When Days Fly

Dig, if you will, the picture of me having breakfast in front of Wink's, squinting at the ocean through sunglasses as I eat.

The only problem with this picture is that it requires leaving the beach followed by three hours in the car to make it the Continental for lunch.

Despite dire warnings about the UCI bike race, I have zero trouble getting back into town or my neighborhood and parking spaces abound.

Dream, if you can, a restaurant full to the rafters of customers, far too many of them with fussy young children. Our trio is fortunate enough to snag a table on the breezy patio while most of the squawking and food throwing is going on inside.

I should be ashamed to admit how much I enjoy a plate of dirty chips - housemade potato chips covered in jack and cheddar cheese, bacon and chives - and sips of boozy limeade, but I'm not.

For the second time today, I have absolutely no problem getting where I'm going despite seeing signs saying, "Bike Race in Progress" at several intersections.

Decide, if you choose, like a friend and I did, to meet at Toast for a fried dinner - sliders, fries and a seafood bucket - to trade tales of the last fortnight's beach trips (hers and mine), miscommunications (ditto) and soul-searching (always).

Driving over, the streets are noticeably empty, no doubt due to media fear-mongering about coming downtown. A pity, really.

Conceive, if you try, of a thought-provoking two-actor play called "Uncanny Valley," which is the term coined for the human tendency to react negatively to robots that seem human (see: "The Polar Express" movie - disconcerting, right?).

Produced by 5th Wall and performed at the tiny Hatt Theater out in the hinterlands (driving west on Patterson for what seemed like hours, my friend says, "Where are we? Canada?"), the play addresses the question of what it means to be human ("In your mind's eye, how old are you?").

And, more specifically, what does it mean to be human and so filthy rich that you can keep yourself alive indefinitely by having your life experiences and memories uploaded into a robot who looks like you at whatever age you choose for it to (34 in this case).

Alexander Sapp is brilliant as the robot being coached on human behavior by the maternalistic scientist played by the reliably-strong Jacqueline Jones ("We're a skittish species. That's how we've lasted so long.").

With the addition of each component - another arm, torso, legs, he becomes more human-like - but it's his early, robotic like voice and distinct learning curve that provide many of the early laughs while endearing him to the audience. This is Julian A.

A real relationship develops between the two and after much coaching from the patient Jones, he receives the download from the dying man (Julian B). The result is the new creature, Julian C, an amalgam of human and a robot.

Playwright Thomas Gibbons took the stage afterwards with director Morrie Piersol and the two actors to talk with the audience about the provocative nature of the play's subject matter, inspired by a National Geographic article he'd read at his dentist's office.

I don't know that an article on artificial intelligence would've grabbed me the same way, but the resulting play certainly did. Are we merely our consciousness? Can it be replicated for another body?

The play raises some hard questions, all the more significant for how close apparently we are to this sort of thing becoming, well, a thing. Only for the 1%, mind you, but that's even scarier since all the "immortals" will be the super-rich.

It may be time to start worrying about the Donald doing something like this.

Or, better yet, it's definitely time to go see "Uncanny Valley" because this is the very best kind of theater: beautifully acted, subtly directed and forcing us to look at some hard issues of personal ethics and technology.

As Gibbons pointed out in the talkback, algorithms already shape our daily lives. Should they be used to shape the minds and personalities of robots to achieve immortality?

Call me the skittish type, but you can probably guess how the woman without a cell phone or TV is going to weigh in on this.

Real life in progress. It's enough for me.

Tequila Makes You Do Strange Things

Ocean temperature: Nice (when I asked the lifeguard what 'nice' meant, he said, "68, 72, whatever you want it to be." That's beach science for you).
Beach read: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
Best song randomly heard on the radio: First Train Home, Imogene Heap

There's a little general store down here called Wink's and it's been around since my family first started vacationing here when I was a little kid.

My parents relied on it for two things mainly: a daily Washington Post and a gallon of milk when we were running low.

These days, you can still buy a 25-cent postcard or an 8-cent Tootsie Roll in a place that looks virtually unchanged.

As you check out, there is always a box of locally-grown tomatoes for sale next to the register, both then and now.

It was for those tomatoes that I went to Wink's this afternoon when a craving for a tomato sandwich hit (alright, it was going to be a bacon and tomato sandwich, but I had plenty of bacon).

 Standing at the register, I noticed two old photographs on the wall.

One I'd seen dozens of times before; it's an old image of Wink's taken from the air back before the area was much developed and it's striking for how simple the landscape was.

But the other photo was new to me.

It looked like a blown-up Polaroid picture with its weird shades of blue. I leaned in closer to make sure I was seeing it right.

An employee was nearby sweeping up the floor of sand, surely an endless job.

I noticed him noticing me looking at the picture of what appeared to be a donkey in front of Wink's.

"Is that...?" I started to ask.

"Found it in an old Pepsi box in the back and had it enlarged, " he said matter-of-factly. "It's a burro and a cart. Belonged to Miss Alice, you know, Miss Alice what owned the Sea Ranch."

I did know of the old Sea Ranch motel, so I nodded.

"But what the...?" I wondered out loud.

"One year she went on vacation to Mexico and a few weeks after she got back, she got a call from Elizabeth City, telling her to come pick up her burro. Boy, was she surprised!"

Me, incredulously, "She didn't remember buying a burro?"

"Nope," he chuckled, "but you know how Miss Alice was. She got herself that cart and she used to have that burro pull her up the beach road to shop here."

At this point, my amazement is apparent. The photograph does indeed show a charming little two-seater cart attached to a burro clearly in front of the store, with the Wink's sign in plain view.

My only disappointment is that Miss Alice herself is not pictured.

"You know," he continues, "You look a little like her when she was young."

This old-timer with the push broom has just completed the mental picture for me.

I am imagining myself in that cart, my little brown bag of tomatoes next to me on the seat, heading the half mile back home behind a slow-moving burro.

Let the impatient drivers stack up behind me.

Unlike Miss Alice, I don't think I'd forget buying a burro, although if she was the tequila fan that I am, perhaps the lapse in memory is understandable given her location at the time.

But very much like Miss Alice, I can totally appreciate making the best of an impetuous decision.

With any luck, I can only hope that the same sort of comments would be made of me.

"Well, you know how Miss Karen was..."