Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation Read Online Free

researchers’ expectations. Its artificial intelligence and quantum computing gave it the ability to preside over the multitude of auxiliary systems of a powersuit, highlighting its importance as the liaison between man and machine.
    The biocomputer’s function as intermediary was best seen with its supervision of a powersuit’s sensorium network. Between the titanium plating and the shell’s subcutaneous layer was a thin stratum composed of sensory nanomites. These units amalgamated with the primary nanomites of the armor, up to the epidermis, and functioned only to relay registered sensations to the biocomputer, which then interpreted the data and conveyed it to the pilot’s brain. This was how Simone felt changes in the environment. She felt hot and sticky if the humidity level was high, or cold and wet if she was up to her waist in a river. Conclusively, the biocomputer tied a pilot into a symbiotic relationship of sorts with a powersuit. With artificial intelligence, the armor had reasonable logic. With a pilot, it had a soul and was very much alive.
    Just as Simone gave her Hard Shell a life force, it in turn gave her a mechanical type of extrasensory perception. With twelve optical sensors, positioned like spider eyes on the head section and included infrared and X-ray vision, her sight was comparable to spy satellites. The computer’s ability to analyze molecules in the air allowed her to smell the underarm musk of a person three kilometers away. She was able to detect and identify subtle oscillations, like the heartbeat of an enemy in hiding. The suit’s peculiar catlike feet gave her the capacity to feel ground vibrations, detect land mines, and walk—even run—in a manner that was deafly quiet. The padded soles of the feet smothered and muffled the sound of snapping twigs and shuffling of grass or leaves.
    The design and mechanics of the powersuits were achievements many were sure made the Japanese proud. Notwithstanding, the U.S. Army built upon their accomplishments and improved the cerebral interface between the pilot and the powersuit, by having the biocomputer receive neural input straight from the brain. It was an operation that Simone did not like. The headaches were intolerable the first couple of months after the augmentation to her cerebral cortex and the underlying Paleomammalian complex. This enhanced joining of man and machine was, however, the minor of two important modifications to the powersuit.
    The major change came shortly after the war started with China, bringing the Army’s dream of eighteen years into fruition. 2015 was the year invisibility became a reality.
    The Micro Refraction System was the brainchild of an aspiring scientist, majoring in nano-optical technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her boyfriend, a textile designer. It was a classic union of art and science. Their invention allowed nanomites to be “stitched” on a woven mesh of fine fiberoptic threads. The end result was a plastic wrap-like material with the strength of leather. It was patented as opticloth.
    Initially, a vast network of nanomites had been sewn on both sides of the material, in which the units on front mimed functions of the brain’s optical lobe and units on the back acted the part of an eye’s retinal layer. Using pixel-size photoreceptive panels, the retinal units collectively worked to capture and filter images as shaped by light into data that flowed to the optical units. Upon receiving the data, the optical units then reassembled the visual information and, like the retinal units, collectively projected the reproduced image. The image as created by the optical units was so refined that when laid in the palm of a hand, the only distortions were in the areas where the opticloth curved and draped over the hand. Despite the warping, the material was invisible. Thus, the basis of invisibility was defined as the created illusion of seeing