Dawn crept across the Bronx like a hesitant melody, painting the brick facades in shades of amber and gold. Marcus stood at his bedroom window, watching the city wake while his MPC2000XL cooled down from an all-night session. The track he'd just finished – a complex weave of jazz harmonics and future-forward beats – still hung in the air like perfume, its frequencies etched into the very walls of his room.
His phone – the new one Rico had supplied, with its polyphonic ringtones and color screen that had seemed so advanced in this original 2004 – buzzed against his desk. The clock read 5:47 AM. In his first life, he'd been asleep at this hour, missing the call that could have changed everything.
"You up?" Rico's voice carried the gravel of an all-night hustle. "Course you up. Listen, I played your joints for some people last night. Heavy people."
Marcus pressed his forehead against the cool glass, watching a delivery truck navigate the narrow street below. In his memory – the one that hadn't happened yet – Rico had waited three weeks before shopping his demos around. Three weeks that had cost them crucial momentum.
"Sony?" Marcus asked, knowing the answer but playing the role of an eager teenager.
Rico's laugh crackled through the phone's tiny speaker. "Better. Jimmy Iovine's people. They want to meet. Today."
The name sent a shiver through Marcus's twice-lived spine. In his first timeline, he hadn't met Iovine until 2008, long after the industry's tectonic plates had shifted. By then, streaming was already eating traditional labels alive, and the deals being offered weren't what they could have been.
"What time?" He kept his voice level, though his heart hammered with the possibilities of this accelerated timeline.
"Noon. Midtown." Rico paused, and Marcus could hear the unspoken question: was his teenage protégé ready for this level of meeting?
Marcus glanced at his reflection in the window – seventeen again, but with thirty-five years of industry knowledge behind his eyes. "I'll need to tell my mother."
"Already did," Rico said, the smile evident in his voice. "Called her at the hospital an hour ago. She's got someone covering her shift. Gonna meet us there."
The surprise must have registered in his silence because Rico chuckled. "What, you thought I didn't know how to handle Maria? Give me some credit, little man. I've been watching you two, learning the plays."
Marcus smiled, remembering how Rico had eventually become like family in that other timeline. This time, he was moving faster, smoother, understanding the importance of keeping Maria Johnson in the loop.
"One more thing," Rico added, his tone shifting to something more serious. "They're bringing in an artist. Someone they think might vibe with your sound."
Marcus's hand tightened on the phone. "Who?"
"Can't say. But word is she's looking for something different. Something that ain't been heard before." The emphasis Rico put on 'she' made Marcus's pulse quicken. It couldn't be. Not yet. The timeline wasn't ready.
"Rico," Marcus started, but his mentor cut him off.
"Just be ready. Car's coming at eleven. Wear that black button-down I got you – the one that makes you look grown." The line went dead before Marcus could respond.
He turned from the window, surveying his room with new eyes. His equipment – primitive by the standards of his future memory but still capable of magic in the right hands – hummed with potential. The walls were lined with records, each one a piece of history he'd studied twice now: Miles Davis next to Dr. Dre, Nina Simone beside Timbaland.
On his desk, next to towers of composition notebooks filled with beats and lyrics from a future not yet written, sat his mother's CD player. She'd brought it in after listening to his demo all night, left it there like a symbol of her evolving faith in his dream.
Marcus moved to his closet, pushing aside hoodies and jerseys to find the shirt Rico mentioned. The fabric was smoother than anything he'd owned in his first run through these years, a small luxury his mentor had insisted on. "Dress like where you're going," Rico had said, "not where you're at."
The shirt still had its tags on. In his first life, he hadn't worn it until that crucial meeting in 2008. By then, it had hung forgotten in his closet for four years, a reminder of opportunities missed and momentum lost.
But now, as he slipped it off the hanger, the morning sun caught the fabric like a promise. This time would be different. This time, he was ready.
"Watch me," he whispered to the empty room, to the ghost of his former future, to the city stirring awake beyond his window. His fingers moved unconsciously, tapping out a rhythm on the shirt's plastic buttons – the beginning of a beat he wouldn't have written for another decade, in a life he was carefully unwriting.
The day stretched before him like a blank track, waiting to be filled with new harmonies, new possibilities, new futures. And somewhere in Midtown, in a sleek office he'd once visited too late, the industry was about to meet a seventeen-year-old producer who carried tomorrow's sound in today's hands.