The call with Jay lasted exactly seventeen minutes—I knew because I watched each digit flip on the studio's vintage digital clock, counting heartbeats between seconds. When Beyoncé finally lowered her BlackBerry, the smile that curved her lips was like a sunrise breaking through clouds.
"He wants to executive produce the whole album," she said, her voice carrying that particular tone of vindication I remembered from countless future moments. "Says the sound is 'five years ahead of its time.'"
Rico let out a low whistle. "Five years? Try ten." He shot me a look that was equal parts pride and suspicion. "Sometimes I think our boy Marcus here must be from the future or something."
The statement hung in the air like cigarette smoke, and I forced myself to laugh, though the sound felt hollow in my chest. If he only knew how close he was to the truth—not five years, not ten, but twenty years of future knowledge wrapped in the body of a twenty-one-year-old producer.
I turned back to the console, using the familiar motion of adjusting faders to steady my hands. "Let's run through the final mix one more time. I want to adjust the bridge."
*When the past becomes tomorrow
And tomorrow fades to then
Every joy and every sorrow
Plays its part again and again
But baby, in this moment here
Between what was and will be
The future's crystal clear
In everything I see*
The vocals floated through the studio like ghosts of a future that now might never exist. I caught Beyoncé watching me in the control room glass, her reflection overlapping with memories of her older self—the woman who had, in another lifetime, helped me through my mother's illness, the one who'd stood beside me at industry awards shows that hadn't happened yet.
"Marcus," she said softly, moving to stand beside my chair, "how do you do it? How do you know exactly what it should sound like before we even create it?"
For a moment, I was tempted to tell her everything—about the future I'd left behind, about the twenty years of music industry evolution I'd lived through, about how I'd woken up in 2004 with a second chance to make everything right. But instead, I just smiled and said, "Some songs write themselves. They're just waiting for the right moment to be heard."
Rico's phone buzzed again—another email from Columbia, no doubt. But this time, he didn't even glance at it. He was too busy studying the waveforms on the computer screen, trying to decode the secret of their sound. "Whatever you're doing, kid, keep doing it. This is going to change everything."
"That's the plan," I murmured, more to myself than to them. Through the window, I could see the morning traffic building on the streets below, each car carrying someone toward their own future. In my previous life, this day had been unremarkable—just another Tuesday in a long line of them. But now, in this rewritten present, it would become the day that altered the course of music history.
I made one final adjustment to the mix, bringing up a subtle counter-melody that wouldn't become common in production for another decade. Beyoncé closed her eyes, swaying slightly as the new element wove through the arrangement.
"It's perfect," she whispered. "Like it was always meant to sound this way."
And perhaps it was. Perhaps all my knowledge of the future had led me to this moment, this studio, this version of a song that would now be born into the world years before its time. The weight of tomorrow's memories pressed against my chest, but for once, they didn't feel like a burden.
Rico was already on his phone, no doubt setting up meetings that would cascade into opportunities I'd only dreamed of in my previous timeline. Beyoncé had moved to the couch, scribbling new lyrics in a leather-bound notebook—lyrics that would be different from the ones I remembered, creating ripples through a future that was rewriting itself with every passing second.
The morning sun had risen fully now, casting long shadows through the studio windows. Somewhere out there, my mother was probably finishing her foundation meeting, living the life I'd always wanted for her. Somewhere, the world was spinning toward a future that only I could remember—and maybe that was the point of it all.
I hit play one last time, letting the music fill the room like prophecy. Some songs were worth waiting twenty years to produce. Some futures were worth traveling back in time to create. And as I watched Beyoncé and Rico nodding along to rhythms that shouldn't exist yet, I knew that every careful step, every measured change, every calculated risk had led us exactly where we needed to be.
Even if "where" was twenty years earlier than I'd started.