The afternoon light slanted through the warehouse's high windows, casting long shadows across the rehearsal space like bars of music on an endless sheet. I'd run the number four times, each iteration bringing us closer to the future I remembered, yet pushing us further into uncharted territory.
Time flows different when you know Which way destiny should go Dancing on the edge of then Writing futures with a pen
The lyrics spilled through the space as I made minute adjustments to the mix, each tweak a careful calibration between what was possible now and what shouldn't be possible for years. Behind me, I felt her presence before I heard her approach – some frequencies resonate across all timelines.
"Your arrangements are unlike anything I've ever heard," Beyoncé's voice carried that same quiet authority I remembered from our first meeting in my original timeline. But this was 2005, not 2012, and the woman standing beside my console was still ascending to her throne, not yet the queen she would become.
I turned, maintaining the careful composure I'd rehearsed in my mind for this moment. "Sometimes you have to break the rules to find new ones."
She smiled, and for a moment I saw both versions of her overlapping – the rising star of 2005 and the industry revolutionary she would become. "Rules," she said, testing the word like a new note, "are just training wheels for artists who haven't found their balance."
In my previous life, she'd said something similar during a late-night studio session in 2013. The déjà vu was dizzying.
"I've been studying your production techniques," she continued, moving closer to the console. Her fingers traced the air above the faders as if reading braille. "The way you layer frequencies, the harmonic structures... it's like you're having a conversation with the future."
My pulse quickened, but years of temporal tightrope walking had taught me to dance with danger. "Music is mathematics," I said, echoing my words to L.A. Reid. "And mathematics is prophecy."
"Is that what this is?" Her eyes met mine with an intensity that had toppled empires. "Prophecy?"
Before I could respond, the space filled with the opening beats of her rehearsal track. Her dancers took the stage, but she lingered, her attention split between her upcoming performance and the riddle of my existence.
"Your set for the show," she said, backing away but maintaining eye contact. "I want to see it. The full run-through."
It wasn't a request. In either timeline, she never really made requests. I nodded, knowing this moment had been inevitable from the second I'd opened my eyes in 2004 with twenty years of future memory intact.
Rico materialized at my side as she walked away, her presence leaving afterimages like a camera flash. "That wasn't supposed to happen for seven more years," I said quietly.
"What wasn't?" Rico asked, then held up his hand. "No, don't tell me. Some things I'm better off not knowing."
On stage, Beyoncé commanded her space with the same regal presence that would one day make her legendary. But now and then, her eyes would drift to where I stood in the shadows, curiosity warring with artistic focus.
"Run it again," I called to my team, knowing each repetition brought us closer to a future that was both familiar and utterly unknown. The music swelled, and I lost myself in the complexity of temporal harmonics and destiny's rhythm.
Hours bled into each other as both teams worked their separate pieces of the show. The warehouse became a temporal junction box, past and future crossing paths in measures and beats. My phone buzzed periodically with updates from Maria about the community center, messages from L.A. Reid about the subsidiary label, and an endless stream of industry politics that needed navigation.
But through it all, I felt the weight of her occasional glances, the gravity of recognition pulling us slowly but inevitably into each other's orbit. Some songs demand to be sung, some stories insist on being told, and some connections transcend the linear progression of time itself.
As the day wound down and the teams began to disperse, she passed by my station one final time. "Tomorrow," she said, not breaking stride. "Full run-through. I want to see what prophecy looks like in motion."
I watched her go, remembering countless studio sessions that hadn't happened yet, collaborations that now might never unfold the same way. The timeline was shifting beneath my feet like sand in an hourglass, but some anchors remained fixed – lighthouse beacons in the temporal storm.
"You know," Rico said, beginning to pack up his equipment, "sometimes I think you're playing a game so complex none of us can see the board."
I smiled, thinking of the performance to come, the carefully choreographed collision of past and future that would change everything. Again. "It's not a game, Rico. It's a symphony. We're just finally finding the right tempo."
The warehouse emptied, leaving me alone with the ghost of future music and the echo of a connection that refused to be bound by time's conventional flow. Tomorrow would bring its own movements and measures, its own harmonies of fate.
But for now, in the gathering dusk, I let myself remember a future that was both certain and impossible, while the present hummed around me like an instrument waiting to be played.