The Brothers [Complete Short Story]

The Meeting.

Dimitry entered with a gust of sleeting rain, which was all at once silenced by the heavy wooden door behind him. The saccades of his eyes searched along the bar in sporadic darts. Every third stool was occupied by a disheveled mop of greyish hair in a slimy overcoat. The worst blizzard couldn't keep that sort away. As his sight lurched from right to left, Dimitry could not help but catch his reflection in a mirror positioned above a vacant table. In fact, most of the tables sat vacant tonight.

Ivan watched, unnoticed by Dimitry, with salivation on his lips. The younger sat at a table in the far corner of a shadowy back wall. Ivan would have never admitted, even to himself, to purposely choosing a dimly lit corner of the room but, as his nature most automatically skewed toward the theatrical, this was undoubtedly the case. One corner of Ivan's mouth curled. He caught himself at once and contracted and squeezed the muscles of his face for one, two... four full seconds. He looked like a dog with deep, wrinkly jowls. He relaxed his face with a deep exhalation. He resumed a stoic visage in hopes his brother did not catch the momentary loss of faculties.

Dimitry's eyes flashed to the table, to Ivan, and froze a beat. His pupils dilated. Ivan, seeing that his brother recognized him, flowed out his chair and exclaimed with more belly than lungs, "Brother, so you have finally found me. Though I noticed you had found yourself first!"

Dimitry's ears turned hot.

"Come, come," said Ivan, "sit here, sit here! Or would you rather the table by the mirror where you may continue to admire God's fine work!"

"You mean to embarrass me, brother," Dimitry said with jovial eyes. "Careful or I'll embarrass you back the way I used to."

"You may be the greater of us in ways other than age alone, but I am not as runtish as I once was, brother. I've grown spry in my years, if not physically then certainly in intelligence. I like my chances just fine. Now, come, take this glass. Drink. Drink up!"

Dimitry palmed a rocks glass from his brother as Ivan produced a bottle of Irish whiskey from beneath the table. "And where, pray tell, did that come from?"

"Never you mind," Ivan said curtly,

Ivan, for his part, never relinquishing control of his brother's glass, pulled both hand and glass in low and toward his chest. Rolling his chin and contracting his muscle, he concentrated on a steady pour.

"For the Lord's sake, the spout is still on it. Did you get this from - "

Ivan's nose shot toward his brother's, "I said, never you mind." Keeping his whisper below the din of the room, Ivan's voice took on a raspy quality, communicating finality, and so the subject was abruptly dropped.

Dimitry watched his brother's mannerisms. He noted the degree to which Ivan tilted the bottom of the bottle, and it was clear to him this was not Ivan's first pour of the evening.

A Deep Contemplation.

Conversation was light over the first two glasses of whiskey. Ivan, speaking just enough to compel his brother to speech, was likely exerting as much willpower in his silence as his brother was in thinking up new things to say. Mostly the pair spoke about family and friends and where they are and what they are all doing. They reminisced about their childhood together. The eye of a child is predisposed to take in only the happiest of memories, as happiness is itself a virtue, perhaps chief among them, and none are more virtuous than children.

Ivan leaned back in his sturdy wooden chair and, expanding himself, cocked out both elbows as if stretching. Despite his slighter frame, his presence could be felt at once. There was a sort of power in him that extended past the physical body. If his frame was slight, his spirit was rotund.

He tilted his glass toward his gaze and eyed the final gulp of brown liquor remaining. In one motion, Ivan shot the whiskey down his gullet and smacked his lips with satisfaction as if to mark the completion of a prelude to some business of which Dimitry was still unaware.

"You're wondering why I am here. Why I've come back and why I called upon you. There isn't much to a thing like that. I am here because in a sense, I never left. And in another sense altogether, home never left me. But how can I expect you to understand a thing like that? Not from the outset of course, because I have spent no time explaining context."

"And context is important here?" Dimitry responded in earnest.

"Of course, context is important here! Context is important in all things. In proper context, all things are permissible. Truly, all things. Context is everything."

"OK, then what is the context?" Dimitry leaned forward.

"You remember when I left? You remember the day?" Ivan asked.

"No, I can't say I do. I heard a thing about your being commissioned by the army, but I did not know what to think of it then, and I suppose we've never addressed it between us," Dimitry said.

"No, of course not, of course not. We never address anything. We are men - brothers. And brothers do not waste time in trivialities such as this. Women, maybe. Two sisters, yes, I can see that. I can see that very clearly. But two men, two brothers? No, it should never come to pass. And on the other hand, exactly why should it not? Why should it not come to pass? Are you not worthy of the truth and am I worthy of your concern, or your time. Of course, you should know. We should know all there is between us, for we are brothers. And I do not speak plainly in the familial sense.

