I met Ashley in fifth grade. Her family moved here from America. Her father had a new job overseeing the giant terraforming project here on Olympus Mons after repairing the environmental disaster on Earth. The other kids teased her for being small, for being from Earth, and for being the new kid. They threw stones at her and called her names like “Tory.” My folks and I came from Luna, so I had gone through being called a “Tory” myself even though we had nothing to do with the Terrans or Martians. Even three hundred years after the war, Martians can still be huge douchebags about winning. The kids tossed rocks at her; I stood in front of them and let each one hit me until they stopped.

They ran. I chucked a rock and smacked one of them right in the small of his back. My dad arrived just in time to catch me in mid-swing. He ran through the kids fleeing from my pitching arm. He chewed me out. Finger waggling. A grounding on the spot. The old man could be a hardass. When I stepped away he saw Ashley standing behind me. This scared little girl cowering behind me for protection. He clamped his hand down on my shoulder. “Nevermind what I said.”

My father always said I had mettle. Being ten I didn’t know what that meant. When I asked him to explain, he’d just laugh and say, “Explain? Son, you show me every day what it means and that’s how I know you’ll be alright no matter what happens.”

Ashley didn’t hang out much on the playground. She preferred being indoors curled up by a window with a good book. I didn’t gravitate towards her because the other kids shunned me for being a “Tory,” but because there was something intangible I felt when I was with her. I sat in the library reading books by her side. She loved history and consumed everything about the Martian Revolution. We learned about Admiral Amanda Rhodes and she introduced me to Admiral John Paul Jones from the American Revolution. We studied General Mingxia Oy Yang and she told me about George Washington. She made them sound alive and full of mystery and intrigue.

Rhodes Park never meant much to me. I rode my bike there Saturday mornings to pitch little league games. One Saturday I arrived late and ran by the statue of Amanda Rhodes. I never really noticed the silvery statue but it was her gazing out into the stars. I realized, Ashley made me appreciate the world. One afternoon we walked home and I took her to the base of the statue. We sat there and read until sunset.

Ashley and I talked about everything together. We wanted to go to the stars. The Flower Blossom, the largest man-made structure in the entire known universe, was being constructed out there at Alpha Centauri. In the library we could get time-delayed feed of the construction.

The day we graduated from middle school, I walked, hand-in-hand with her, back to her home. I chatted away. Summer vacation arrived. I planned our holiday all out. With the oceans formed, we could swim and make sand castles on the beach. We could roam free across the grassy countryside. I intended to enjoy every moment basking under a shaded tree with her by my side. Summer heralded a new world.

We arrived at the front gate of her house. In all my reverie, I didn’t realize she let go of my hand. She came to a stop behind me, tears trickling down her cheeks. She used her hand and wiped her eyes dry. “We’re moving,” she said.

A jumble of questions and exclamations in my mind kept me from saying anything. After a moment of silence, I whispered: “Where?”

“Alpha Centauri.”

She still had a month on Mars, but for a week she visited her grandparents back on Earth. When she jumped back she began packing. We still had days together, but each day drew closer to the last time I’d ever see her again.

The day before her transport left, I knocked on her front door around seven in the morning. The sun had just come up and the weather was warm. She poked her bed-head out of her window and joined me soon after with her hair still in disarray. The dew was still heavy on the grass when we traipsed through the open fields. There wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky, and I could see the snow covered peak of Olympus Mon, and a row of cranes constructing skyscrapers at the base of the mountain-volcano.

We picnicked in the shadow of volcano and the city daring to match it in height and size. The flowers bloomed and their fragrance and pollen filled the air. It was a mixture of beauty and sneezing. My eyes watered; I told her it was the ragweed. Her eyes watered, but I knew she didn’t have any allergies.

“One day, I want to come back and see Olympus Mons, when it’s all built up,” she said.

“I want to see Alpha Centauri when they put the last pedal on it.”

“It’s four light years away. The transport’s too big to use a jump drive. They say it has something called a warp drive.”

“It distorts space, right?”

“And travels close to the speed of light.”

“It’ll be like hours for you then.”

“And it’ll be years for you.”

We were silent at that prospect. It wasn’t just space separating us. It was time as well.

“Just four years by Earth Standard Time. That’s like two years locally,” I mused.

“I’ll send videos. Only if you promise to show me Olympus Mons. I want to see it from the top of Alliance Tower.” She pointed at the tall glass and metal spire, a thin obelisk standing before the wide and domineering volcano. “It’ll be two miles high. You could see everything.”

“It’s a promise.”

We went back to Rhodes Park that evening and sat under the statue of the Admiral. We sat there until the stars came out. The moons over Mars shone bright. We caught up with the constellations until she said the words I dreaded hearing:

“It’s time for me to go.”

I took my time escorting her home. She didn’t rush along either. Her house was the unlit one on the street. Most of the stuff had been taken earlier that day while we wandered around town. She stood close to me. The crickets sang us their lullaby. She hinted with her closed eyes. Now or never. We kissed.

