The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion by Chris McCoy

rest of the Perfectly Reasonable, no nods hello, no joy. Playing this gig was business, and that’s all. They walked onstage.
    â€œSo please give a head-shattering welcome to your gods made flesh…the three…the only…THE PERFECTLY REASONABLE.”
    Skark strummed a guitar chord— BARRUMPH —and I saw blood trickle from the left ear of the roadie I had been speaking with earlier. He noticed me staring.
    â€œMy eardrum explodes a couple times a week,” said the roadie. “I’d get it fixed, but the band can’t afford to pay the crew’s health insurance anymore.”
    â€œThey’re that poor?”
    â€œUnless something happens to put them back in the spotlight, soon they’ll be playing weddings, though even that career would probably last about ten minutes.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNo man in his right mind would trust Cad around his bride. The man is a fiend. You know bassists.”
    â€œWhat about them?”
    â€œChicks love a man with good hands. Do yourself a favor. Never bring a woman around Cad.”
    â€”
    Every time Driver hit his snare drum, he wrenched my spine out of place; every time he hit a cymbal, he split my skull.
    On bass, Cad could do anything—bossa nova, Philadelphia soul, gypsy rumba—his hands moving so quickly they gave the visual effect of being at rest, draped over the fret board, shuddering every now and then before snapping back to their home position.
    And soaring above the fray were the sounds of both Skark’s guitar and his voice , which left no doubt in my mind that he was more alien than human.
    His range was stunning—one moment his voice was a crisp, pitch-perfect tenor, and the next it would rise to hit notes so high I couldn’t hear them at all, climbing upward and then disappearing from my auditory range altogether, even though I could see that his mouth was still open. If he fell silent, the audience did the same, waiting for him to speak. If he motioned for them to clap, they continued unprompted until he cut them off with a slash across his throat with the neck of his guitar. If he put his hand to the side of his temple to hear them sing his lyrics, they did so at full throat, or whatever parts of their bodies they used to make noise. When he asked if they wanted togo home with him, their affirmative response echoed through the stadium.
    The crowd was surprisingly noisy, considering there was barely anybody present. The stadium itself was massive—if you told me a hundred thousand people could have sat comfortably, I wouldn’t have been surprised—but it looked like there were only a couple hundred fans in attendance, most of whom had crammed themselves into the first five rows. The rest of the arena was a ghost town, with the fans in the back having entire sections of bleachers all to themselves. I saw wisps of smoke rising above these nomads, who were altering their consciousness for the show, no doubt.
    It was a depressing scene, though the fans who were there were quite loyal—wearing T-shirts bearing Skark’s face, singing along with every lyric, shouting out song requests.
    But halfway through the show, something went wrong.
    The incident occurred while Skark was finishing a song called “You Can’t Hide,” a hard-driving dance number about visiting different planets in search of the perfect girl, which Driver had told me was one of the band’s biggest hits.
    For most of the song, the fans were rapturous—dancing wildly, singing along, using face tentacles to make out with each other. But as the song was ending, somebody shouted at the stage.
    â€œPlay something new for once!” said the heckler. “This is the same set you did five years ago. You think I don’t remember?”
    â€œWho said that?” said Skark, putting his hand over his eyes to block the lights.
    â€œI said it ,” said the heckler. “And you know it’s