"You are a dear and treasured part of my childhood and my life to this day, too. More than even that, more than the blood we share, you are my brother because you are brother to all, and I am brother to all. All men are brothers and all life an expanding circle of filial interconnectedness. Don't you see, we are all, of this world, brothers to one another. All life is a brotherhood. That is why I called upon you.

"To discuss brotherhood?" Dimitry completed his brother's thought with incredulity.

"See there, your eyes. Your eyes betray you, brother. Dear, Dimitry, my brother. You look that way, and why? Are you thinking to leave because I am drunk, or else mad? I am not mad, brother. I am well. Though it is fair to say I am drunk - not drunk, per say, but certainly under the influence.

"What a wonderful phrase, 'under the influence'. We are all under the influence in one way or another, are we not, dear Dimitry? We are, each of us, under the influence."

Dimitry started in response, but Ivan did not relinquish.

"It wasn't that I never learned to manage my base instincts," Ivan said. "I hadn't, but it lay deeper than that. I lived a long time by my nature. I embraced that part of me.

"Can you understand what I mean by those words, that part of me. I embraced a part of self not because I did not know better, but precisely because I did know better and chose to live contrarily. It is a sort of experiment, if you can come to see it that way. 'If I do this, then that,' and that was the start of it. I embraced all that is the basest in man. And I am here to tell you there is no respite in a thing like that. Perpetual thunder rolls in a thing like that. I thought the army might claw me out of the moral hole I had dug myself. By then, we had not spoken for many years, you and I. Those were dark years for me. The army brought about even more brutishness in my heart, and my hole sunk deeper still.

"Do not misunderstand me, brother. I have not, and I do not now, repent for these things I have done and for the condition of my heart. Through the virtue of my baseness, I may come to you today and say these words I have been waiting to say for a long time - a very long time, brother.

"Do not discount my words on account of my appearance now, or the slur in this utterance or that one. For, my condition, my drunkenness if you'll have me come right out and say it, is not the driver of my words, though it may be the vehicle. Without a drink or two, I am not sure I could expel all that stirs my heart at night, in the moments before sleep steals me away. And yet, I know these things I am about to say; I know them intrinsically. That is to say, I have meditated on these things some years now, and I know what it is I am to say. So, you will pardon me if I speak myself in circles once or twice and mince this word or that, because at the end of it all, like the end of an apple tree, is a sugary-sweet morsel for you and me both. I will begin my contemplation with man as an animal of the Earth. From there we can explore much more deeply these things I keep in my heart.

"In many individual instances of this creature called man, we find a sort of ignorance which manifests in a brutish sort of fellow. He is like a horse, each is taught what is required of him in society by the carrot and the stick. He is rewarded with the carrot and punished by the stick.

"The temperament, that is what's in the heart of each man, fills a range as natural as that of all the other creatures of a certain evolutionary stature. Mammals are the most fully developed, by way of the species known as man. And man has developed incredible complexity - dexterity of body and mind. Yet, within each individual representation of the species as a whole, within each man, there is a second sort of evolution which may take place. This is the evolution that occurs within the mind. This is important, listen carefully, brother. A distinct delineation lies between the evolution of the mind and, as I have said, the evolution within the mind, you see.

"Evolution within the mind is a rare milestone marking an acceleration in the progress of aggregate Life. It is a shift from the biological wildcard of mutation. Like a Las Vegas casino dealing cards from an automatic shuffler, perfectly random mutations in the smallest pieces of our tangible self are dealt into being at a pace no quicker than the generational width of a given species. Conversely, evolution of the mind is spry and lively. It has not the same limitations of biological evolution.

"We've not so much reached the limits of biological evolution - certainly life exists all around us that has come to harness functionalities with which the human biology cannot compete. Rather, it may be said man is something of a runt of the evolutionary family. Ay, Dimitry, a true runt of the litter, and yet has broken free of the shackles of his own physical limitations of body and mind."

Ivan chortled. "I have not come to my own defense on the matter of my sanity, have I? You think me no more than a lunatic."

"No, Ivan. I do not take you for a lunatic," Dimitry said warmly. "I think you eccentric and a bit grandiose, but I'll admit you might be sane, yet."

"Well now, then that is good! I knew I did well to call on you, brother. Here, here, have more drink," Ivan splashed a pour over the glasses, spilling the majority along the table between the two.

