The stage lights caught the dust motes floating through Studio 8H, transforming them into constellations of golden possibility. I watched from behind the mixing board as Beyoncé adjusted her headphones, her silhouette casting long shadows across the recording booth's velvet walls. The song we'd been crafting for the past six hours was unlike anything that existed in either of my timelines – a fusion of neo-soul and what would have been called bedroom pop decades hence.
"Let's take it from the bridge," I spoke into the talkback mic, my fingers dancing across the SSL console's faders. In my previous life, I'd only dreamed of sessions like this. Now, at nineteen, I was already making the impossible real.
Rico leaned against the studio wall, his eyes closed in concentration as the first notes filled the control room. The melody I'd written felt both fresh and timeless, drawing from influences that wouldn't exist for years to come, yet somehow feeling perfectly at home in 2006.
Beyoncé's voice soared through the monitors:
*Time is a river flowing backward
Through the streets of yesterday
Every choice a new tomorrow
Every memory leads the way
But baby, when tomorrow echoes
I hear your voice calling me home*
The production was deliberately sparse – just Rhodes piano and subtle 808s, with layers of vocal harmonies that would have made Quincy Jones proud. I'd learned from my future mistakes; sometimes the spaces between the notes spoke louder than the notes themselves.
Maria sat in the corner of the control room, her hospital scrubs still on from her morning shift. She'd started attending these sessions more frequently, her initial skepticism about my career choice melting away with each small success. The pride in her eyes made my chest tight with emotion.
"That's the one," Rico declared as the final chord faded. "That's going to change everything."
If only he knew how right he was. In my original timeline, this session had never happened. The butterfly effect of my choices was creating ripples I couldn't have predicted. The song would go on to influence a generation of artists, spawning a whole movement of minimalist soul that wouldn't have existed otherwise.
Beyoncé emerged from the booth, her face glowing with the particular satisfaction that comes from capturing something magical. "Marcus," she said, "there's something different about the way you produce. Like you're pulling from somewhere else entirely."
I smiled, remembering similar words she'd spoken to me fifteen years from now, in a future that no longer existed. "Sometimes," I replied, "you have to trust the music to take you where it needs to go."
Maria caught my eye across the room, and I saw in her expression the same thing I'd been feeling: that this moment was bigger than all of us. That some dreams, when given a second chance, bloom into something far more beautiful than we could have imagined.
The digital clock on the wall blinked 3:47 AM, but none of us moved to leave. In the music industry, moments like these were sacred. Time travelers or not, we all recognized when we were making history.
Rico was already on his phone, lining up our next session. Mother had dozed off in her chair, peaceful in the knowledge that her son's future was secure. And I sat at the console, making minor adjustments to the mix, knowing that somewhere in the multiverse, another Marcus Johnson was wishing he had the chance I'd been given.
The night air hummed with possibility, and in the quiet of that studio, I could almost hear the echoes of tomorrow singing back to us.