Why am I dressed like this? Just hold on a second and let me explain. It’s January, right? 2015? Then there isn’t much time.
Now, please, just let me get through this. I am about to tell you two things. The first will absolutely blow your mind—I’m still a little freaked out about it, to be honest—but you have to promise to ignore it for a moment so I can tell you the second thing.
Promise? Okay. [long sigh] I just came back from the year 2108. I know! Dude. I know. It’s—hey, hey, shhh. Hey. Come on—you promised. We will talk about it later, I swear. Time travel is actually surprisingly easy. You just have to—sorry.
Here is the second thing: in the year 2108, Dallas doesn’t exist. Not as you and I know it. In its place is something they call The Convention. You know what? This might go down a little easier if I make it sound like exposition from a dystopian YA novel.
[clears throat, lowers voice] In 2108, most people are forced to live outside the smooth, beige walls of The Convention, where there is little water and less food. A full generation died without ever once knowing the feeling of a full stomach. Another is well on its way, still suffering under the tyrannical rule of the man who built The Convention into what it is.
[coughs] That voice is kind of hard to do. Where was I? Oh, right. Okay, this part is going to blow your mind, too. Sorry. I should have warned you before. So, the man who controls everything, they call him The Greeter. You know what his real name is? Phillip Jones.
Yes, that Phillip Jones, the president of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau. Uh-huh. No, it’s him. I saw him. Well, he’s more machine than man now, but he actually doesn’t look all that different. Let’s see—kind of like if Captain America’s longtime nemesis the Red Skull was real and shopped at Men’s Wearhouse and brewed his own beer? You know, the same.
I mean, we all know Jones has a haunting visage and a bloated salary, right? But we also think he doesn’t actually possess any real power. Nor does he have the iron will or keen mind necessary to acquire it. We have no idea what he’s capable of.
There is much more to Jones than being the human equivalent of a shawl collar sweater. That is the game he plays, the sleight of hand that obscures his real aim. He wants us to think of him as a 2004 Toyota Camry with all of its maintenance records and a clean Carfax report that has somehow become sentient. He needs it. To hide in plain sight, he has to come across as a Twitter account with an egg avatar and 47 followers that is only used to beg for a retweet from various local radio personalities.
That’s how he won the war before anyone even realized we were fighting one. Only after victory was assured did Jones peel back his bland facade and show people the depth of his depravity. By then, there was no more Dallas. There was only The Convention.
Seeing what has become of this place, it makes me laugh that we were all up in arms when we gave him $500 million in 2009 for a convention center hotel because otherwise, he said, we would never get another convention. And how we got upset when he came back just five years later and wanted $300 million to spruce up the convention center, or else we would fall behind the likes of St. Louis as a meeting destination.
Oh, the Omni is still around in 2108, yeah. But it’s become a musty warehouse. Someone from the American Numismatic Association deemed its ballrooms too small, and it was abandoned. Or so the story goes.
But, whatever. That’s small-time. You want to hear something crazy? He had the entire Trinity River paved over, and the toll road next to it, because someone from the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association complained about parking spaces. The whole thing. It’s actually sort of beautiful at night, if you manage to climb to the top of the wall without being shot. It looks like the surface of the moon or something.
They wanted me to join the resistance, but I knew if I came back I could stop it before—wait, what?
Yeah, Jerry Jones still owns the Cowboys in 2108.
