"Seer" Radiosensory Array

The "Seer" Radiosensory Array is a cybernetic augmentation that grants its user a variety of benefits relating to the perception, interpretation, and transmission of radio- and microwave-band signals.

Mechanics & Inner Workings

The primary sensory arrays of the Seer - that is to say, the parts that grant the user the ability to 'see' into the radio and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum - are two broad, flat stretches of circuitry that are implanted in the upper face just in front of the sinuses. Installation is typically accomplished in sections via intranasal laproscopy, using the frontal bone as a layer of extra protection against impacts and to attenuate the signal. Flexible antennae are snaked down beneath the skin on either side of the nose and out around the temples to aid in picking up more minute signals and to improve broadcast quality.
The implant is connected to the brain through a variety of means. This can be accomplished less invasively by routing electrodes around the optic nerve or beneath the skin to the back of the head above the visual cortices, but many who opt for the Seer choose to connect it to a pre-existing neural jack or to have one installed as a 'package deal.' The LimbOS package that comes standard with the Seer can either interpret the signals into an 'overlay' for the user's vision when connected to the optic nerve, but it also has a special feature for direct brain interfaces where it helps the owner learn to interpret the signals more innately. In the latter case, LimbOS gradually conditions the visual cortex with signals such that, over time, neuroplasticity causes regions to develop in the brain that can interpret the signals entirely separately from the normal input of the eyes - sort of the inverse of the process when, for example, a mouse loses whiskers and the associated regions in its brain are taken over by adjacent functional regions over time.

Significance

Aside from the wireless connectivity touted by many such neurological implants, the Seer allows a trained user to see wavelengths of light normally invisible to the human eye. Users report finding the night sky extra beautiful because they can see features in space that no one else can. The Seer implant also has utility in other scientific and engineering applications, as the users can tell by the propagation of radio and microwave signals through a room where sources are located, how thick and dense structural materials are, and even - to a limited extent - where people and objects are through walls that are opaque in the visible spectrum. These qualities give Seer owners what seems to be preternatural timing and a sense for danger, as they are often aware of events long before unaugmented humans are by simple dint of being able to see them coming.
Unlike the members of the vbyifabid flockmind, Seer owners enjoy a degree of privacy that comes from having these special senses as a result of technological, rather than biological, features. Nevertheless, information security is always a concern where cybernetics are involved - especially when it comes to those which have the ability to create hyper-advanced 'peeping toms.' A whole new branch of ordinances have been enacted on Evermorn to deal with the implications of this and other augmentation technologies that threaten personal privacy, public order, and the security of military and governmental systems, including the Seer.

Item type

Cybernetic

Rarity

The Seer and similar implants are all the rage among the cybernetically inclined in Protectorate space, though they face competition from more 'all-purpose' augmentations like hard-line brain-vehicle and brain-computer interfaces.