Movies in My Mind

I been living with the strangest sensation for the last few weeks. It's like I know almost everyone that I see. As if there are no more strangers in the world and I've met everyone I pass. I know them all: the guy in the car next to me at the traffic light, the girls with the nice legs that walked past the restaurant last night, the cashiers at the supermarket and all the squints walking around the streets outside the office window. Clearly, on one level I know I have never met these people before, but my mind seems to be constantly spinning trying to pattern match each person to the situation where I met them. The identification routines are working overtime, flipping through index cards, pouring over old photos and reconstructing situations and scenarios. This causes a lot of wasted horsepower and I hate waste.

I'm thinking this is all tied to the lack of sleep. I seem to remember a Star Trek episode where Riker is abducted by some scaly aliens during sleep who are messing with his mind. Maybe these same aliens are screening movies in my brain. Hmmmm. Could happen. It's quite unsettling, it's not like I like people enough to want to know all of them.