Free The Time Portal 2: Escape in Time by Joe Corso [time travel] Page B

anywhere , anytime .”
    “Whoa there a minute, professor,” Lucky said as he brought his rocking chair to a halt. “Are you telling me that you can make this ship invisible?”
    “Yes. And not only the ship. I can also make you invisible.”
    Lucky looked at the professor in a manner that signaled incredulous, stunned, and interesting – all this from an agent who was practically un shockable.
    “Once I read the Harry Potter books,” Lindstrom said, “I became determined to see if it was possible to invent a cloak that would make someone invisible. So I spent some time studying the possibility and became convinced I could do it. I performed a test using basic electronics and the tests were rather encouraging, but I put it aside when I started work on the propulsion system. Now I realize that an invisibility cloak is a necessity and not just an interesting experiment. If I am to fly this spacecraft, I must make it invisible. I can see that very clearly now. You were absolutely right Lucky. No one must see this ship except when or if we want them to see it. So you must realize we cannot leave until I successfully build an invisibility component.”
    Lucky was intrigued. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
    “Well, at present there are two schools of thought. The first one is the use of a meta-material that researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have developed. It’s a material that can bend light around 3D objects thus making them ‘disappear’. They’ve been successful making a small object invisible, but haven’t had success yet with larger objects. Research shows that light rays can theoretically be bent around an object, making it seem as if an observer is looking straight through the object.
    “David Smith of Duke University said, ‘The cloak will act like you've opened up a hole in space. All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the meta-material to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space.’”
    Lucky leaned back in his chair and resumed his rocking as he listened. This was interesting stuff, more so than some of the things he had learned as an agent.
    “The second method,” the professor continued, “is the use of optical camouflage which delivers a similar experience to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, but using it is slightly more complicated. First, the person who wants to be invisible dons a garment that resembles a hooded raincoat. The garment’s made of a special material. Next, an observer, Person A, stands before Person B, who is donned in the raincoat standingat a specific location. Instead of Person A seeing Person B wearing a hooded raincoat, Person A sees right through the cloak, giving Person B the illusion of being invisible. This effect is rather simple to accomplish as long as the subject moves slowly, but difficult to maintain when sudden movement is made because it requires a hefty, computer generated power source to re-compute each movement of the cloaked party, which at present is all but impossible. But more impossible is to fit a powerful computer into the cloak or more specifically into the fabric that comprises the cloak. The new ‘meta-materials,’ have a component that bends visible light in a way that ordinary materials can’t. This material might be what I need to help design an invisibility cloak that can guide light around an object so that neither a reflection nor a shadow will be created. My idea is to incorporate the meta-material with the optical camouflage. The optical camouflage experiment, recently performed by the Chinese, works similar to a television set inasmuch as the material is impregnated with hundreds of tiny video cameras, on the back of the cloak, and as many small screens placed into the front of the cloak, so that a person looking at someone wearing the cloak will see an image of what is behind the cloaked person, thereby making him invisible to