Twelve Minutes

An old man on the New Zealand coast records a video message for his daughter, who works on Mars. He shows her the garden, holds up an old photo, presses send. The signal takes twelve minutes to cross the void. She watches it in a cramped habitat module, dust drifting past the porthole. She records her reply and holds up a seedling she's grown under lights, the first green thing on that planet. Twelve minutes back. It's night on Earth now. He's asleep in his chair. Her message plays to an empty room while a red point of light rises over the sea. A film about the distance between people who love each other, measured in light-speed delay.