Rattled Mind

Rattled Mind

By William Arthur McDonaldFictionScience Fiction
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Rattled Mind episodes

  • Greed of the Masses

    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

    - Alexander Fraser Tytler

    7 min
  • Born From Legend

    The inspiration for this short comes from my day job. I work in IT. Too often we think we are more important than we really are. As a result, there is a saying we put forth frequently. So much so, it inspired this story. Hope you enjoy.

    6 min
  • Missed Opportunities

    The inspiration for this story is one of the most

    controversial topics in American society. Maybe others, but I don’t follow the debate in other countries. I personally recognize that making abortion illegal will not prevent it from happening. However, I will follow that up by stating that taking the life of an innocent child is wrong. This is an intro, and not a place to debate the issue.

    With that being said, my beliefs spawned the idea of this short story.

    11 min
  • Blind Faith

    One of my instructors in Army flight school once stated, no amount of technology can make an aircraft idiot proof. I think that is our biggest issue in today’s aviation world. We are relying way too much on technology to save our skins. This story was inspired by the Boing 737 Max fiasco. It is true, I am a Boing fan, and bristle a little when someone says something negative about the company. But I am not such a fan that I will put blind faith in their aircraft.

    8 min
  • Fake Heroes

    Upon hearing this flash fiction story, the inspiration will be easy to decipher. Back in 2019 there seems to be a lot of celebrity deaths. This was obviously before the Kobe Briant tragedy the killed “nine others.” It bothered me that these people got so much attention while everyday people who were real hero’s garnered little to no attention. Think of all the vets dying alone in VA hospitals, or worse, on the streets. Will this idol worship result in an alien invasion…who knows.

    7 min
  • Long Cold Winter

    This story was written a long time ago. February of 2019 to be exact. Pre-covid I believe. Because it was so long ago, I cannot remember the exact inspiration. It also happened to be before I started adding intros to my flash fiction stories. What I can tell you is, I love snowboarding, and I am the type of person to turn lemons into lemonade.

    8 min
  • God's Wall

    This episode begins a period in my life where I tried to

    write one flash fiction story a week. That effort was successful for about half a year. This story kicked off that effort which started just prior to the spring of COVID, and securing the border was all the news. As you may ascertain from my description of God, the President was quite the prominent figure at the time. This episode is a short one, but I think you will enjoy it.

    5 min
  • Writers Time

    The inspiration for this first story comes from what any

    writer wishes they had…time. More time to be exact. See, most of us have day jobs and scrounge writing time out of lunch breaks, after the kids are put to bed, or some quiet time on the weekends. I wrote most of my first book while
    going down the road as a local truck driver. Microphone headset strapped on, dictating to Dragon Naturally speaking.

    Even if you have an abundance of time in the evenings, there were other distractions, or you’re just simply too damn tired to get your mind in a creative mode. I wrote a large majority of my second book in the evening.

    After spending a day burning up my creative juices solving technology problems for a local school district. When it came time to edit, I realized it would be better just to rewrite it.

    I am not one for time travel, multidimensional universes, or other such hocus pocus (I know, and I fancy myself as a Sci-Fi writer?) But the inspiration for this next story came from a profound need to find uninterrupted writing time when my creative juices were at their best.

    16 min
  • In My Dreams

    We all dream of do overs. Many of us wish we could go back and undo that one thing. Make a fifty-fifty decision go the other way.

    This story is another take on that wish. Near the end of his life, Fletcher is given a chance to go back and undo his single biggest wrong.

    49 min
  • M.E.T.S. Corps

    If you are driving a semi-truck through southwestern Wyoming on a moonlit night, and the winds are calm. The way the blue light of the moon reflects off the layered rock formations almost looks as though you are underwater…

    For those of us with an imaginative bent, the mind takes over.

    55 min

About Rattled Mind

From the publisher's feed

Rattled Mind is comprised mostly of flash fiction stories, with some longer ones interspersed. All but a handful of stories are science fiction. All are based on my distorted view of the world around…