Dimitry sopped up the pooling whiskey with napkins. Ivan continued as if in recitation, "Biological evolution, you see, never set flight as the desired result. In biological evolution, the only desired result is continuation of life. That is assuming one could expand the mind to encompass a concept such as desire in the context of evolution - in the process of aggregate Life. Is it not the shared attribute of all successful life, to move toward the continuation of Life? As a whole that is, as a whole does life move toward a continuation of the phenomenon? Now, the phenomenon, as I have just called it, of life in this context can mean more than one thing. It is not necessarily Life in the aggregate, but this will add to the complexity of the argument without adding much value, and so can be put aside. Rather, I mean only to look to flight as a proxy for the efficiency of evolutionary modalities.

"It was approximately 350 million years ago that insects first took to the skies. In the last third of an Aeon, insects have truly mastered aviation. Among them are evolutionary artists as found in the butterfly's enchanting wing. Insects such as ants and crickets grow wings only temporarily which they shed after use. And have you ever tried to swat at a housefly who seemed to anticipate your every move with grace and ease? Insects are truly marvels of flight, and it only took them 350 million years to hone the craft.

"Ancient birds were famously sprouting functional avian appendages a mere 150 million years during the Jurassic period when we called them dinosaurs. Modern birds, in that time have spread across the world and accomplish outstanding feats of migration. The Arctic tern can fly from right here - this very spot," Ivan's finger jammed forcefully on the table, "to the Arctic circle and back in one migration cycle, which is a truly incredible distance for a creature to move under its own locomotion. But no bird can hold a candle to the feats of the mammalian branch of the family tree of Life.

"The first mammal to escape toward the skies, bats have finally eked out an evolutionary win only within the last 50 million years. They have not had much time to diversify in the ways insects and birds have, but still cover virtually all the planet, save for some islands, and fill a variety of ecological niches. This is all relatively impressive considering the short amount of time in which the mammal has worked it all out. Quite impressive, indeed. Then we have humans.

"Humans are the first form of life to fly independent of biological evolution. In humans we find an extremely active evolution within the mind. We will not delve into the details of the Montgolfier brothers or of their more famous counterparts, the Wrights. Man achieved flight in one regard or another within a mere few hundred years. A blip of a blip in the journey of life. In that blip of a blip, man has constructed craft larger than any biologically flying lifeform. We fly faster and farther as we extend our reach past our little speck, our home planet, into the vast Universe. Man has accomplished so much so quickly to the credit of the heightened capability within the mind."

Of evolution and God.

Dimitry watched his brother with a sense of bewilderment. The last time the two spent any notable time in one another's company, the evening resolved in a barroom brawl entirely instigated, against the wishes of Dimitry, by his brother, Ivan. The pair was waxing philosophical with a pair of former schoolmates when gentlemanly discourse gave way to ad hominem innuendo. Said another way, his man disagreed with Ivan and so Ivan insulted him before throwing a wild cross. Slipping into the subsequent commotion, Ivan vanished that night leaving Dimitry to even up with the bartender. That night was never itself a reason for Ivan's excommunication of sorts, but it was another data point along a trending curve. Evidently, still an unabashed boozehound of questionable scruples, Dimitry saw something else in his brother now. In their twenties, the pair was fresh-faced and youthful, if not a bit sophomoric in character. Now, sitting in scant lighting, Ivan's countenance a decade hence demonstrated untold turmoil in the younger brother. His voice had grown gravely and coarse like sandpaper. Dimitry felt drawn to his brother. Afterall, they were family.

If Ivan had noticed the inquisition in his brother's stare, he was careful to make no indication. Just as likely, the concoction of liquor and preoccupied thought dampened his external awareness. He continued, "Heretofore, I will contextualize and condense this matter of evolution within the mind. We may call it cultural evolution. The concept of culture carries mental baggage to be sure, but it really is the most fitting term to use. When we discuss culture, or cultural evolution, we are examining the larger systems which are comprised of the individual. Exactly the same as the culture shared within a colony of Argentinian ants or a troop of chimpanzees in the Congo. Also shared by these species is a tendency for culture to expand in a Darwinian sense when it becomes too powerful relatively or encounters a vacuum in the cultural ecosystem. Yes, dear brother, culture has a wide tapestry of ecosystems. The mind is just as diverse as the ecosystems of the Earth. As one culture expands and encompasses more and more individuals, new layers of culture form within the larger culture, like rose petals expanding outwardly in bloom.

