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*****
"The final transfer deeds for Cheiron Studios cleared international escrow this morning," Max announced, a mixture of awe and residual shock in his voice.
It was a seismic shift in the European music landscape. Cheiron Studios, located in the heart of Stockholm, Sweden, was a hit-making factory. It was previously Max's collaborative home, a powerhouse responsible for producing the rising tidal wave of late-90s pop, including the Backstreet Boys, Robyn, and Ace of Base.
But it was no longer an independent Swedish entity. In a leveraged corporate buyout orchestrated entirely by Marvin's Zenith Trust, Wolf Cousins Music had swallowed Cheiron Studios whole and it became Wolf Cousins subsidiary.
The two men were currently reviewing the new corporate structure.
"Wolf Cousins owns Cheiron now, Marvin," Max said, shaking his head as he looked at the equity breakdown.
"We own Cheiron, Max," Marvin corrected softly, a smile curving his lips. "I hold ninety-eight percent of the controlling shares of Wolf Cousins Music. You hold the remaining two percent."
Max let out a chuckle, leaning his hands on the dusty folding table. Two percent sounded microscopic to a layman. But Max possessed the industry foresight to understand exactly what he was standing next to. Two percent of the global monopoly Marvin was constructing would easily be worth hundreds of millions of dollars within the next decade. Just look at the sales of Marvin 1.
He wasn't just Marvin's producer anymore; he was a founding partner of a studio that could rival Columbia someday.
"The vocal groups currently under Cheiron's production umbrella will be restructured," Marvin commanded, tapping fingernails against a list of Swedish assets. "I want the Backstreet Boys' upcoming recording sessions prioritized and locked down to our producers. We control the masters, we control the sound, we control the radio."
"Understood," Max nodded, jotting down notes on a legal pad.
Just as Max was detailing the acoustic upgrades required for the Swedish vocal booths, the door to the shabby office was pushed open.
The man who walked in looked entirely, hilariously out of place.
He was wearing a bespoke, razor-sharp charcoal suit, a silk tie, and Italian leather shoes that were instantly covered in a fine layer of white drywall dust.
Jeff Raymond, brushed a speck of sawdust off his lapel with a look of mild distaste before his eyes locked onto the boy in the room.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Jeff announced smoothly, his shark-like grin sliding into place.
Marvin turned away from the blueprints. He raised an eyebrow. He had not summoned CAA today.
"Jeff," Marvin purred, his voice dangerous, that forced the seasoned Hollywood agent to stand a little straighter. "To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure? I do not recall scheduling any briefing for this afternoon. Nor did I inform your office of my current coordinates."
Marvin ran a rapid calculation. "Let me deduce. You must have bypassed my mother and gone directly to Amy to acquire this address. Which means you interrupted her while she vetted the Asian corporate team I instructed her to assemble."
Jeff let out a short laugh, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Your assistant is persistent, Marvin. It took me ten minutes of negotiation just to get her to admit you were in West Hollywood. But yes, I crashed the party uninvited. Because what I have in my briefcase could not wait for a scheduled telephone call."
Marvin gestured toward his producer. "Jeff Raymond, CAA. Meet Max Martin, the architect of my sound and the minority partner and chairman of Wolf Cousins Music. Max, this is the man who negotiates my deals to the studios."
The two men exchanged a firm handshake.
"If you braved a construction zone in an Armani suit, Jeff," Marvin said, "it means you have smelled a monumental amount of blood in the water. Speak."
Jeff didn't hesitate. He unlatched his sleek leather briefcase, pulled out a thick, sealed manila envelope, and dropped it onto the dusty folding table directly over the studio blueprints.
"I received a phone call late last night from James Horner," Jeff began, the gravity of the situation pulling the room into a tight silence.
Max's eyes widened instantly. Everyone in the music industry knew James Horner. He was a legendary composer — Aliens, Braveheart, Apollo 13 — nominated five times, never won, and somehow that made him more mythic, not less.
"Horner is currently locked in a post-production nightmare at 20th Century Fox," Jeff explained, pacing the small, shabby office. "He is scoring James Cameron's Titanic. The film is massively over budget and bleeding bad press, but internally, the studio knows they have a cinematic masterpiece on their hands. They are missing some critical piece of architecture: one of them being the end-credits song. And wants the thematic melody and the foundational score better. And yet to find the right tune."
Jeff stopped pacing, leaning over the table, his eyes locked onto Marvin.
"Cameron was opposed to a pop track," Jeff continued, his voice dropping into a whisper. "He wanted complete silence and an orchestral fade. He felt a vocal track would cheapen the historical tragedy. But Horner staged a coup. Horner walked into the editing bay, bypassed Cameron's ego, and forced him to listen to Marvin 1."
A slow handsome smirk began to spread across Marvin's face.
"Horner played him track two, I Need Your Happiness, and track three, Battle Hymn," Jeff said, shaking his head in disbelief.
"According to Horner, the music broke Cameron. The man who eats studio executives for breakfast was moved to tears. The haunting sorrow in your vocals bypassed his cinematic rules entirely."
"And the result of this emotional compromise?" Marvin asked smoothly.
"The result is the holy grail," Jeff breathed, tapping the manila envelope. "Cameron agreed to a vocal track. But under non-negotiable conditions. Horner does not want you as a hired singer. He wants you as a fully credited composer— co-composer and lyricist. Inside this envelope is the foundational, skeletal score that also needs to be refined."
Max let out a sharp gasp, running his hands over his face. "A composer, co-writing credit on a James Cameron epic... Marvin, do you understand what this means?"
