The night stretched out like a long note fading into silence as I sat alone in Studio A, replaying our session. Beyoncé had left hours ago, but her presence lingered in the room like perfume in still air. The tracks we'd laid down hummed through the monitors—familiar yet foreign, like memories of a future I was steadily rewriting.
Rico appeared in the doorway, his silhouette a dark interruption against the hallway's light. He carried two glasses and a bottle of Macallan 18—the same scotch we'd shared in my original timeline when I'd won my first Grammy in 2022.
"Interesting choice," I said as he poured, wondering if some patterns were too deeply woven into time's fabric to change.
"Thought we should celebrate properly." He handed me a glass, then settled into the leather chair beside the console. "Though I'm not quite sure what we're celebrating. The birth of something? Or maybe its rebirth?"
The scotch burned familiar paths down my throat. Through the studio's windows, Manhattan's lights blurred in the distance like a photograph from a future that might never develop.
"You're not as subtle as you think, Marcus." Rico's voice carried the weight of accumulated observations. "The way you moved in here today, the way you knew exactly what she needed before she asked... That wasn't beginner's luck."
I turned to the console, pulling up the final track we'd recorded:
*Time keeps its secrets in melody
Whispers futures we cannot see
But baby, in this sacred space
Every moment leaves its trace
Like footprints in tomorrow's snow
Leading where we're meant to go
Each step a dance we've danced before
In a club on destiny's floor*
"Listen to that bridge," Rico continued, swirling his scotch. "That progression shouldn't exist yet. The technology to layer sounds like that shouldn't exist yet. Hell, some of those digital effects won't be invented for—" He caught himself, but the implication hung in the air like suspended notes.
"Music evolves," I offered weakly.
"No, brother. Music is revealed. Like mathematics—we don't invent it, we discover what's already there." He leaned forward, his reflection in the mixing board glass overlapping with mine. "But you... you're not discovering anything, are you? You're remembering."
The scotch in my glass caught the studio lights, amber waves like the flow of time itself. In the monitors, Beyoncé's voice soared through octaves that bridged decades:
*In this city of endless light
Where day dances into night
I feel the pulse of what's to be
Calling out to you and me
Each chord a path we might choose
Each silence a step we might lose
But baby, in this grand design
Even time falls into line*
"You know what she said to me before she left?" Rico's question cut through my thoughts. "She said she felt like she was remembering the future. Said the music felt like something she'd already sung, in a dream she hasn't had yet."
I closed my eyes, remembering—or foreseeing—her saying those exact words to me years from now, on our wedding day. The weight of temporal paradox pressed against my chest like a bass note too low to hear but heavy enough to feel.
"Sometimes," I said carefully, "artists tap into something beyond the present moment. Something eternal."
"Eternal." Rico tasted the word like he'd tasted the scotch. "That's one way to put it. Another way would be to say that some people carry tomorrow's music in today's hands. People who've heard the future's songs before they're sung."
He stood, moving to the window where the city sparkled like scattered notes on an endless score. "I won't ask you how. Maybe I don't want to know. But whatever this is—whatever you are—it's changing everything. You're not just producing music, Marcus. You're conducting time itself."
The final track faded out, leaving us in a silence pregnant with unspoken truths. Outside, a siren wailed—B-flat, I noted absently—its Doppler shift a reminder that everything was always in motion, always changing, always becoming.
"The future isn't set," I found myself saying. "Every beat, every note... they're all choices. Possibilities."
"But you've heard them all before, haven't you?" Rico turned from the window, his face half-shadowed. "In some other when?"
I lifted my glass, watching the scotch catch the light. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm just listening very carefully to what time wants to play next."
He laughed then, but it was the laugh of a man who'd glimpsed something vast and chosen to look away. "Keep your secrets, time traveler. Just promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"When you're done conducting tomorrow's symphony... make sure there's still room for the rest of us to improvise."
The night pressed against the windows like future memories seeking entry. I turned back to the console, fingers hovering over buttons that would help shape the next decade of music. In the polished black surface, I caught my reflection—young face, old eyes, time's contradiction made flesh.
"There's always room for improvisation," I said softly. "That's how tomorrow becomes today."
Rico raised his glass in a silent toast, and we sat there in Studio A, drinking scotch that tasted of the future while the present moment stretched around us like a song reaching for its final note.
Outside, New York played on, its rhythms eternal, its melodies endless, its harmonies bridging all possible timelines in the grand arrangement of existence.