A coffee cup rattling on glass.
The sharp beep of a studio mixing board.
A platinum plaque on a hotel nightstand, catching soft lamp light—"A. Vance" engraved in shining script—surrounded by the scent of antiseptic and regret.
His jacket was still on the floor. Next to it, an empty bottle. Beside that, a half-finished score for a song no one would ever hear.
One last voicemail from his label manager.
"We're gonna have to let you go, Alex. Three flops in a row. I'm sorry."
A woman's tear streaked face, singing his lyrics from across a studio glass wall. Just a memory now.
A roaring crowd, from a life that didn't feel like his anymore.
And then—silence.
Alex lay sprawled on the carpet, one hand reaching out toward that platinum plaque, like maybe touching it could tether him.
It was for his first song. The one that had changed everything. Before the awards, before the burnout, before the music industry had carved out pieces of him.
A flash: he was seventeen again, nervously playing a demo at a friend's party, never expecting anything. But someone had recorded it. Uploaded it. Within two days, it was everywhere. The label had called that same week.
"You're going to be a star."
The song wasn't perfect. But it was real. Raw. It felt like a confession that every listener recognized.
Platinum in three months.
They handed him the plaque on a small showcase stage. He'd grinned like he was holding the moon. His parents hadn't come. But his friends had. That night, it felt like the whole world was listening.
And now… no one was.
His voice came out slurred, rough:
"We don't lose time. We trade it."
The last words he would ever say.
One final breath—and everything went dark.
---------------------------------------------------
The jolt didn't feel like waking up. It was like being yanked from the void. One moment, total blackness. The next, a full-body surge of awareness—his heart hammering in his chest, breath jagged, his mind screaming without knowing why. Pain shot through the base of his skull, white-hot and sharp.
3:17 AM. The red glow of the alarm clock pulsed in the dark.
But the pain wasn't the worst of it.
The worst was what his body remembered.
A deep, grinding ache in his lower back—like he'd spent years hunched in a studio chair he'd never sat in. The bitter taste of burnt coffee on his tongue. The wired tension of anxiety vibrating in his chest, like a deadline was approaching and he was already late.
Then it all came crashing in.
A decade's worth of memories that didn't belong to this body—rushing in like a tidal wave. Rapid-fire fragments: the polished surface of a record label boardroom table, a smug executive face, the layout of a massive SSL mixing console his fingers instinctively knew how to navigate. A woman's face, twisted with grief, her voice accusing him—but the words were lost. And under it all, music. So much music. Hooks, melodies, full songs—an endless vault of sound and emotion he hadn't written, but knew deeply.
He bolted upright, drenched in sweat. His T-shirt clung cold and soaked to his skin. He swung his legs off the bed, and nearly fell. His limbs felt wrong. Heavy, foreign.
He stumbled to the mirror above his dresser, gripping the edges like it could hold him upright.
Moonlight cut across his bedroom through the blinds—falling in bars over posters he and Leo had once picked out proudly. Now, they looked like leftovers from someone else's childhood.
He stared into the mirror.
It was his fifteen-year-old face looking back. Rounder. Softer. Acne dusted his chin. But behind the eyes—something was off. Something older. Tired. The exhausted weight of a 25-year-old soul sat inside a teenage frame.
He touched his cheek. It felt real. But wrong. Like wearing someone else's skin.
Panic clawed up his throat. He had to ground himself—prove that he was just a kid in his room. That this was all some twisted hallucination. A nightmare. Anything but what it felt like.
He staggered to his desk. Hit the power button. The laptop screen lit up in cold blue. His hands hovered over the keyboard. Shaking. But then, they moved—confident, practiced, automatic. And they typed:
Taylor Swift
The results popped up instantly.
"Pop Icon Taylor Swift Celebrates Her 35th Birthday…"
"35 Years of Taylor…"
Thirty-five.
No. No, no, no.
She was 25. He knew that. She had just released that retro pop album—less than two years ago. In his memories, it had been a cultural reset.
But in this timeline, that album didn't exist. The articles talked about different music, a different career. Nothing matched.
His breath hitched. He typed again—faster this time.
Eminem
Another tidal wave of wrong.
Photos of a young man, black-haired and intense—but the photos were old. Faded. Articles called him a trailblazer from the seventies. A spoken word poet. Gone from the spotlight decades ago.
There was nothing about Slim Shady. No blonde hair, no chaos, no fury. No Rap God. The entire force that had scored his teenage rebellion… never happened.
It was gone.
Not just people. Not just albums.
A whole musical universe—erased.
Alex shoved away from the desk. The chair screeched back against the floor. He sat there, frozen, bathed in the laptop's glow. His hands limp in his lap. His room was quiet—too quiet. The silence wasn't peace anymore. It was vacuum. A black hole where a world used to be.
The garage, the music, the laughter from just a few hours ago—felt like echoes from another life.
Because that's what it was. Another life.
And he was the only one who remembered it.
He wasn't just confused. He wasn't just scared.
He was completely, terrifyingly alone.