"It means very least the nomination at Academy Awards," Jeff answered for him, his shark-smile returning in full force. "Horner needs you to take his orchestral foundation and inject your soul into it. He needs you to write the lyrics. He needs you to bridge the gap between his Celtic orchestration and the depth of human loss. He wants a rough demo, recorded right here in your own studio, by the end of the week to lock Cameron in permanently. It is a true collaboration."
The shabby, dusty office fell silent. The only sound was the muffled drilling from the floor above them.
Marvin stood still, his eyes staring down at the unmarked manila envelope resting on the table.
Internally, the Incubus was experiencing a rare moment of absolute amusement. With his transmigrated, future knowledge, Marvin knew exactly what My Heart Will Go On was. It was not just a movie soundtrack. It was destined to become one of the best-selling, most culturally inescapable singles in the entire history of recorded human music. It was a song that would define a decade, win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, sweep the Grammy Awards, and permanently cement its singer into the stratosphere of global superstardom.
In his original timeline, that crown had belonged to Celine Dion.
But in this timeline, the universe had just ripped the crown from history and practically gift-wrapped it, dropping it directly into his lap. It was a stroke of luck. The gravity of his own success had warped reality, drawing the biggest cinematic event of the century straight into his gravitational pull.
'A lucky star indeed,' the demon purred internally, the thrill of the ultimate price burning brightly in his chest. 'I do not even have to hunt for the throne. The kings of this world are actively walking into my dusty office to offer it to me.'
Marvin slowly reached out, his fingers resting lightly on the manila envelope. He looked up at Jeff and Max. The boyish innocence was completely gone, replaced entirely by the creature who knew he was about to conquer the globe.
"Max," Marvin commanded softly, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "Clear the digital mixing boards in Studio B. We are halting all current renovations in that wing immediately."
Max nodded frantically. "Done. I'll get the engineers."
Marvin turned his piercing gaze to his agent. "Jeff. Call James Horner back. Tell him the boy who broke the Billboard 100 accepts his generous invitation."
Marvin picked up the envelope, a smile completely illuminating the dark, shabby room.
"Tell him," Marvin whispered, "that I will give James Cameron a foundational score thematic melody, an ending that the world will never, ever be able to forget."
---
The heavy, soundproofed door of Studio B clicked shut, sealing out the grinding noise of the ongoing construction in the Westlake corridors.
Inside the control room, the air was cool, smelling faintly of heated electronics and fresh acoustic foam. Max sat behind the massive, partially upgraded digital mixing console, his fingers resting lightly over the faders. Standing nervously near the leather sofa was Jeff, his bespoke suit completely out of place in the sterile, dimly lit recording cave.
In the center of the room, seated in a chair, was Marvin.
He wore a pair of heavy, professional-grade studio headphones. His eyes were closed. The combination of two transmigrated souls within him was entirely focused, dissecting the audio playing through the cans with precision.
It was a raw, instrumental demo by James Horner. It was the thematic skeletal structure intended to play over the end credits and foundational score and the thematic melody during introductions of the world's most expensive movie.
Through the high-fidelity speakers clamped over his ears, Marvin listened to the composition.
It was, objectively, a beautiful piece of music. It featured a mournful, haunting blend of traditional Celtic bagpipes, a sweeping, sorrowful violin section, and a heavy, melancholic piano progression. It captured the cold, freezing tragedy of the North Atlantic perfectly.
But it was entirely, fundamentally wrong.
It was completely unrelated to the culturally inescapable architecture of My Heart Will Go On. The soaring, transcendent vocal melody, the iconic tin whistle intro, the explosive, emotional key change that was destined to define a generation—none of it was there. Horner's current draft was merely a tragic orchestral fade. It was a funeral dirge, not an eternal anthem.
As the final, lingering piano chord faded into digital silence, Marvin slowly opened his eyes.
Max immediately paused the playback. He looked at the boy who was also his boss, a mix of curiosity and deep professional apprehension written across his face.
"Well?" Max asked, breaking the heavy silence of the control room. "Marvin, what do you think of Horner's foundation?"
Marvin pulled the heavy headphones down, letting them rest around his neck. He offered a slow nod, but his eyes were calculating, running a thousand different timeline variables in a fraction of a second.
"It is a nice piece of work, Max," Marvin replied, his velvety baritone smooth but laced with a edge of disappointment. "But frankly... I was hoping for something significantly better."
Jeff blinked, stepping forward. "Better? Marvin, that is James Horner. He's an Oscar-nominated veteran. That track is brilliant."
"It is tragic, Jeff. It is not timeless," Marvin corrected flawlessly.
Internally, Marvin's mind was rapidly piecing the puzzle together. He recalled the history of his previous world with perfect clarity. My Heart Will Go On was famously a collaborative piece, secretly recorded by Horner and Will Jennings behind James Cameron's back before finally presenting it to the director.
Marvin was intimately aware of the friction between the two Jameses. During the production of Aliens back in 1986, Cameron and Horner had suffered an explosive falling out over creative differences and impossible deadlines. Their professional relationship had been deeply strained ever since. It was a miracle Horner had even returned for Titanic.
In truth, writing songs requires inspiration just like writing poetry or painting. Marvin should have realized early on that although Titanic's core narrative could remain consistent, when it came to the ending theme, there was no way James could recreate the exact inspiration he had from the original timeline.
It is conceivable that the butterfly effect of Marvin's own perturbation of the timeline had inconspicuously altered the musical currents in Hollywood, yet it remained exceedingly improbable; after all, he had scarcely established his reputation in the industry to the extent that no studios had yet emerged to express investment interest in the Sixth Sense script. Indeed, many in Hollywood continue to perceive him as an ephemeral flash of brilliance.
*****
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