WNYU's studio lights blinked like distant stars through the soundproof glass. Sophia Chen sat behind the microphone, her headphones slightly too large for her frame, making her look younger than her nineteen years. In my original timeline, she'd been behind a different mic, at Hot 97, breaking the news of Maria's accident. But that future was becoming more fluid with each passing day, like tape washing away in water.
"And now," she said, her voice carrying that perfect blend of confidence and intimacy that would later make her a legendary A&R executive, "we have a world premiere. This is 'Tomorrow's Gold' by Maria Chen, produced by Marcus Johnson."
She caught my eye through the glass as she cued up the track. I sat in the engineering booth, watching the VU meters dance, remembering how this song had sounded on radio in 2024—compressed, squashed, stripped of its dynamics. But here, now, in 2004, through WNYU's analog broadcast chain, it would breathe.
The brass line hit, and I closed my eyes, letting myself drift between timelines. In the original version, the horns had been synthetic, a poor man's approximation of what I'd heard in that Seoul jazz club. But this time, we'd done it right—real players, real emotion, real gold.
*When the morning comes calling,
With diamonds in hand,
Will you remember the nights
When we had nothing planned?*
The studio phone lit up immediately. Then again. And again.
Sophia glanced at me, eyebrows raised. College radio usually got requests for obscure indie rock at this hour, not R&B with future-funk influences. But I'd known this would happen. Had seen it happen, in a different way, in a different time.
"We've got a caller," Sophia said into the mic as the song faded out. She pushed the button. "WNYU, you're on the air."
"That horn arrangement..." The voice was familiar in a way that made my stomach drop. "Is that the Seoul Progressive Jazz Orchestra's counterpoint style?"
My hands gripped the engineering console. Min-jun Park. The Korean jazz pioneer who'd invented that brass technique—who wouldn't invent it for another eight years. Who I'd watched perform it in that smoky Seoul club in 2012.
"Marcus?" Sophia was looking at me expectantly. "The caller asked about the horns..."
I leaned toward the talkback mic, my mouth dry. "It's... inspired by various sources. Jazz, funk, soul. We wanted something that felt both classic and future-forward."
"Future-forward indeed," Min-jun's voice came through the speakers, thick with accent and amusement. "Almost like you've heard something that hasn't been played yet."
The red recording light seemed to pulse with the rhythm of my heartbeat. Through the glass, Sophia's dark eyes studied me with that same penetrating gaze her sister had—the one that seemed to see through time itself.
"Music is circular," I said carefully, quoting words Min-jun himself would say to me over soju and jazz in a future that might never happen now. "Everything new is old, everything old becomes new again."
A soft chuckle came through the phone line. "I'm in New York for a week. Perhaps we could meet, discuss these... circular influences?"
Before I could respond, another line lit up. Then another. The request queue filled like a mixing board's channels, each light a possibility, a timeline, a future being rewritten.
"Looks like we've got a hit on our hands," Sophia said as she juggled the calls. "And Marcus... I've never seen the request lines light up like this. Not even for the Strokes' demo last year."
I watched her work the board, her movements precise, passionate. In my original timeline, she'd given up radio for A&R after Maria's death. But now... now everything was in flux, like a master tape being recorded over, track by track.
The song played again at the listeners' insistence. Min-jun's number blinked on the call screen—a temporal paradox in seven digits. Through the studio windows, the Manhattan skyline glittered like a visual equalizer, each light a note in the city's endless composition.
*Tomorrow's gold, tomorrow's gold,
Weighs heavy on my soul...*
"Marcus?" Sophia's voice pulled me back to the present. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost," I said softly, watching the VU meters paint pictures of possible futures. "Just tomorrow, coming faster than I expected."
She turned down the monitor feed, her expression serious. "You know, don't you? About Maria. About me. About things that haven't happened yet."
The question hung in the air like a sustained note, waiting for resolution. Outside, a police siren wailed past—a G sharp sliding to a G natural, Doppler effect bending time as well as tone.
"Some songs," I said finally, "you hear before they're written."
Sophia nodded slowly, understanding blooming in her eyes like reverb in an empty room. She turned back to the mic just as "Tomorrow's Gold" faded out again.
"That was Maria Chen's 'Tomorrow's Gold,' producing waves through the late-night frequencies. Speaking of waves..." She glanced at me. "Sometimes they come from the future, don't they?"
I smiled, remembering when she'd said those exact words at Maria's first Grammy acceptance speech—a speech that now might never happen, or might happen differently, or might...
The request lines kept blinking, each light a possible tomorrow, each call a thread in time's great tapestry. Min-jun's number pulsed like a metronome, counting measures in a symphony of temporal paradox.
Time, like music, was all about patterns. And I was finally learning how to remix them both.