I couldn’t sleep that night. When dawn broke, I headed out to the launch field. You couldn’t get too close, the radiation and fumes would kill you. Even early in the morning, a lot of people were there for the launch. We waved and cheered as the transport took flight and breached the atmosphere. My phone rang, I got a picture: Mars from orbit. “See you in four. -A.”

After she left, I counted the hours. I did the math on my own. She would be there in maybe a day, but those hours for her were different for me. Each morning I’d go out to where you could see the city and snap a photograph. I’d show her the four years she missed here in time lapse. I graduated high school while she traveled. The Alliance Tower opened to the public that fourth summer. I camped out at the city waiting for the first doors to open. I went up to the observatory deck first and witnessed the sun rise. I filmed the whole thing for her. To my surprise, my phone tweeted. One new message. “Just arrived. -A”

I sent the video to her a month later. It’s funny how near instant communications and relativistic travel works. I could talk with her as if we were in the same room, but four years separated us now. I told her about starting college. She told me about starting high school. I showed her my video of the Alliance Tower being built. She sent me a video of the Blossom being constructed in space. Her face hadn’t changed.

“Tell me everything I missed,” she said.

As time went on, my schedule and life changed. We stopped talking and instead traded texts or e-mails, and even then the space in which they arrived became longer and longer. New people had come into my life. As I’m sure, new friends came into her life. We hung on by a bare thread. When my new friends left me alone for the night, I wanted her to be there. Sometimes my eyes would play tricks on me. I’d see her sitting in the cafeteria, or I’d see a girl reading in the library and mistake her for Ashley. At these times I’d send messages to her and she’d write me back.

One day I received a new text from her. “We need to talk.” That night, I logged in and we met up in a video IM.

“You’re handsome,” she said to me.

“You’re pretty.”

“I’m moving again.”

“Back?” What was four more years?

“Altair. Sixteen-point-one light years from here.”

I did the math. “I’ll be 37.”

“I’ll still be 16 going on 17.” She averted her eyes from me. I hated physics with every fiber of my mind. “I know you’ll be alright. Just like when you stood up for me. Remember?”

We talked for another couple of hours. Catching up one last time. She ended the call; it was her bedtime. I looked up the flight times for her transport and imagined the sixteen years to follow as an insurmountable obstacle. I could jump on a transport too, but the amount of money was beyond my means. Be brave, I thought. Be brave.

I graduated from the Polytechnic Institute at Olympus Mons and got a job building starships with my aerospace degree. It was her absence that got me into studying relativity and building new jump drives. I married. My wife Stephanie and I had two children: Ashley and Terrance. Twenty years separated us and what could have been, but I vowed that my children wouldn’t be separated from their loved ones in the same way. Sometimes, during my lunch breaks, I’d go to the starport, and even though I knew she wasn’t coming back to Mars, I poured my eyes over the people exiting those transports. Maybe, just maybe, I kept thinking.

I was on the construction site when I got a tweet on my old cellphone. “Greetings from Altair. -A.” She sent me a picture of herself on the new starbase at Altair. She was seventeen. I was thirty-seven. I sent her a photo of my wife and kids. I told her I built starships.

I got my last text from her when I was forty-one. “Graduated! I’m going to Paradiseworld to work.” She attached a picture of herself dressed in her robes surrounded by her happy parents.

Paradiseworld. It was officially named Elysia. Everyone from around the galaxy set sail for this second earth. No pre-industrial civilizations lived on the planet surface. Just wildlife, nature, and absolute beauty. It was also one hundred light years from Mars. I would be 121, if I lived that long. She’d be 22 going on 23.

I snapped a photo of myself with one of our new transports behind me. It would need several jumps and could make it there, and if I could, I’d have taken it there to meet her. “Congratulations, Ashley.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was old enough to be her father now. I was in love with my wife. My children were growing up and falling in love themselves. My life was established here and yet I kept talking with this ghost. “Ashley, live free and fearless. I love you always.” I sent the message and turned off the phone for good.

I spent the next twenty years focused on building ships that used our enhanced jump drive technology. Perhaps when she gets to Paradise, she can see these ships I helped design delivering people a hundred light years in the wink of an eye. Lovers will never have to be separated by distance and time again. I could even go and see her again, but I am in my twilight. I sometimes think back to when my father said I had mettle. I never did anything brave, but maybe the bravest thing was to let her go. She’s only a phantom of my youth. A girl in my dreams. A memory.

THE END

Thoughts: Last week’s story was partially inspired by the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Well this week’s is inspired by another song called One more time, One more chance. It’s from an animated film I saw this past week called Five Centimeters Per Second. It’s a love story about two people and the distance between them physically, temporally, and emotionally. It inspired me to write this story. I guess I like sappy stuff like that. Definitely, go check out the movie. Yes, it’s anime, but the imagery and story are beautifully done.

Also, I hope I got all the ages right. It’s rather difficult when writing about people moving through time relativistically.