The Atlantic Records conference room felt different at midnight – more confessional than corporate, the city lights below creating a constellation of possibilities through the windows. Melissa Chen sat across from me, her BlackBerry finally silent after a day of industry earthquakes.
"You turned down Beyoncé," she said, not a question but a measure of the power shift my future knowledge had engineered. "Twice. And then Jay-Z offers you a joint venture." She leaned forward, her expression caught between admiration and suspicion. "You're playing a game I can't quite see, Marcus."
*When starlight bends through time's lens
Every moment holds infinite ends
While destiny deals its hidden hand
In a game few understand
(But the house always knows the score)*
I pulled up the new track on my laptop – the one I'd engineered specifically for this moment, built from fragments of a collaboration that had happened years later in another life. The production was a careful amalgamation of 2006's familiar elements and innovations that wouldn't exist for years: rhythms that would define 2010, harmonics from 2013, mixing techniques from 2018, all woven together like a temporal tapestry.
"Listen," I said simply.
The music filled the room, and I watched Melissa's face as recognition dawned – not of the specific elements, but of their inevitable convergence. This wasn't just a beat; it was a blueprint for the next decade of sound, distilled into five minutes of prophecy set to rhythm.
"This isn't for Beyoncé," she said slowly, understanding blooming in her eyes. "This is *with* her. A collaboration that rewrites the rules."
"The industry's changing," I replied, each word carrying the weight of future certainty. "Streaming will transform everything. The old power structures, the traditional rollouts, the album cycles – it's all going to evolve. We need to be ahead of that wave, not chasing it."
Through the window, Times Square pulsed like a digital heartbeat, its LED billboards painting the night with commerce and dreams. Somewhere out there, Beyoncé was probably in her own late-night session, working on innovations she didn't yet know would align with mine.
"The building in SoHo," Melissa said, referring to my recent purchase. "That's not just a studio, is it?"
"It's an incubator. A laboratory. A place where we can develop the infrastructure for what's coming." I pulled up the architectural plans on my laptop – designs that incorporated spaces for technology that didn't exist yet, rooms configured for collaborations that would define genres not yet born.
*Innovation flows like rivers
Through time's ancient gates
While wisdom sits patient
As destiny waits
(For the moment when all paths converge)*
"You're seventeen," Melissa said, but the words carried no judgment, only wonder. "How do you see so far ahead?"
I thought of my other life, of lessons learned too late, of opportunities missed by inches and miles. "Maybe I'm just remembering," I said softly, "what hasn't happened yet."
Her phone buzzed – another message from Beyoncé's team, no doubt. The timeline was compressing, events accelerating toward a convergence I had carefully orchestrated across decades of memory and months of present-time manipulation.
"Set up the meeting," I said, closing my laptop. "But not here. At the new studio, once it's ready. Some songs need the right space to be born."
Melissa nodded, already typing. Outside, a private jet traced its path across the night sky like destiny drawing a line through time. In my pocket, the RAZR buzzed with a text from Ma: "Baby, you awake? Come home soon. Your future will still be there tomorrow."
But she was wrong. The future was here now, in this room, in these plans, in the music that would bridge two timelines into something entirely new. I gathered my things, each movement measured against memories of what had been and calculations of what could be.
"Marcus," Melissa called as I reached the door. "What happens next?"
I smiled, thinking of a queen I'd met in another life, of an empire built on second chances, of a revolution guided by the wisdom of time traveled.
"Everything," I said. "Everything happens next."
The elevator descended through the quiet building, carrying me down through layers of time and possibility, while somewhere in the city, another star was rising, her orbit already adjusting to align with mine – again, but for the first time.