[ WP ] In the land of the blind , the one-eyed man is king .

Serge could feel the crowd above him in the arena. Writhing, impatient, grasping. Perfect. It was 45 minutes after Fader was scheduled to go on. His bandmates were exasperated. Daud Griffin, founder of Griffin Records, was somewhere in throng. He was going to get a show he'd never forget. 
 
 His mates and manager been shouting at him, but he could n't hear. He was feeling the rumble of ten thousand eager souls. He was matching their pulse. He did n't need to see them to understand them. Griffin was important, but Serge did n't forget what brought him here. The crowds energy frothed and foamed. By now everyone has lost themselves to their shared Leviathan. Their matched emotion made them a single entity. They were syncing, and for each one in sync, amplifying one another. Positive interference was a powerful force. Others guessed at what was happening when a person followed their gut instinct. When a crowd lost control and devolved into riot. When groups hallucinated the same shared dream. Serge could see it. He could measure it. He could control it. 
 
 `` They're ready.'' Serge announced, his eyes still closed. 
 
 `` I think they've been ready since Nasty Fall finished, you fucking diva.'' 
 
 Serge grabbed his lead guitarists shoulder, looked directly in his eyes, and smiled. `` Garret, have I ever let you down? This is going to be our best show yet. Fuck that. This is going to be every person in that arena's best show of their lives, including Daud fucking Griffin.'' 
 
 They marched through the cavernous grey concrete hallway toward the stage. The crowd sensed the change. The roar changed tone. Gradually, and ever more intensly, it grew louder. When they saw the band saunter out to their spots, the cheer washed over the stage like a rogue wave except it never let up. There was no introduction. Fader launched into their first song. A driving track that got no radio airplay. Almost everyone in the audience had heard it, but almost every single one felt they shared the secret of this obscure song that just happened to be one of their favorites. Until the next one. Then they remembered why that one might be Fader's best. 
 
 The sometimes shimmering, sometimes pulsing, sometimes reposed crowd was guided through a flipbook of emotions. Daud Griffen forgot himself for a while. He was 16 again, sneaking into clubs and appreciating the raw, unfettered talent of future industry titans... and like then, when he snapped back into himself, he knew he had to have them. 
 
 And before them all was Serge, a freshly minted man who never knew his father, raised in a cult by his hippy mother, who'd built a band from a bunch of overly-technical math rockers more concerned with impressing their fellow musicians than making real music, to this... a two year old world phenomena. 
 
 `` If only they could see what I see.'' He thought, catching a ripple of disturbance to the left side. He gently guided the crowd to envelope and extinguish it. He saw the energy of the crowd rise and breathe like baking bread. He broke down their walls of ego and allowed them to intoxicate themselves in the release. He brought them back down to stunned intimacy and brief recharge with a somber, heartfelt tune, then back again. He never allowed them self-reflection or awkwardness. 
 
 No one would be able to describe to their friends who were n't there what it was like. `` You just have to go.'' each would say and shrug after several minutes of excitedly tripping over their words. 
 
 Griffen was only the first big fish in the bidding war that ensued. `` He's a god, it's as simple as that.'' he would implore his board weeks later, when asking them to accept terms he would n't have dreamed of a month before. 
 
 Serge's mother would call it'seeing auras'. And perhaps she did, herself. Perhaps that where it came from, Serge did n't know. His mother was fried and could n't talk sensibly about anything for more than a few sentences before she fell into ramblings about aliens, or ruling councils from Europa or who knows what. But to Serge, it was n't seeing them, but just *sensing* something that might be interpreted as an aura. He could sense people's emotions, surface thoughts, and even intentions sometimes before they knew they even had them. It was even easier when people were in a group. He was, at heart, a scientist and his mother's boyfriend's cult was the perfect proving ground for his'vision' and his experiments with it throughout his youth. He did n't buy into all of the hippy-dippy shit. He saw it for what it was -- money and power. 
 
 And after tonight, he'd have both.
