have done within his EE.