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His voice was quiet, but the request itself was direct. "I'd like you to come."
Marvin raised an eyebrow. "Come to Munich?"
Michael smiled. "Come perform."
The room went still. "A few songs."
Marvin studied him. "Which songs?"
"Yours."
Marvin's eyebrows rose slightly. "Mine?"
Michael nodded. "I've been listening to your EP. The singles, too."
Max glanced toward Marvin.
Michael noticed. "The songs are beautiful," he said. "Really. There's something about your voice, about your music." He paused, searching for the right way to put it. "When you were singing just now..."
His fingers touched his chest. "It made me feel young."
Marvin said nothing.
Michael continued, quieter now. "That's what I want on the stage. Not somebody trying to impress people. Somebody who can make people feel."
He smiled. "And you can do that."
For the first time, Marvin looked genuinely caught off guard.
Michael's expression softened. "I think the children would absolutely love it. And I'm sure your fans would, too. I have a feeling it'll sell a lot of tickets."
The entire control room went quiet.
Beyoncé covered her mouth.
Max simply stared.
Michael Jackson had just walked into the room.
For most people, that alone would have been enough to stop the conversation.
Marvin knew what that name carried with it.
Michael wasn't merely famous. He was Michael Jackson.
Many modern executives often failed to truly comprehend just how prestigious, dangerous, and god-like Michael Jackson's live concerts were. Since 1990, every single one of his global shows had sold out entirely in a matter of seconds, routinely shattering Guinness World Records. At every single venue, the overwhelming hysteria of the audience was so violently intense that hundreds of people frequently fainted from hyperventilation, emotional overload, and a total lack of oxygen.
His most legendary, historically massive concert, held in Bucharest during the 1992 Dangerous World Tour, was famously known in the industry as the "most dangerous" concert ever staged. The venue, a massive national sports stadium with a strict maximum capacity of 70,000, ended up violently overflowing, hosting 74,000 screaming bodies inside. But the true terror lay outside; there were over 200,000 desperate, weeping fans crowding the streets around the stadium, crushing against barricades just trying to listen to the echoes. This single concert set another untouchable Guinness World Record. Dedicated medical teams consisting of over 2,000 trained staff and paramedics were actively on hand, working frantically through the night to ensure fans' safety as the crowd swelled and rioted.
When Michael Jackson simply appeared on stage—shooting up through a trapdoor and standing perfectly still like a frozen statue for two full minutes—it would instantly send the audience into an uncontrollable frenzy of weeping, screaming, and roaring in unison. The atmosphere was electrifying, akin to a religious revival, with every single live broadcast earning tens of millions in exclusive television rights fees.
The cultural influence of Michael Jackson was unparalleled. It was hard to imagine a time in human history when he wasn't sitting securely on top of the world.
And Michael knew exactly how to use it.
He could walk onto a stage, do almost nothing, and have an entire stadium lose its mind.
Marvin had seen plenty of stars with devoted audiences.
None of them had been Michael.
There was something almost absurd about it. Marvin could understand screaming fans, sold-out concerts, people chasing a celebrity down the street. Those were normal. What Michael had was something else. The moment he appeared, the crowd seemed to forget how to behave like ordinary people.
Marvin understood exactly how rare that was.
And, if he was being honest, it annoyed the hell out of him.
His popularity still managed to irritate Marvin from time to time.
Even Tom Cruise never quite matches the devotion Michael inspired. People didn't simply like the man; they adored him. To billions, Michael had become almost sacred, someone they could place on a pedestal and treat as something far beyond an ordinary celebrity.
What irritated Marvin was that he had deliberately made himself into the sort of man people could worship. He had crafted his appearance, his talent, his image, his wealth, even the way he treated people. He was handsome enough to look unreal, successful enough to seem untouchable, and generous enough to make people believe he was giving them a better life simply by being around.
He was building himself into an almost perfect idol.
If he wanted to, Marvin could probably push that image all the way to something approaching a modern-day messiah.
And yet Michael was still more beloved.
That stung.
But Marvin couldn't stay jealous for long. Michael had spent nearly two decades building that relationship with the world. Marvin had barely had three years.
For what he'd accomplished in that short a time, the gap was hardly worth complaining about.
He still had plenty of time to surpass him.
There was no point dwelling on something he couldn't change tonight. Marvin had never been particularly good at looking backward anyway. His attention had already moved on, weighing the people around him and the opportunities sitting in front of him.
As he looked at the man standing a few yards away, none of that was what caught his attention.
Marvin's eyes moved past the dark sunglasses, the familiar clothes and the carefully composed expression.
He looked at Michael's aura.
It was bright.
Almost painfully so.
There was no darkness clinging to it. No corruption. Nothing like the ugly, heavy presence Marvin had sensed around men such as Harvey Weinstein.
But there were cracks.
So many of them.
Michael's aura reminded Marvin of a beautiful piece of stained glass that had been struck hard enough to fracture without completely shattering. The light was still there. It simply had to pass through all those broken lines.
Marvin's expression changed.
He knew why.
He knew what was waiting for Michael.
The accusations. The lawsuits. The headlines that would follow him for years.
The people who would turn on him. The money that would disappear. The endless arguments over his name and his character.
Marvin knew that Michael would eventually stand in court and be cleared.
He also knew that by then, the damage would already have been done.
Being found innocent would not give him those years back. It would not restore the people he had trusted.
