"Welcome, brother Thomas."
"I am honored, Brother Simon."
"You have completed your training. We can now reveal to you the purpose of our organization ... the conspiracies that we maintain, to keep the world's sanity intact."
"I am ready."
"But first, some coffee." Simon poured himself a mug. "We struggle with this. Requiring that you prove your loyalty to serving mankind, without actually knowing how or why ... it offends truth. But we've found no way around it. Do you have any guesses at the conspiracies we are asking you to maintain?"
"Perhaps the deadliness of radioactivity?"
"No, radioactivity exists, and is just as deadly as they say."
"Perhaps cell phone radiation really does cause cancer?"
"Not that we know of; the evidence seems to say otherwise."
"Faked moon landings? Elvis is still alive? UFOs? The earth is flat?"
"No, no, no, and no ... those particular conspiracy theories are all wrong."
"The Illuminati! Are you the Illumnati?"
"Not in the normal sense, no, we don't control governments or currencies. We are rather specialized."
"Oh my God ... it must be ... God, is that it? There really is a God? Are we a simulation?"
"I don't think so, personally. Although brother Alfred does. Really we haven't conclusive evidence one way or the other."
"Hm." Thomas's forehead creased in though. "Time travel?"
"Nope." Simon sipped his coffee.
"Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?"
"You recall your mother saying 'Don't make that face or it'll freeze like that?'" asked Simon.
"Yes, and 'it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye'."
"Well, people's faces really do freeze like that. We have to disappear the people this has happened to, to prevent mass insanity."
"What? All this secrecy for THAT? How would that cause mass insanity? And it isn't even true!"
"It is true. We store them all in the place people think Nebraska is. That's our other conspiracy."
"Oh come on you're pulling my leg. That's where Warren Buffet's from."
"He's one of our primary benefactors. His sister's face got stuck when they were children, and he helps look after her. You've never actually BEEN there, right? You think it's just endless cornfields."
"I have! I drove through Omaha. Nebraska IS endless cornfields."
"We've patched up a little corner of the territory with actors and props so as not to draw suspicion."
"Mutual of Omaha Wild Kindom, I watched it all the time as a kid!"
"Our propaganda. Most of its filming took place in Africa, which really exists, and furthered understanding of the environment. Which is a goodness in itself."
"And you're saying people's faces get stuck like that ..."
Brother Simon turned on a video, showing a mob of people with their eyes crossed and their tongues sticking out. "Here's what 'Nebraska' is REALLY full of."
"This is pretty hard to swallow. You're going to have to show me proof. Show me the people with their faces stuck like that. Show me Nebraska."
"Yes, we will. You will. Tomorrow. We've booked you an Amtrak ticket. You'll be living in 'Nebraska', spoon-feeding the StuckFaces and posing as a fan of the Cornhuskers."
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "Turns out every major conspiracy theory is false. We did land on the moon, the gov didn't kill John Lennon, etc etc. The official stories are all true... except the one nobody saw coming..."