I moved around my house pulling down dust sheets from furniture like tearing away ghosts of the last six years. The could have beens, the things I may have done or people I might have met.

But I am finally home.

By our standards, I would be considered to have a high quality of life. The apartment block I had grown up in was a crumbling old-world heap, with peeling walls and rotting floorboards in the hall. My parents were good people, my mother owned a tech-shop on the Section Two borders and, from what I remember they were the sort of intelligent, quiet type that kept themselves to themselves. With the exception of one conversation with my father, I don't remember catching a whiff of their insubordination.

But Mother obviously did.

I suppose in a way I had tried to honor their memory. Because becoming a vet was the sort of role that allowed you the perks of living outside of Section Two, but under anyone's radar.

Biology is a highly valuable skill, for two reasons; with Mother's arrival we were thrust into a great galactic community with endless biological data to understand and manipulate and, more pressingly; because of the war with the Scynthians.

When Mother landed on this earth hundreds of years ago, the Scynthians and their great Space Dragons were (by her account at least) already tearing through the galaxy. Earth was next on the menu. Their rolling colonialization was unstoppable. Mother was fighting tooth and nail to quell the Scynthian expanse. Henceforth, our whole society, the entirety of humanity was charged with ways to destroy the Scynthians.

As a talented biology student my decision to become a vet and forsake a life of biological warfare or, (as was my suspicion, to perfect our bio-working capabilities) horrified my instructors.

But I followed through and spectacularly failed any exam that would have put me forward to be a biological weapon scientist in Mother's Mind.

So instead, my day job was mostly re-animating people's pets, delivering puppies, and very occasionally being escorted to the agricultural sections to deliver more exotic animals. I don't regret my choice.

Now I think about it. I realize that there was a second reason.

And that was Scynthian Day.

Scynthian Day happens every year. A captured Scynthian is released and the community must gather to kill it using make-shift hand-held weapons. It's a must-attend-on-your-life event and so the streets are packed with families, children and the elderly.

I only know the origins of Scynthian Day because of rumors, and they say that many years ago there were whole sub-groups of war-deniers, those who thought the war against the Scynthians was some kind of hoax and the Scynthians themselves didn't even exist.

So, perhaps as a demonstration, Mother declared Scynthian Day.

Whole communities gathered together around huge mysterious crates that were left in central community squares in a score of our sections.

The first Scynthian Day I remember, was with my parents. I had a scarf wrapped round my neck. Held up in my dad's arms, being the end of December, it was one of those rare cold days where my breath came out in clouds. I remember feeling sad because my parents had insisted, I leave my Purple Monkey behind. We were at the back of the crowd, my parents half-heartedly carrying spears crafted from that year's scrap metal. I had a small knife in my hand. Like a four-year-old with a knife could make a difference!

There was our yearly gift, a great black box dropped in by gravcopter in our community square. I heard great huffing sounds, a threatening click-click-click come from inside. Then a loud bang and the box shook. Everyone was silent and tense, surrounding it.

"Kal," my dad said to me. "I want you to close your eyes."

"No, Daddy," I said. "I want to see the monster."

The box let out a bang, the creature testing the sides. A loud thunderous deep click filled the square. So loud I felt it in my stomach.

I remember even then, realizing that my parents were scared and how that affected me. I didn't cry. But went quiet, any sound snatched from my voice.

My father passed me to my mum and held his spear up in his skinny arms.

Then the sides from the box fell away, exposing the Scynthian. Eight-feet tall with a hard-black shell that curved around it's back, two huge pincer-like claws, then two smaller, more human-like arms that protruded from its front. It let out a roar, it's head angular and squat with a sloping armored skull and black eyes. It shifted around, its two legs were reptilian, but made from the same hard shell. Like a giant walking crab.

The first wave were teens, always teens. Their path to adulthood paved in this moment. They charged forward and the Scynthian picked up a young man with its massive pincers and pulled him apart in front of us.         

Waves of people followed and the Scynthian fought back. People I knew were killed. My father ran ahead, and my mother let out a small cry. Eventually, someone managed to get a spear in-between the Scynthian's neck and shell. The Scynthian stumbled and more people rushed forward clubbing and hacking until the monster was dead.

After, all the weapons are set in a great pile, the Scynthians remains dragged on top and the whole thing was set ablaze.

I remember, being part of the crowd watching the flames lick its shell and hearing the crackle and pop as the corpse burnt. I was perched again in the embrace of my father, my mother wrapping her arms around us both.

