The after-hours quiet of Electric Lady Studios wrapped around me like a familiar ghost. My fingers traced the edge of the vintage Neve console—the same one that would sell for millions at auction in 2019, though now it was just another piece of legendary gear in a legendary room. Outside, Greenwich Village hummed with late-night energy, but in here, time moved differently.
Beyoncé's voice floated through the monitors, a cappella and raw:
*Memories of days not lived
Dreams of moments yet to pass
Time's a gift that can't be given
But baby, we'll make it last*
I'd written those lyrics this morning, the irony of them burning in my chest. She'd asked what inspired them, and I'd fed her some line about prophetic dreams. The truth would have sounded far more impossible.
"Play it again," she said from the doorway, making me jump. I hadn't heard her come back in. She moved like that—silent and graceful, already carrying the regal bearing that would define her later years. Her eyes found mine in the dimness. "Something about that bridge..."
"The modulation?" I asked, though I knew that wasn't what she meant. In this timeline, as in the last, she had an almost supernatural sense for authenticity. For truth buried in melody.
She settled into the chair beside me, close enough that I could smell her perfume—Givaudan's unreleased fragrance that wouldn't hit the market until 2007. Another anachronism I shouldn't have recognized.
"No," she said softly. "The words. 'Memories of days not lived.' It's like..." She paused, searching. "Like you're remembering the future."
My heart stumbled. In my original timeline, we'd had this conversation years later, in a different studio, as different people. Now here we were, the same words falling into a new moment, and I watched her face for any sign that she sensed the strange déjà vu of it all.
"Sometimes," I said carefully, "I think music lets us do that. Remember things that haven't happened yet. Feel moments that are still coming."
She studied me with those eyes that had always seen too much. "Is that what you're doing with these productions? Because nobody's ever heard anything like them. It's like..." She gestured at the console, at the pro tools session glowing on the screen. "Like you know what music is supposed to sound like five years from now."
Try fifteen, I thought but didn't say. Instead, I pulled up another track—the skeleton of what would become her biggest hit in my original timeline. But this version was different, evolved. A fusion of what had been and what could be.
The first notes filled the room, and I watched her eyes widen. This was the moment that had changed everything last time. But now...
"That's it," she whispered. "That's the sound I've been hearing in my head but couldn't explain to anyone." She turned to me, wonder and something else in her expression. "How did you know?"
Because I've lived this all before, I wanted to tell her. Because in another life, we found this sound together years from now. Because time isn't the straight line everyone thinks it is.
"Maybe we're just tuned to the same frequency," I said instead. "Sometimes artists just... connect like that."
She nodded, but her eyes hadn't left my face. The same look she'd given me in 2018—would give me in 2018—when we finally talked about everything. About destiny and timing and paths crossing before they were supposed to.
"Play it again," she said. "But this time, let's take it somewhere new."
I reached for the faders, ready to bend time once more. The music swelled, and for a moment, I let myself forget about timelines and causality. This was why I'd been sent back—not just to fix mistakes, but to create something pure. Something true.
Her voice rose with the track, improvising over the chord changes, finding melodies that belonged to no timeline but this one. New words, new frequencies, new destiny. We worked through the night, building tomorrow's sound with yesterday's tools, and I realized that maybe some moments weren't meant to be replicated. Maybe some magic only happened once, even across multiple lifetimes.
As dawn crept into the studio, painting everything in gold, she paused by the door. "You know what's strange?" she said. "I feel like we've done this before. Like we've known each other..."
"In another life?" I offered, the truth slipping out disguised as metaphor.
She smiled—that same smile that would grace magazine covers and stadium screens. "Yeah. Exactly like that."
After she left, I sat in the control room watching the sun rise over Greenwich Village, the finished track playing softly through the monitors. Some changes to the timeline were intentional—calculated moves toward a better future. But others... others were like this. Moments of pure creation, of souls connecting across time's broken boundaries.
The music played on, bridging then and now, here and there, what was and what would be. And for the first time since waking up in 2004, I wondered if maybe the point wasn't to recreate the future I'd known, but to find one I'd never imagined possible.