It's a warm summer's day and I'm cycling my BMX like a lunatic across the grass, where I'm racing my best pal to the bandstand at the centre of the park, but even racing at breakneck speed I'm still unable to take my eyes off the new girl who'd recently moved in just down the street from me, I may have been young and naïve, but to me, her beauty excelled that of any flower.

I found myself fighting with my subconscious mind, as it desperately tried to warn me that something was askew, as it knew I was reliving a moment from my past, which had happened some ten years ago when at fourteen years old I had my first meeting with Joy. But regardless I ignored the attempt by reality to steal away an opportunity for me to enjoy every moment of our first encounter.

Even at speed, I could see clearly, how her lips curled perfectly from ear to ear, to create the most distracting smile, so much so that in the next moment my feet slipped from the BMX's peddles, allowing my legs and its cranks to combine as one, causing the bike to flip tossing me into the air, through which I soared like a ragdoll. My arms are flapping like a featherless bird as I try to fly and make myself look even more ridiculous than I already did. Like a bag of bones, I crash-landed on the ground a matter of feet away from the steps where she sat, slid across the grass, and smashed headfirst into the steps at her feet, my head spontaneously turned into a bloody red mess, spraying bright red droplets all over her pink and white summer dress.

Most girls would have run away screaming and crying more concerned about the blood spatter on their dress than me, but not Joy, and thanks to whoever is watching out for me from above, hers was the first face I saw when I came around. I was completely oblivious that I'd been unconscious for several minutes and the crowd of kids who surrounded me were beginning to wonder if I was dead. Even with blood spatter on her face, she was still the prettiest girl I'd ever seen, and she was looking at me with eyes full of compassion and cared about nothing else but my well-being and was soon bandaging my head with her scarf.

I never returned the scarf and carried it with me wherever I went, I wore it to our first prom, and I wore it as a bandana on my stag night and the following day to our wedding where I used it to wipe the sweat caused by an unbelievable hangover and wrapped it around her leg as a garter, it made for some amazing wedding photos. From then on, well when I wasn't on duty that is, it was wrapped around our bedpost, where it witnessed our wedding's consummation and the conception of our twins Penny and Paul. We lived a happy and blissful life apart from repeated calls to war and orders to fight in battles that no god-fearing person wanted, but duty always came first in our military families who were selected from genetic material that was engineered with a prime directive to serve.

Before the birth of our children, Joy had risen through the ranks faster than me and became a fearless and decorated officer but sadly, concerned that it would compromise our decision-making process, the Solar Defence Force didn't allow partners to fight on the same planet. But regardless of her elevated station, she gave up her career without hesitation to fulfil a personal prime directive of becoming the loving mother she'd always desired to be.

The battle hadn't yet begun as we travelled across the red sands of Mars making our way toward the reinforcement's depot, some fifty clicks or so from HQ when we received a distress call from Spartan Sub-Zero, the code name of a covert extraction team on this devilishly cold planet. This was a rare thing, these teams either came home with their prize or never returned, after a quick comms with HQ we were soon weaving our way up a canyon along what the maps described as an ancient riverbed, but it never looked much like one to me. Progress became slower and slower as the rocks on the riverbed became larger but fewer in number, many exceeding the size of our armoured carrier. Eventually, we were driving blind and were unable to get up a head of steam, and even though the temperature outside was umpteen degrees minus zero, it would have been quicker to get out and walk but due to the enemy's superior ability to fight hand-to-hand on open ground, this was a tactical no-no.

As the armoured vehicle approached the source of the distress signal the view ahead opened onto a broad plain but there was still no sign of the platoon or its transportation just a barren rocky landscape that vanished over the far horizon. Bent over the tact screen looking at the terrain where no sign of movement was indicated by the motion sensors of either enemies or friendlies, the rescue had rapidly become an unfathomable dilemma. We sat huddled in the eerie silence discussing in whispers what we would do next, how I wished in those finite moments that Joy was here to guide us, for she would have instinctively known what to do.

As I stretched my arms, for a split second, I caught sight of a movement in my peripheral vision, but it was too late for before I could react a mechanical arm shot out of an adjacent holographic rock smashing through the vehicle's port window and by some freak accident gripped me via Joy's scarf which was wrapped around my neck. It proceeded to drag me from my seat using its superior mechanoid force and pulled me through the shattered window, the broken glass peeled the skin from my face like an apple and the vehicle's metal frame cracked my skeletal bones as if they were made of puff pastry and what was left of my brain sloshed around like a Martini in my battered skull.

My dying thought was to thank God for allowing my soul to spend its last moments living in this realm reliving the memory of my first meeting with Joy in the full beauty of her earthly incarnation.

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