The studio lights cast long shadows across the mixing board as I adjusted the final EQ settings on Beyoncé's vocals. Dawn was breaking over New York City, painting the sky in watercolors I'd seen a thousand times before—both in this life and the last. The track we'd been working on for the past fourteen hours was finally taking shape, a melody that had haunted me for twenty years, waiting to be born again in this moment.
"Play it from the bridge," she said, her voice carrying that particular exhaustion that comes from pushing perfection past its breaking point. I obliged, letting the music fill the room:
*When tomorrow meets yesterday
In the space between time
Every moment we threw away
Comes back on the line
But baby, I'm not who I was
When the world spun around
Now I'm breaking all their laws
Just to keep my feet on the ground*
The harmonies soared exactly as I remembered them, though in my past life, I'd only heard them through earbuds and car speakers, never from behind a mixing board with their creator in the room. Beyoncé closed her eyes, swaying slightly to the rhythm, and I found myself watching her reflection in the control room glass—the way she moved was exactly the same as it had been (would be?) when we first performed this song together at Madison Square Garden in 2012.
"There's something different about this one, Marcus," she said, opening her eyes. "Like you wrote it for someone specific."
I smiled, masking the weight of twenty years of memories she didn't share. "Maybe I did." The irony wasn't lost on me—I had written it for her, in a future that now only existed in my mind.
Rico burst through the studio door, his BlackBerry clutched in one hand and a stack of contracts in the other. The sight of that old phone still made me chuckle; in a few years, it would be as obsolete as the cassette tapes gathering dust in the studio's back room.
"The label's pushing back on the production credits," he announced, dropping the contracts on the console. "They're saying the sound is too forward-thinking for their marketing strategy." He glanced at Beyoncé apologetically. "No offense to your artistic vision."
She laughed, that rich, confident sound that hadn't changed across two decades. "That's exactly why we're doing it this way. Marcus understands where music is going." She turned to me with that knowing look that always made me wonder if somehow, somewhere, she remembered our future too. "Don't you?"
The weight of my future knowledge pressed against my chest. In my previous life, this song had come out in 2008, with a completely different production style. The version we'd just created incorporated elements that wouldn't become mainstream for another decade—but I knew they would work. They had to work.
"Sometimes," I said, carefully choosing my words, "you have to trust that the audience is ready for something they don't know they want yet."
Through the studio windows, I could see the first rays of sunlight catching on the Bronx rooftops. Somewhere out there, my mother was probably already awake, preparing for her foundation's board meeting. The thought made me smile—in this timeline, she'd never have to work another hospital shift again.
"Play it one more time," Beyoncé requested, pulling me back to the present. "From the top."
As the opening notes filled the room, I caught Rico nodding along, his initial skepticism melting into understanding. He'd been right to trust me four years ago, when I was just a teenager with impossible dreams and even more impossible knowledge. Now, as the music swelled into the first verse, I could feel the future shifting again, realigning itself around this moment, this song, this version of history we were creating together.
*Time is a river flowing backward
Through the streets of what could be
Every choice becomes a landmark
On the map of you and me
And baby, when the world rewinds
To give us one more day
Will you remember what we find
When tomorrow fades away?*
The lyrics held a different meaning now, weighted with the reality of my situation. Every day was a careful dance between what was, what could be, and what must never be—a balancing act that grew more complex with each passing moment. But watching Beyoncé lose herself in the music, seeing Rico's quiet pride, and knowing my mother was finally living the life she deserved, I knew that every careful step had been worth it.
The sun continued its ascent over the Bronx, and somewhere in the distance, a new day was beginning. Again.