Late night at Rico's new office, Manhattan sprawled below us like a circuit board of light and shadow. The contracts from Jay's team lay spread across his desk—thick with potential, heavy with destiny. Rico stood at the window, bow tie undone after the industry dinner we'd just left, his reflection fractured across the glass wall.
"You want to tell me how you knew?" he asked finally, not turning around. "About streaming. About social media. About all of it."
I settled deeper into the leather chair, feeling the weight of unspoken truths. The dinner had been a triumph—every major label head present, all of them scrambling to adjust to the future I'd outlined. In my previous timeline, it had taken them years to catch up to these realizations. Now they were ahead of schedule, and the industry's tectonic plates were shifting beneath our feet.
"Research," I said, the lie familiar on my tongue. "Market trends. Technology tracking."
Rico turned then, his eyes sharp in the city-lit darkness. "Nah, brother. This is different. The way you move... it's like you've seen the whole game played out already." He picked up the Billboard magazine from his desk—my face on the cover, the headline screaming about revolution. "Like you know exactly which dominoes to tip."
The moment stretched between us, taut with possibility. In both timelines, Rico had been more than a manager—he'd been my compass, my foundation. But this version of him saw too much, understood too deeply.
"You remember that first day?" I asked, deflecting. "When I showed you the production techniques?"
"You mean when you showed me sounds that shouldn't exist yet?" He laughed, but there was an edge to it. "Yeah, I remember. Same way I remember every time you've been just a little too right about everything. The Beyoncé collaboration. Jay's deal. Even the studio choices." He leaned against the desk. "It's like you're remembering instead of predicting."
My heart stuttered. The same words my mother had used. I stood, walked to the window, watched a plane's lights trace a line across the night sky. In the glass, I could see both our reflections—Rico's patient stillness, my own face carved with shadows of futures unlived.
"What if," I said slowly, "someone knew exactly how the next twenty years of music would unfold? All the technological changes, the industry shifts, the cultural movements. What would they do with that knowledge?"
"They'd do exactly what you're doing," Rico replied without hesitation. "They'd change everything." He paused, then added softly, "The question is: how do you know, Marcus?"
I turned to face him, this friend who'd been loyal across timelines. In my pocket, my phone buzzed—probably Beyoncé, wanting to discuss the tracks we'd worked on all week. Songs that were simultaneously new and old, fresh and remembered. The weight of temporal paradox pressed against my chest.
"Some things," I said carefully, "are harder to explain than others. But what matters is what we do with the knowledge we have. How we use it to make things better."
Rico studied me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Better for everyone, or just for us?"
"That's why I need you," I said, meaning it across all timelines. "To help me keep perspective. To make sure we're building something that lasts, something that matters."
He picked up the contracts again, thumbed through pages that would reshape the industry. "These deals you've structured... they're not just about profit. They're about changing the whole system. Artist ownership. Fair streaming rates. Direct distribution." He looked up. "You're not just predicting the future, you're trying to fix it."
"Is that so wrong?"
"Depends on what you're fixing it from." Rico set the contracts down, came to stand beside me at the window. Below, the city pulsed with midnight energy, unaware of how its soundtrack was being rewritten. "Just remember, whatever you know, wherever it comes from... you can't control everything. Sometimes the best music comes from improvisation."
I smiled at that—the same wisdom Rico had offered in my original timeline, just years earlier. "Speaking of music," I said, pulling up the rough mix of Kanye's track on my phone. "Listen to this bridge. Tell me if it feels too..."
"Too future?" Rico grinned, the tension breaking. "Man, everything you touch feels like that. Maybe that's your real magic—making tomorrow's sound feel like today's destiny."
The track played through my phone's speakers, filling the office with carefully crafted anachronism. Rico closed his eyes, nodding to the beat, while I watched our reflections in the window—two figures suspended between what was and what could be, orchestrating changes that would ripple through decades.
Somewhere in the city below, radio stations were playing our productions, each frequency carrying pieces of an altered future into the present. And in studios across Manhattan, producers were already trying to reverse engineer the sound of tomorrow.
Let them try, I thought. Some frequencies only existed in the space between timelines, in the harmony of what was and what would be. In the end, maybe that's what music was always meant to be—a bridge between moments, a way to make time dance to a different rhythm.
Rico opened his eyes, turned to me with that look that said he knew I was carrying something bigger than success. "Whatever you're not telling me," he said, "whatever you're trying to build... I'm with you. Just don't forget who you are while you're becoming who you're meant to be."
I nodded, grateful across timelines for his unwavering loyalty. Outside, the city played its eternal symphony of ambition and dreams, while inside, we orchestrated changes that would echo through years yet to come. Tomorrow would bring new sessions, new decisions, new ripples through time's fabric.
But tonight, in this moment between moments, I let myself believe that some changes to the timeline weren't just necessary—they were destined.