"Sometimes, rarely, I feel like there's a substantially better world just inches away, but inaccessable and nameless. I experience it only in brief flickers.

It has a stillness to it, and an outdoor, summer quality, which is normally not something I would participate in. There's also a sense of experiencing it from the point of view of a child, but that could just be the alienness shining through.

It has a depth to it, is the odd thing, it's just faint. Something about it makes me vaguely uneasy."

"What if people talked to themselves all the time?

Actually, it turns out they do. At least, the muscles of the face involved in speech make constant tiny movements in accordance with what people are thinking, much like the tiny movements the eye makes to stay focused on something. But while the patterns traced by the eye form only a sort of random etch-a-sketch of squiggles and curves, the motions of the mouth and face are effectively the same as speech, only much faster.

Two scientists at the university of columbia have successfully uncovered the internal monologs of random test subjects by reviewing slowed down footage from a high resolution digital video camera and running it through a new form of lip-reading software.

The monologs rarely form complete sentences even at their most lucid. The most coherent thoughts occured when the subject was observing another person while waiting for them to do their part in a shared activity.

One subject, who asked not to be named, had monologs with consistant themes of violence. While working with another subject on an exercise in which plastic gears were connected together, his internal monolog contained such lines as "think of all the lives I could be taking instead of dealing with THIS idiot."

He says if he was actually thinking such a thing, he was not aware of it."

Jack Masters