I hit the vape. I’m in the reception of Dallas Venture Capital Inc., about to pitch a new product. An assistant waves at me to stop vaping before beckoning me through into a meeting room. Around a table sit twelve investors, some of the richest people in Texas. The CEO had hired Matthew McConaughey to play him, receiving decisions via ear piece but then acting as a flamboyant alpha male business mogul otherwise. For these appearances, Matt only charged seventy five bucks an hour, as well as unlimited usage of every golf course in Texas, and the corporation got there moneys worth. As I quietly set up my apparatus, he sat with angled legs at the head of the table, his middle and index finger on his lips as he looked out of the window. I clap for attention.
I had stayed up the night before constructing the device. Every time the program crashed, I did a line of coke, managing to extinguish all bugs in the software in just a few hours. The fitting of cables, the soldering, I did everything by the hotel window, watching the sun rise in Dallas.
"This is one hell of a city." I say to myself, leaning the chair back on two legs and lighting a cigarette. It was ready.
Five hours later it now rested on the board room table. It was basically an aluminium box stood on four half-ping-pong balls I had secured from a vending machine.
I was wearing a disguise. The cop that wore a mask of my face had struck again just the day before, this time caught on multiple security cameras, plastered over news networks in 4K. To avoid any confusion, I bleached my hair white and had used some temporary piercings in my cheeks to change the shape of my face slightly. On my neck an insect had bit me and had swollen to the size of a grape. I also wore a fake moustache made from actual human hair, it kept tickling my top lip when I spoke.
“Gentlemen. I don’t wanna waste any time pullin’ on your dicks. I invented the greatest thing the world has ever seen.” I say, pressing a button. The side of the aluminium box opened up, revealing a cowboy hat. All the investors leaned forward.
“I don’t give a shit about the climate crisis, okay. What I do give a shit about is getting sunburnt. And I think we can all agree, its been pretty hot in Texas the last few summers.”
“Let me see that.” Says McConaughey. I take the hat from the box and throw it to him, frisbee style. He catches it.
“Welcome to the future of hats. Particularly the cowboy hat. I’ve modified the rim with AI. It tracks the movement of the sun and makes sure your head is protected.” I say, demonstrating by shining a daylight bulb towards the hat. As if by magic (but entirely by technology), the rim of the hat begins to shift around. McConaughey laughs, putting it on. I give further demonstrations of how the hat adapts to the light around it.
“Alright, I kinda like it.” Says McConaughey.
“Its not just limited to cowboy hats either. We can do baseball, we can do bucket, whatever you want. We’re talking about the future of hats, gentlemen. You remember pictures from the good ol’ days? Everyone wore a hat. If you have a head, you need a hat.”
“If you have a head, you need a hat…” says McConaughey, trying it on. I give a long technical description how it works as McConaughey approaches the door to the meeting room balcony.
“I look good in it, right?” he says to the investors. They all nod in unison. McConaughey looks at his reflection in the glass of the door before stepping outside.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet tested the hat in the daylight, having built it the night before and only using artificial UVs from lamps. As soon as McConaughey stepped outside, the hat malfunctions and brings the brim down around his face. It had clamped down hard, making him stumble backwards into the boardroom. The investors all ran to him, trying to yank the hat off his head.
“It’s just a prototype. It’s just an idea. A proof of concept.” I say.
“Will you get this goddamn contraption off our boss?” says one of the investors. I go over and start pulling at the hat along with the other millionaires. After much heaving, sweating and some temper tantrums, we finally get the hat off the head of McConaughey. Somehow, it has turned his head into a perfect cylinder. It has stretched his head out like a 3D model from the 90s. He staggers around the room, trying to speak. I hit the vape and my fake moustache peels off my face in one go, landing glue-side down on the carpet.
I apologise for the fiasco, as well as my Interstellar review, and bid the board goodbye. It wasn’t everyday that I made a mistake, but when I did, turns out it was kind of a big deal. I supposed that this in itself was actually a good thing. What I did mattered. The higher you might try to attain success, the more opportunity there was for you to fail. The worst repercussions hinted at the potential for the best successes. Though it didn’t turn out in my favour this time around, I knew that if I just kept trying, the world would be a better place.
