MIZ by Scooter Duff

What Kind of Adventures Await In the Deep Past? Naked and Confused, But Running Like Heck  Imagine this guy at 40' in length (Hey, it's sci-fi) Daryl Streeter has been wandering around the prehistoric forest, looking up to find a smoldering spot where lightning has struck for a fire source.  No luck so far, and then..... An hour later the back of my neck and the top of my shoulders ached from looking up and felt on the verge of cramping. I actually ran into a tree, staring into the canopy. Dumb. For all that, no joy on the smoke hunt. I rubbed my neck and shoulders, did toe-touches and rolled my head around while fully bent over. I could still bend forward, legs stiff and damn near touch my knees with my nose. From that position, through my legs, I saw a truly large snake sliding out of an extra deep puddle, a pond basically, its eyes boring into mine from five meters away. Thoughts of smoke blew quickly out of my mind. Now I am not a ... what? snake-o-phobe...

Try It Yourself; It's Easy Just hang out in a superconducting stator coil going chaotic. Our hero in MIZ, Daryl Streeter, hard working electrical engineer, is doing his job checking out a superconducting stator in Denison Dam, Lake Texoma, Texas. Here is a brief excerpt from his travel diary: ....I approved the first upgrade on this unit over a year ago, now here I was, field probes in hand, trying to figure out why the sucker made a very big millisecond surge, a fault I had never even heard of, much less had a clear idea on how to check. The stators were at full pump, about a mega amp. The rotors were still, the water from the surge tanks channeled out into the Red River. I could feel the rumble through my boots as I climbed back down into the core. I was surrounded by serious cooling tubes and lots and lots of hybrid metal loops, a typical superconducting stator core. Suddenly I saw something like mist rising from the crevices in the stator, a totally new exper...