Night had claimed Manhattan by the time I made it back to the studio, the city's pulse quickening with that peculiar energy that only exists after dark. The contract in my briefcase had dried, but its implications still rippled through the air like sound waves. In my previous life, I'd spent years chasing this moment. Now it felt like both an ending and a beginning.
The studio lobby was empty except for Danny, the night manager who'd eventually become Jimmy Jam's right-hand man in my original timeline. Tonight, he was just a kid with dreams, nodding along to something in his headphones. He buzzed me through without looking up – another small change, another butterfly effect in motion.
Beyoncé was already in Studio C, bent over a notebook in the soft glow of the mixing board's LEDs. She looked up as I entered, her smile carrying the warmth of recognition that still felt surreal in this timeline.
"Congratulations, Mr. Universal recording artist," she said, closing the notebook. "Rico called. Said you handled that room like you'd been doing this for decades."
If she only knew. I set my briefcase down, settling into the familiar embrace of the production chair. "Sometimes things just line up exactly how they're supposed to."
*Like stars across the midnight sky
Destiny's no stranger to time
Every path we choose to take
Leads us where we need to break*
She sang the lines softly, testing them against the night air. New lyrics, born from our last session, already evolving beyond what we'd captured. In my original timeline, these words had never existed. The melody was reshaping itself, becoming something that belonged purely to this new reality.
"I've been thinking about the bridge," she said, moving to sit beside me at the console. "There's something there about time, about moments like these. Like everything that's happened was always going to happen, just waiting for us to catch up."
My hands froze over the faders. Sometimes her intuition bordered on dangerous – as if some part of her could sense the temporal displacement that surrounded us. "What do you mean?"
"The way you produce, the way you write... it's like you're pulling from somewhere beyond now. Like you've already heard the future of music, and you're just helping us get there faster."
The air in the studio grew thick with possibility. In my previous life, it had taken years to develop this level of creative trust with any artist. But here, now, it was happening naturally, as if the universe was compensating for lost time.
I pulled up the rough mix from our last session, letting the sparse arrangement fill the room. The production choices I'd made were deliberate anachronisms – techniques that wouldn't become common for another decade, subtle sonic signatures from a future that no longer existed.
"Listen to this part," I said, isolating a section where her vocals seemed to dance between dimensions. "Sometimes the most powerful moments are the ones we can't explain. They just... are."
She closed her eyes, swaying slightly to the rhythm. "It's like you're writing tomorrow's classics today."
If she only knew how literal that statement was. I watched her lose herself in the music, remembering how in my original timeline, we'd had this same conversation years later, in a different studio, under different circumstances. The weight of knowing pressed against my chest.
My phone buzzed – a message from Maria:
*Baby, just heard from Rico. So proud of you. Your father would be too.*
Another change to the timeline. In my first life, I'd never known what my father thought about anything. But in this version, Maria had reached out to him last month, something my success had given her the courage to do. Small changes, rippling outward.
"We should celebrate," Beyoncé said, pulling me back to the present. "This is big, Marcus. You're about to change everything."
*Again*, I thought but didn't say. Instead, I turned back to the console, fingers finding their place on the faders. "Let's create something first. Something that makes this night mean something."
She nodded, understanding. In both timelines, music had always been our truest language. She headed for the booth, headphones already in hand, while I pulled up a new session.
The night stretched ahead of us, full of possibilities that had never existed before. Somewhere in the multiverse, another Marcus Johnson was still struggling to make it, still years away from this moment. But here, now, the future was writing itself in real-time, each note a stepping stone between what had been and what could be.
I pressed record, and the red light bloomed to life, a beacon in the darkness. Time, I had learned, was just another instrument in the grand arrangement of existence. And tonight, we were composing something entirely new.