The elevator's descent felt like time travel in miniature—twenty-three floors of freefall, watching the future compress into now. Rico waited until we hit the tenth floor before breaking the silence.
"Man, what was that up there? Streaming revenue? Social media impact? You're talking about things that don't even exist yet."
The glass walls of the elevator reflected infinite versions of us—producer and manager, mentor and protégé, each reflection holding secrets the other couldn't know. I adjusted my collar, buying time.
"Market research," I said finally. "Reading the trends."
"Trends?" Rico's laugh was sharp as broken vinyl. "You're not reading trends, Marcus. You're writing them. First that sound on Jasmine's track, now this whole Project Tomorrow thing... it's like you're operating on a whole different timeline than the rest of us."
*If he only knew.*
The lobby spread before us in marble and chrome, a temple to an industry I was systematically dismantling and rebuilding. My phone buzzed—another text from Beyoncé's team, moving our meeting up to tomorrow. The timeline acceleration was becoming dizzying.
Outside, Manhattan's afternoon light painted everything in shades of possibility. A street vendor's radio played one of my productions—a track that, in my first life, hadn't existed until 2015. Now it was climbing the 2006 charts, changing everything.
"You remember what you told me when we first met?" Rico asked, as his driver pulled up in the Escalade. "About wanting to change the game?"
I remembered two versions of that conversation—the original one from my first life, and the more recent one armed with future knowledge. Both felt equally real and equally distant.
"Thing is," Rico continued, "I thought you meant the music. But this... this is bigger. You're not just changing the game, you're changing the whole damn industry. And I can't shake the feeling that you know exactly how it's all going to play out."
The weight of twenty years' knowledge pressed against my temples. In my pocket, my phone buzzed again—Mom, sending updates about the foundation's healthcare initiative launch. Another deviation, another butterfly's wing beating against the fabric of time.
"Maybe I do," I said finally. "Maybe I don't. But you trust me, right?"
Rico studied me for a long moment, his reflection multiplying in the Escalade's tinted windows. "With my life, little brother. But you're scaring people. Katherine Chen looked at you like you were either a prophet or a madman."
"Sometimes they're the same thing," I echoed my words from upstairs.
A new song drifted from the street vendor's radio—one of the tracks I'd produced last week, its sound deliberately anachronistic:
*Prophecies in platinum
Future's past undone
Every beat a butterfly
Wings against the sky
(Time ain't nothing but a loop
Dancing through the hoops)*
"Get in," Rico said, opening the car door. "We've got that meeting with the studio architects about the community complex. Unless you want to walk again, lost in that head of yours."
I slid into the leather interior, letting the air conditioning wash over me like temporal winds. The blueprints for the community studio complex were in my bag—another piece of future infrastructure I was building years ahead of schedule. In my first life, these kinds of facilities hadn't existed until the 2010s. Now...
"About tomorrow's meeting," Rico said as we pulled into traffic. "Beyoncé's team—"
"I know," I cut him off. "It's too soon. The timeline's accelerating."
"Timeline?" He shot me a look. "Man, you keep talking like that. Like you're playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. Like you've seen how all this ends."
Through the window, I watched 2006 New York scroll past—a city on the cusp of changes it couldn't imagine, driven by futures only I remembered. Every decision I made rippled outward, changing more than I could track. The butterfly effect had become a tsunami, and I was losing my grip on what should happen versus what was happening.
"Maybe I have," I said softly. "Maybe that's why we have to build all this now. The studios, the foundation, the healthcare programs—it's not just about music anymore. It's about being ready."
"Ready for what?"
I thought about tomorrow's meeting, about Beyoncé hearing futures in my music that shouldn't exist yet, about timeline changes cascading faster than I could control them.
"Everything," I said. "Nothing. The future. Take your pick."
Rico shook his head, but he was smiling. "Prophet or madman."
"You forgot genius," I said, falling into our old pattern.
"Nah, that was never in question." He pulled out his phone, probably to check Jasmine's streaming numbers again. "Just promise me one thing?"
"What's that?"
"When you're done reshaping the whole industry, don't forget who had your back when you were just a kid with big dreams."
The words hit me like temporal whiplash—because in my first life, I had forgotten. I'd let success and time drive wedges between us. But not this time. This time I was changing more than just the industry.
"Never," I said, and meant it across all timelines.
The Escalade carried us downtown, toward meetings and decisions that would reshape futures I was rapidly losing my ability to predict. But maybe that was the point. Maybe you couldn't build a better tomorrow by clinging too tightly to memories of one that never happened.
After all, butterflies didn't fly in straight lines.