"Merry Christmas," she whispered in my father's ear.

My father tensed slightly at the word then squeezed me even tighter.

Eventually, it was my turn to be in the first wave. As was the law, when we finished high school. I was alone by then, my parents gone.

I was sixteen and standing side-by-side trembling classmates. Our final school project was making our weapons from scrap as best we could. No training was allowed, but we were armed with an array of clubs and spears. I remember feeling warm go down my leg as my bladder emptied as the crate sides fell away.

But the Scynthian didn't charge. It stayed very still. Its two massive claws hung down each side and its smaller inner human-like hands were spread out. Like it was trying to talk to us, in it's garbled throaty clicking-language.

It took a step forward.

All of us were so jacked-up on adrenaline that we didn't wait. We stormed ahead, my teenage classmates and I hacked the Scynthian to pieces while it screamed.

By the time it was over, as I lay my spear onto the funeral pyre and watched the flames lick the Scynthian's skull, a Scynthian that hadn't even attacked us... That's when I knew I wanted no part of this war.

As much as I dreaded Scynthian Day, whole communities rallied around it. It brought people together and gave them a real appreciation of what life was like for our Mother's Hand who had to fight the Scynthians day in day out.

I think it kept people distracted.

I touched the two scars on my chest.

Did Scynthians carry guns too?

***

My house was a bungalow. All of them were matching modular homes in Around The Lake small but new, clean and expandable if you had a family – for me I had my small veterinary addition. It was Mother's goal to move everyone into homes like this one day. But don't be fooled; space and cleanliness came with a price; a total lack of freedom. Gone were the telecubes that threw up a three-dimensional projection, our every moved was watched though our interactive screenwalls.

Our fridges produced small gluey bars, one darker, a sweet brown fudge and the other pink with streaks of marbled white, that had a more savory and meaty taste. These came from a pipe, which I had followed from the back of the fridge into the ground– but I did not know what supplied our food. We were expected to eat it.

Our modern toilets sucked our excrement away, testing us for illness and disease. If we needed medicine, it was automatically updated in our food patties. We were, in a way more in Mother's clutches than anyone else.

I went into my bedroom and pulled out my Purple Monkey. The only real and solid link to my childhood. He and I in a way had just been through a very similar experience.

I pulled the fluff up behind his head, switched him on and set him back down.

He animated, coming alive and then looked about confused.

"Kal... what date is it?"

"It's 528 After Mother, 30th of Thebus." Our twelve months were named after the planets which Mother cared for in our system.

"I've been asleep for a very long time!" my Purple Monkey exclaimed.

"Me too actually."

"Did you sleep well, Kal?"

"I don't know."

"Would you like me to tell you a story?" Monkey said his head cocking to one side a small smile on his face. This was something he suggested often. He had a vast library of Mother-approved propaganda stories. They were tales of the Princes' bravery, the perils of curiosity or how Mother came and saved us all. I had listened to them many times, the one constant thread through my childhood and, having them play in the background continued to have a therapeutic effect.

"Yes please, Monkey."

As he spoke a story, I examined the white envelope, corners framed with a golden guild and in the center like a clot of blood was Mother's crest. Inside was my invitation to meet with Prince Rupert for photos of us... playing golf.

I didn't want to go. I wanted to put this whole thing behind me, I was thirty-six, no, I corrected myself, you are thirty-eight. Damn. I am thirty-eight.

I looked down at my right arm. It hadn't felt the same since I had disassociated from it. Physically– yes, okay it felt fine. But it didn't feel quite right knowing it wasn't mine.

It was something Mother had added to me without my permission. I wondered if it was bugged, or somehow recording my movements. I promised myself I would scan it later with my veterinary equipment and see. In Section Two you see people whose prosthetics are wildly out of proportion to their own body. I thought they had traded their own arms and legs to escape it all with moon powder.

When I lose all this mass... is that what I am going to look like?

I took a sigh and mentally chastised myself.

Come on Kal. You could be dead. You got shot. You need to give your head a shake and thank Mother you are alive. Be thankful for what you do have.

My limbs matched. I had spent enough time in the mirror as soon as I got home naked and clenching everything. I made a mental note of trying very seriously to keep my service gains. There is a whole industry dedicated to this sort of thing, I will sign up for one of those jacked celebrity veteran's programs, drink Mother's Milk and try and stay this muscly.

Yes. That was what I needed to focus on. I am alive and after one final brush with Mother, my life will be my own once again.