It would not erase everything the press had dragged through the mud.
And after it was over, Michael would retreat further from the country that had made him famous. He would spend years moving from place to place, appearing less and less, working away from the spotlight.
The tours would stop.
That was what bothered Marvin most.
Michael Jackson belonged on a stage. He belonged in front of thousands of people with an entire stadium waiting for him to move.
Instead, the years ahead would slowly push him away from the very thing he had once commanded better than anyone.
Marvin's gaze softened.
He understood Neverland differently now.
The amusement rides. The animals. The games. The endless attempt to surround himself with the things a normal childhood should have contained.
Marvin knew enough about Michael's upbringing to understand why.
The boy had been put to work before he had any chance to simply be a boy.
Perhaps that was why the adult had spent so much of his life trying to build the childhood he never got.
It was profoundly heartbreaking to witness the slow downfall of such a beloved, universally unifying icon. But it was glaringly clear to Marvin that, despite everything the world would throw at him, Michael Jackson remained a pure genius—both musically and commercially—while tragically retaining a deeply vulnerable, childlike innocence.
A famous psychiatrist in the future would once accurately state to the press, "Michael Jackson's core emotional and mental age is permanently locked at ten years old. To him, those children he invites to his park are not fans; they are simply his peers."
Marvin felt something unfamiliar tighten inside him.
Pity. Not because Michael was weak. He wasn't.
There was still an extraordinary mind beneath all that fame. A musician, performer and businessman who understood audiences on a level very few people ever had or could.
But there was something painfully vulnerable beneath it too.
Marvin had always believed that knowing the future meant having power over it.
Standing there now, he wasn't so sure.
He could change things. He knew that.
The question was whether he could change them without breaking something else in the process.
Michael was watching him.
Marvin stood perfectly still, the silence stretching in the control room as the weight of the future pressed down on his shoulders.
Marvin realized he had been staring for too long.
Michael slowly lowered his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose.
His eyes met Marvin's.
"Marvin?" His voice was soft. He tilted his head. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Michael studied Marvin for a moment.
The boy had gone strangely quiet.
Not the awkward silence of someone meeting a famous person for the first time. Michael was used to that. Usually there was excitement, a nervous smile, some attempt to hide how much they were staring.
Marvin wasn't doing any of it.
He was looking at Michael as though he'd seen him somewhere before.
Marvin blinked.
For a second, the room seemed to fall away.
Then he caught himself.
"Sorry."
Michael smiled faintly. "You don't have to apologize."
"I wasn't trying to be rude."
"I know." Michael's voice was soft. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket and gave Marvin a curious look. "You looked sad."
That caught Marvin off guard. "Did I?"
"Just for a second."
Michael gave a small shrug. "Maybe I'm wrong."
Marvin looked at him.
He could have lied.
Instead, he gave him a small smile. "I was thinking about how much you've done."
Michael laughed under his breath. "I've done a lot of things."
"More than most people."
"That's true."
There was no arrogance in the answer. If anything, Michael sounded almost embarrassed by the attention.
Marvin's eyes stayed on him. "You've spent years performing like that."
Michael nodded. "The shows?"
"The dancing. The rehearsals. The travel."
"Oh." Michael glanced toward the booth. "Yes. It can be tiring."
"I can imagine."
Michael smiled. "Sometimes I don't think my body knows what time zone it's in anymore."
A quiet laugh came from Max behind the console.
Michael looked over. "I'm serious."
"I know you are."
Michael turned back to Marvin. "But when I'm onstage, I don't think about being tired."
"Why?"
Michael took a moment before answering. "Because I can feel everybody."
Marvin said nothing.
Michael's fingers moved slightly as he searched for the words. "You can stand in front of thousands of people and still feel alone. But when the music starts..." He smiled. "It's different. For those few hours, everybody's together."
His voice softened. "And when it's for children, it means even more."
Marvin's expression eased. "That's why you're doing Munich."
"Yes." Michael nodded. "I want to help where I can. There are children who don't have the things we take for granted. Food. Medicine. A safe place to sleep."
He looked down for a moment. "I've been very blessed. If I can use what I have to help somebody else, I should."
Marvin watched him quietly.
Michael looked back up. "You understand?"
"I do."
A small smile appeared on Michael's face. "Good."
"You're a good person, Michael," Marvin said.
There was something in the way he said it, quiet and certain. A little of his magic slipped into the words, nudging at the trust already beginning to form between them.
Michael shook his head and looked down at his shoes. "No, no. I'm really not."
Marvin smiled.
"I'm just a person," Michael said. "I've been very blessed. That's all."
He rubbed his thumb lightly against the side of his hand. "There are people doing much more important things every day. Doctors. Teachers. Police. Firefighters. People who spend their lives helping somebody and nobody ever knows their names."
"Too few of them," Marvin said.
Michael looked toward the window. "Far too few."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Outside, the hills sat beneath the afternoon haze, the houses scattered across them like they had been placed there one by one.
Michael's expression changed slightly.
"You know," he said, almost to himself, "sometimes I think people forget there are more important things than money."
Marvin looked at him.
Michael gave a small, tired smile. "They forget until it's too late."
He looked toward the booth again. "Your voice is something else, Marvin."
Marvin raised an eyebrow. "Something else?"
Michael laughed softly. "That's the best way I can explain it."
****
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