Rattled Mind

A long time ago I decided I needed to start writing four thousand words or less short stories. At the time, I was getting seriously into the hobby of freshwater aquariums. Saltwater was an ambition, but that step was just too expensive.

As I thrashed through the crap that floated about in my mind, looking for a concept for a short story that I could fit into four thousand words or less, my multitude of aquariums became an inspiration. The story, however, swelled well beyond four thousand words.

One of my weaknesses at the time.

Please enjoy...

This is story number two that was inspired by the concept of mega corporations or tech giants going to blows. This one being from the point of view of one of the combatants.

Remember the reference to the fast-food wars in the movie, The Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone?

The following two stories are akin to that idea. Not because I wanted to take the idea of fast-food wars and apply it to tech giants, or corporate behemoths. The concept for the next two stories popped into my head as a result of the mega corporations we have today. The Googles, Amazons, Microsoft, et al. I think the thought process was, as these corporations get bigger, and entwine themselves deeper into our lives, and each other’s niches, i.e., operating systems, cloud services, home automation, they will quit competing on the open market, and come to blows.

The government would stay out of the way or limit the conflict because they did not want to lose their tax revenue stream, or bribes, or political gains, garnered from said corporations, and their conflicts.

I was never good at predictions. Somewhere in the late to mid-90’s, after discovering email, online banking, and electronic bill pay, I predicted that the post office would be gone in ten years.

Resilient damn thing…isn’t it?

I also predicted a few years later, that eventually everyone will be on some sort of psychotropic medication. Every mood would be a clinical diagnosis, and your family physician would prescribe the fix in pill form.

My imagination took this one step further and decided that waiting for a prescription was not going to be enough. The government would force a preventative on all of us.