Dawn painted the Bronx in watercolor grays when Maria found me still at my desk, surrounded by legal pads covered in production notes that wouldn't make sense for another decade. She placed a cup of café con leche beside me, its steam carrying memories from both my lifetimes.
"You look like your father," she said softly, "the night before he signed with Blue Note."
I looked up sharply. She'd never mentioned this in either timeline. My father's jazz career had always been a closed book, a story ended before its first chapter.
"He sat right there," she continued, perching on my old bed. "Writing arrangements until sunrise. Said he had to get them perfect because the future was listening." She smiled, but it held the weight of years. "I see that same look in your eyes now."
The demo track still played softly through my headphones, now layered with Beyoncé's midnight additions:
*When tomorrow calls our names
Through the morning light
All these memories and claims
Will finally burn bright
Every second that we steal
From time's eternal flow
Teaches us what's really real
And what we really know*
"Mami," I started, then paused, searching for words that could bridge the gap between what I knew and what I could say. "Did you ever feel like you were living the same moment twice?"
She reached over and picked up the unsigned Columbia contract, her fingers tracing the embossed logo. "Life doesn't give us do-overs, mijito. But sometimes..." She glanced at the old family photo on my wall, her younger self frozen in mid-laugh beside my father. "Sometimes it gives us the chance to finish what others started."
My phone buzzed – a message from Beyoncé:
*Meeting with Columbia set for 9AM. Bring your revolution. We're rewriting history today.*
If she only knew how literally true that was.
"I didn't understand your father then," Maria continued, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from my bedspread. "He talked about music like it was alive, like it existed somewhere out there in the future, just waiting to be discovered." Her eyes met mine. "But watching you these past months... maybe he wasn't crazy after all."
I turned to my production notes – complex arrangements and technological innovations that wouldn't be possible for years, except that now they were. Because sometimes the future isn't something that happens to us. Sometimes it's something we remember into existence.
"The industry's going to change," I said, rolling my chair to face her. "Everything's going to change."
"Good." She stood, straightening her nurse's scrubs. "It's about time someone remembered how to dream big in this family."
As she turned to leave for her morning shift, she paused at the door. "Marcus? Whatever you're carrying – whatever makes you look like you've lived a thousand years when you think no one's watching – it's made you stronger, not heavier."
The morning light caught the gold cross at her neck, the same one she'd worn when I graduated high school (twice), when I'd won my first Grammy (once, in another life), when I'd first played her the demo that would change everything (in a future that was now transforming with every breath).
"Thanks, Mami."
After she left, I pulled up the production session one last time. The track we'd created wasn't just music – it was a bridge between timelines, a love letter to possibilities. I added one final automation curve to the outro, a subtle shift that wouldn't be appreciated until audio technology caught up in 2019. Or maybe sooner, now that the future was more fluid than ever.
My phone lit up again:
*Just dreamed about our tenth anniversary performance. The stages keep getting bigger. -B*
I smiled, remembering a future that was both written and unwritten. Some love stories transcend time. Some revolutions start with a single note. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to live the perfect moment twice – once to learn its value, and once to make it last.
Gathering my notes and the unsigned contract, I headed out into the morning light. Behind me, the demo track faded into silence, but its echoes would ripple through time for years to come. Ahead lay Columbia Records, Beyoncé, and a future we would write together – not the one I remembered, but something newer, truer, and infinitely more precious.
After all, some songs are meant to be rewritten until they become the classics they were always destined to be.