Doppelgäng agley.

Ego-surfing, as one does (forgive me; my name makes it all too easy, you see), I tripped into one of those grey-flannel rabbitholes, an uncanny corner filled with dollops of AI slop about hole after hole in the wall joints, locally famous diners, rib joints you want to put miles on your odometer for, steakhouses that bring them from Rehoboth Beach all the way out or down or over to Hockessin, a trip that I or at least a Kip Manley once made, to take a photo of the sort of golden walls and white tablecloths and warm lighting that create that rare atmosphere where you instantly know you’re in for something special. Needless to say, I’ve never been to the Little Italy neighborhood of Wilmington—I’m still not entirely convinced that the entire state of Delaware isn’t entirely a fiction, only as real as the thousands of corporate headquarters that each somehow manage to fit precisely within the confines of a post-office box, I did drive through it once, or was driven, the particulars of the trip escape me, it was some time ago, and very, very late at night, or early in the morning, and we needed to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel for some reason, going from New York or New Jersey to points south, again, I don’t remember why, maybe, probably, on our way to drop Charles and/or Sarah off in North Carolina, maybe, or to pick one or both of them up, though I think Sarah was there, or maybe it was Emily, not that Emily, but why were the rest of us? Where were we going? But: that’s the second time I’ve crossed the Chesapeake Bay by that disconcerting route; the first time I did so is one of my very earliest memories (wait—we’re going to drive? Underwater? and my father grinning like a genial madman, oh, oh yeah, and are you sure this is safe? I wanted to know, and he shrugged, let’s find out, I’m embellishing here, I don’t really actually remember what was said, precisely, or even at this point any exact or precise details, I’m constructing the scene around the vibe that remains, that’s summoned when I call it up, of bright light on endless water, a ruthlessly improbable stretch of pavement laid over nothing at all, over air, the sudden darknesses that swallowed the car entire, my wonder, my anxious terror)—but it’s possible to cross the Bridge-Tunnel without ever setting foot or tire in Delaware, so that later exhausted midnight ride is the only chance I’ve ever had to verify the existence of the First State of this great country, but I blew it; we were on our way to somewhere else, and didn’t have the time, we didn’t have the cash, either, for the toll, as it seemed like it was going to turn out, until we doubled back to a rest stop or a gas station parking lot and a frantic search turned up change enough from the back seat of one of our cars. —Maybe it’s the same Kip Manley I’ve bumped into before, who’s left Yelp reviews of Sherwin-Williams joints in New Jersey, who really enjoyed that luau in Maui, maybe he really does exist; maybe he did enjoy a steak once, in Wilmington, or something else, one of the meals under twenty-two dollars, maybe, the burger, that gave him the opportunity to snap that photo, which, granted, looks real enough, an actual if digital record of real photons bouncing about a definite space in that precise moment of time, early in the sitting, maybe, nobody else in that corner yet, all those empty tables and booths waiting patiently for the plates to come, the wine glass, there, on his table, the sort a good joint leaves out for show and maybe fills with prepradial ice-water as you’re sitting down, I don’t know, is Delaware conserving water these days? Do you have to ask for it? Is that more a West Coast thing?—but if you were to order wine with your steak, that glass would be discreetly swept away and replaced with an actual wine glass, shaped properly to properly shape the nose of whatever varietal you’d ordered, Tempranillos are trendy with steaks these days, aren’t they? I don’t know, I never go to steakhouses. —Maybe he did, is the point, this other me, the website’s looking for photographers, it says, and writers, too, they list an impressive roster, but I have to imagine if anyone did take up their offer, and actually yourself typed up the 40,000 words a month they expect of their contributors, you’d wither away into a single AI-generated JPEG of yourself to join all the others LLMing away in there, one hardly imagines they’d pay for anything more than what they already get. —Why does every paragraph generated by a chatbot read like an introductory paragraph? Every sentence a thesis statement. —They just keep starting, kicking off over and over until they just stop, never developing, never following through, nothing but ceaseless sizzle. It’s one of their most glaring tells.