But, when I'd been here a couple of years and the applause rose as I stepped up to the Base Commander, as he handed me the certificate that said I'd been chosen by most of my colleagues for that year's award, as I shook his hand and looked in his eyes and said, "Thank you," I knew what I had to do.

For the rest of the day I merely listened to people, mechanically going about the assigned tasks, rehearsing over and over the opening paragraph of my letter, the one that would finally tell Flanagan her "thank you." I chose an old-fashioned form. Not a Screen message, not something cold and electronic, but something actually put on paper, a rarity on Mars. Ink and paper. It was an expense, an extravagance that was the least I could do. To say "thank you" for taking the time when it mattered most to talk to a really troubled eighteen year-old kid terrified about leaving Earth someday, maybe never to return, talking to me even when it meant Flanagan couldn't get on with what she really wanted to do. To say "thank you" for inviting me to her home, she and her husband feeding me dinners and letting me sleep over when I was more scared than usual. "Thank you" for bringing me to places of art and music and dancing and beautiful language spoken with the ease of flight.

I put my letter in the rarely used postal box that gets sent back with the shuttles and waited for months, travel time for cargo vessels to Earth still being slow. As time grew on, I couldn't avoid facing my fear, the fear that kept slithering in my ear at night like Claudius's poison while I stared at the long white streaks and longer black smudges that a midnight near a dome light can make through my window port, the fear that told me that maybe she was angry that I had left her in the hall back on Earth with only a casual "Part of the territory" instead of "Thank you," because she knew I knew she knew "Thank you" can be far deeper than mere "Good bye" or "I love you."

I knew she would respond in the same way I had written. And when the mail finally arrived and I saw my old school's envelope, I ran to my quarters, 18 years-old again, I was back in the hall, this time ready to share that cup of tea, let her have one of those damned Camels, finally ready to talk beyond the motion of words and scripted conversation. I remember so clearly putting aside everything, sitting down, looking at the envelope with my name typed in crisp black ancient Smith Corona, finally turning it over and with an index finger splitting the paper apart. The letter unfolded and began, "I regret to inform you..." and I didn't have to read on.

My hands and their news fell to the table, and I sat staring, Zebulon Base going on with all its common sounds beyond my apartment door and window ports, sat and heard myself begin to wail so loud that my next-door neighbor knocked, and I lied too easily that everything was "Just fine," and he went away, his door shutting like a vault in my head.

I've never lied to anyone since about such matters and have never passed someone in a hall that way again.

How kind of Flanagan's secretary to go to the trouble of typing something on paper rather than just creating a Screen response. How kind of him even to find something as antique as a typewriter. He got my first "Thank you." My second went to my husband Jeremy for listening to my tears all night long without trying to "rescue me" from all the pain.

And when I was gathered with our Base before the quad Network Screen, and I saw the Sail with its golden wings and thousand foot chain of glittering environmental cubes explode silently in the night sky, blossoming in a mute, slowly mushrooming mass of shimmering metal and expanding iridescent gases, scores of souls ready to relocate to a distant moon of Jupiter suddenly vaporized by the anger of terrorists, and when we all watched the replay over and over on the Screens in our own quarters or in the emotional comfort of the public quad, trying to comprehend such an act, what ever commitment I had made to saying "Thank you" in honor of Flanagan got reinforced, became fundamental to my way of living in a solar system that now was splitting into warring factions, where danger lay everywhere.

So today when you say, "bye," and I say, "thank you" instead, now you know what I believe Flanagan knew that afternoon in that hall back on Earth, though she never said anything to me afterwards, nor I to her. You know the truth now, and I'm glad.

Glad that she knows now. That I told. That she mattered. That you matter. That those two hundred colonists still matter. That no one has to regret saying "Thank you" to anyone, whether they're strangers or lovers. Never.

4.

Nkosi Jalla watches Yoko leave his office. The door slides shut with a dull thump. He opens his desk drawer and pulls out the little "delta unit." He smiles, holds it in the air towards the ceiling camera. "I done good," he says aloud and smiles.

His desk screen beeps twice and the Base Commander's face appears.

"Bravo, Nkosi. You gave a very convincing performance."

"Indeed. And we got want we wanted — let the Prime Minister get a load of this."

"Yes."

"Hope Yoko's story gives the bitch in Toronto a heart attack."

The Commander's face crinkles into a grin. "Go write your report to Alliance headquarters, make up some lies that you couldn't stop her from sending the story, and get some sleep."

"Yes, sir," Nkosi says simply.

The screen blips to white, followed by a stream of Network approved news items and feature stories all in bright colors and cutting edge design.

"We may win this game yet, " he says aloud and goes over to the galley to make a soothing cup of Chamomile.

Time for bed and an afternoon nap of gratifying sleep.

For Matthew Rogan,
September 11,2001