Night had claimed the studio by the time we finished the last record. The room felt different now, charged with the electricity of revelation. Rico sat at the mixing board, scribbling notes – track lengths, production techniques, patterns he'd recognized. Mom had settled into the worn leather couch, eyes closed, perhaps seeing scenes I could only imagine.
"There's something else," she said finally, reaching into the box one last time. What she pulled out wasn't vinyl but paper – pages yellow with age, creased from repeated folding. "His production notes. Everything he was trying to accomplish, all written down."
The pages trembled slightly in her hands. In my first timeline, I'd never seen her so vulnerable, so connected to the past. She held the notes out, not to me, but to Rico.
"I want you to look at these," she said. "Tell me if I'm crazy. Tell me if what Marcus is doing now..."
Rico took the papers with professional reverence, spreading them across the mixing board. In the blue glow of the VU meters, my father's handwriting sprawled across the pages – diagrams, frequency charts, theories about where music was heading. My breath caught as I recognized concepts that wouldn't be mainstream for decades.
"Jesus," Rico muttered, tracing a particularly complex workflow chart. "This is... this is exactly what we're seeing in the industry now. Digital integration, layered production, cross-genre fusion." He looked up at Mom. "Your husband wasn't just ahead of his time. He was mapping the future."
I leaned in, studying the notes more carefully. There, in the margins, were early thoughts on techniques I'd used – would use – in tracks that helped define the 2010s. My father had seen it all coming, had tried to manifest it too soon.
"The timing," I said softly, more to myself than them. "It's always about the timing."
"What do you mean?" Rico asked, but Mom was watching me with an expression that suggested she already knew.
I picked up one of the diagrams – a production technique that wouldn't be feasible until ProTools evolved three more versions. "It's not enough to see where music's going. You have to understand when it's ready to get there."
"That's what broke him," Mom said quietly. "The waiting. Knowing something was possible but not being able to make anyone else hear it." She turned to Rico. "That's why I was so afraid when I started hearing these sounds in Marcus's music. The same patterns, the same forward motion."
Rico gathered the notes carefully, squaring their edges with deliberate precision. "But Marcus isn't pushing too hard. He's... it's like he knows exactly how far to take each innovation. Like he can see not just where music's going, but the exact path it needs to take to get there."
If he only knew.
I traced the grooves of the final vinyl with my fingertip, feeling the future-that-was pressed into their spiral. "Maybe that's what Dad's work was really about. Not just seeing tomorrow, but understanding how to build the road that leads there."
Mom crossed to the mixing board, laying her hand over mine on the record's surface. "You sound so much older than seventeen when you talk like that."
The moment balanced on a knife's edge of revelation. In my chest, the truth of my time travel pressed against my ribs like a bass line wanting to drop. But some secrets weren't mine alone to carry.
"I had a good teacher," I said instead, meeting her eyes. "Someone who taught me that knowing when to hold back is just as important as knowing when to push forward."
Rico was already rewinding the first track, hungry for another listen. "We should digitize these," he said. "Archive them properly. This is history right here – history and prophecy all rolled into one."
"No," Mom said, with a firmness that surprised us both. "Not yet." She looked at me. "These recordings, these notes – they're not just about music. They're about legacy, about choices." Her hand squeezed mine. "About learning from the past so you don't have to repeat it."
Understanding bloomed in my chest. She wasn't just protecting my father's work; she was protecting me from the weight of it. In my first timeline, I'd struggled under expectations I didn't understand. Now, seeing these records, these notes, I realized how much heavier those expectations might have been.
"The future will come when it's ready," I said, echoing words she'd told me in another lifetime. "Our job is to help it arrive safely."
Rico looked between us, sensing currents he couldn't quite navigate. Outside, the night hummed with the eternal rhythm of the city – trains and traffic and distant music all blending into the beat that had driven my father's innovation, that drove mine now.
The vinyl spun to silence, the needle lifting automatically at the end of its journey. But the frequencies lingered in the air, ghostly prophecies of a future that was both warning and welcome, legacy and possibility, echo and answer all at once.