Maxine's Recording Studio occupied the hollow bones of what used to be—or rather, would have been—a Bank of America branch. The irony wasn't lost on me as I stood before its unwashed windows at 9:47 AM, watching Rico arrange sound panels with the precise care of a man setting up dominoes. In my first life, this building had housed my initial failures. Now it would witness my first deliberate steps toward rewriting not just my history, but an entire industry's future.
"You planning to lurk out there all morning?" Rico called through the glass. "Because T.K.'s people already called twice."
I pushed through the door, the familiar scent of dust and dampened acoustics hitting me like déjà vu. The studio had changed since last night—or perhaps my memory of it had. New monitors gleamed on the mixing desk, their labels still plastic-fresh. Equipment that hadn't been here in my first run through 2004 hummed expectantly.
"You upgraded," I said, running a finger along a MIDI controller that shouldn't exist for another eight months. Rico's connections had always been impressive, but this was something else.
Rico's grin carried the sharp edge of triumph. "Amazing what happens when you let slip to certain distributors that T.K.'s looking for a home base in New York." He adjusted his cap—forward-facing today, business mode. "Though I got a feeling you knew that would happen."
Before I could construct a suitable deflection, the door chimed. Devon entered, carrying himself with the easy confidence of someone who'd woken up to find his social media exploding—except social media didn't exist yet, and his newfound reputation had spread the old-fashioned way: word of mouth, faster than any algorithm.
"T.K.'s stuck in traffic," Devon announced, setting down a bag that clinked with promise. "Said to start without him. He wants to hear what we can do with that second verse progression from last night."
Rico raised an eyebrow at me. "Second verse? Thought you were holding court in the back all night."
"I record everything up here," I tapped my temple, another truth disguised as metaphor. The progression Devon mentioned had originally emerged during a late-night session in 2009. Now it would arrive five years early, birthed from a cipher rather than a studio session.
Behind the glass, the recording booth beckoned—its dimensions identical to my memories, but its potential vastly different. I began unpacking the rhythm tracks I'd reconstructed during my sleepless night, each one a careful balance between innovation and plausibility.
"You're doing that thing again," Devon observed, leaning against the mixing desk. "Looking at everything like you're seeing double."
"Just mapping possibilities," I said, loading the first beat into Rico's upgraded system. The monitors caught frequencies I hadn't expected to have access to yet—another ripple effect of accelerated timelines.
Rico settled into his chair, hands hovering over the controls with practiced ease. "Alright, wonder boys. Show me what the future sounds like."
If he only knew.
Devon stepped into the booth, adjusting his headphones with the casual precision of someone who'd done this a thousand times—though in this timeline, it was only his third studio session. I watched him through the glass, this young artist who'd been a cautionary tale in one life and was now becoming something else entirely.
The beat dropped, and with it, the careful walls between my past and present knowledge began to blur. Devon caught the rhythm instantly, his flow weaving between frequencies with an intuition that matched my future-borrowed expertise. Rico's eyes widened as patterns emerged that wouldn't be mainstream for years, but felt organic, inevitable.
My phone buzzed: Mother. "Left something in the jacket pocket. For luck."
I reached into father's jacket, still hanging on the back of my chair, and found a small brass key I recognized from another lifetime. In my first run through these years, she'd given it to me much later, after the bank had foreclosed on our apartment. Now it sat cool against my palm, a talisman from a future we'd avoid.
Through the glass, Devon caught my eye and nodded—he'd found the pocket I'd built into the beat, the space where T.K.'s verse would slot in perfectly. The timeline was shifting again, futures realigning like tracks on a mixing board.
Rico's hands danced across the new equipment, catching harmonics we shouldn't be able to isolate yet. "Whatever this is," he said softly, "it's bigger than last night."
He had no idea. But he would.
T.K.'s text lit up my phone: "5 minutes out. Ready to make history?"
I gripped mother's key, feeling its edges press possibility into my palm. History, I thought, was just another track we could remaster.
Time to lay down the first take.