** Forces ** Prime
Base difficulty: 5 (Coincidental);
Threshold: 2
Do you have photosensitive skin that burns at the first hint of UV
exposure? Are you tired of sweltering in the hot summer sun under dark, heavy
clothing to avoid sun-damaged skin? Are you looking for an alternative to
topical SPF 5000 sunscreen agents which leave you looking like a kabuki actor,
cause allergic skin reactions when worn for extended periods, or both? Do you
need to leave the safety of your underground bunker to conduct business during
the day, and don't relish the thought of a side trip to the emergency room or an
extended stay in the burn ward to recover?
If any of these sound familiar, take heart and read on. Recent advances in fiber optics and metamaterial technology have made practical the creation of the Sensible Heliodermatitis Avoidance Defense Ensemble, a new twist on protection for sensitive skin, now available for everyday wear at a sensible price.
Traditionally, options for people with photosensitive skin have been limited: stay indoors during daylight, wear heavy clothing, or trowel on the sunscreen. Each of these options has drawbacks. Some offices do not stay open late enough to avoid exposing a would-be customer to sunlight. Dark, heavy clothing designed to block the sun tends to absorb heat, and extended periods of activity while wearing hot heavy clothing can cause a variety of medical problems. And faces painted the stark while of SPF 50 sun-block tend to draw attention and off-hand dismissal as clownish.
What would happen if, instead of trying to block or absorb sunlight, the damaging rays were simply guided around the person? The result would be no heat build-up and no sunburn for the wearer.
Many transparent materials are known to bend light; refractive materials are not a new idea. Metamaterials with a negative index of refraction for visible light wavelengths have been researched and developed since their announcement in 2007, but creation of effective light-cloaking metamaterial has been a difficult and costly endeavor. Previous metamaterials actually absorbed most of the light instead of bending it away, necessitating multiple layers of metamaterials and resulting in a fabric too heavy and costly for everyday wear.
As any physicist knows, more than one way exists to bend a sunbeam. Electromagnetic radiation can itself be easily manipulated with lenses, electromagnetic fields, or even gravity wells. By combining electromagnetic interaction and fiber-optic metamaterial, sunlight may be safely diverted from the patient.
The SHADE appears to be a long floor-length veil. A small flexible cable connects a light-weight head-band and a pair or mirrored sunglasses to a battery box containing four AA batteries. A switch on the battery box provides the means to by which the device may be activated or deactivated. The veil guides the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between 250nm and 750nm (UV, visible light, and near IR) around the wearer. The sunglasses, sensitive in the 750nm-1250nm near-IR range, allow the wearer to see his or her nearby surroundings rendered in grainy green-scale with a successful perception roll at a difficulty of 4 in the absence of all visible light. (Since visible light has been diverted around the wearer, it's completely dark under the veil!)
Forces allows the direction of minor forces to be diverted. In this case,
solar energy is guided around the wearer, for as long as the batteries last.
Prime fuels and sustains the effect.
Focus: Nanotech interface, apparatus, and veil
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