"Within the western culture there is a subculture, an inner petal, of science. It may be agreeable to say science is the dominant driver currently of cultural growth. It may be said that the petal of science is pushing outwardly upon the outer petals of western culture to promote cultural growth. At another time, it was religion, and at another it was agriculture, but these cultures have already grown to inhabit most of the human species over most of the planet now. Science, as complex and multifaceted as this umbrella term is, continues to expand in a way that appears exponential given the evidence of evolutionary progress."

Ivan took a swig of drink. He peered through bloodshot eyes at the table in front of his brother and his pupils dilated. He began again, "In my mind I see a root, or a branch, or a blood vein. Yes, a vein within the human body, taken for example. At the one end of each vein are the capillaries. Capillaries are feeding the cells of the body, feeding them the oxygen they need to continue operations. And yes, too, the earliest forms of technology all work to serve the same. They feed the people. This is stone working and woodworking. This is hunting and gathering. It is fire. We feed the people to keep the system moving.

"We fold inwardly to find the veins, just as I said a moment ago. Is that what I said, in fact? Well I am not sure, but nonetheless, it is the vein next. The veins are early agriculture and animal husbandry, you see. They are religion and commerce, too. In the vein cultural tools come together into larger cultural machines. Within a cultural machine, we find adaptations of the physical world. We find structures made of masonry and wood. We find implements to augment our environment at our will. Implements to tend the field and implements to tame the beast. In addition, we bring to bear tools of the mind, cultural tools. We learned to turn the fields to mitigate loss of crop yield harvest over harvest. We bred animals with favorable attributes to improve the proportion or the degree of such an attribute within the population. We aided biological evolution by removing much of the randomness inherent in mutation. Much of the randomness, mind you; never quite all - remember that fact, brother. Quite often we do evoke our agency without a full comprehension as to the underlying process yielding the desired result. In the veins of culture then, we understood how to manipulate even if we did not grasp (do not today grasp) the entirety of the why behind that how.

"The next tier in our vascular system is the artery. Do keep with me, we are almost complete, and in this I do have a broader point to be made. The arteries in our systems are much the same as bloody superhighways of cells whizzing by. Each cell, there might be ten million of them at a time, is delivering oxygen or rushing back from a recent drop-off. Each is like a scientist rushing headlong toward the truth and delivering some singular morsel to sustain the people - to continue life.

"Something important happens between the second tier and the third, that is, the veins and the arteries of our little analogy. Did you catch it? At a certain point above and beyond sustainment, cultural evolution shifts gears in a sense. When enough oxygen - we may do away with any analogy for now, though I do have a final thought on the matter which I will come to momentarily - when enough culture is disseminated across some number of individuals, dependent on many externalities, the culture grows to exceed what is needed by the human system to sustain itself. Man being a creature of insatiable drive, in the aggregate, but that is giving man too much agency in the whole deal. Rather, man drives toward higher complexity whether cultural or biological because Life drives toward higher complexity. Both systems are the same in that respect, you see. The Universe drives toward higher complexity, and what is Life and in turn Man if not a more complex representation of the universe? Nothing more. That is all He is."

"And there," Demitry interrupts, "why do you say He like that? To whom are we referring?"

Ivan chided his brother, "Well, it just goes to show, brother, you haven't been listening to me at all!"

"I have."

"You've heard my words, no doubt in that, brother. But you have not heard me. You have yet to listen. Come now, try. Try to see the deepest meaning in my words.

"Religion is the start of the whole of it. Agriculture and warfare served their part of it as well, but none like religion. For agriculture may satiate a man today, and religion may satiate him for eternity. Religion was the first to look for why. For the first time, Life and the Universe asked the central question of existence. Why? By what underlying means, and to what purpose is it all? Man was the tool.

"It is a question we pursue to this day, and I believe man will pursue until his dying breath. At least, the dying of our cultural complexity. For you see, cultures may become extinct as surely as biological evolutionary traits by means other than expected competition from other complex life. All evolution may be exterminated, suddenly and completely exterminated. It is a fact inherent in the randomness of evolution that may never be fully mitigated, however hard we try."

Ivan stopped speaking for a moment. The idea of sudden and complete extermination hung in the air above their heads. Ivan recollected his thoughts and began again, "Religion, philosophy, mysticism and mythology began to feed a spirit within the heart of brutish man. Here I find myself, that is my mind, at the cusp of an infinitely deep, infinitely black chasm which demonstrates how fledging our evolution truly is. It is here though, the edge of an incomprehensible fissure that the mind of man made flight for the first time. Not literal flight, mind you. I have slipped into another analogy all together. Forget that bit, rather the cultural evolution of man made a functional shift from pursuing knowledge for sustenance to consuming knowledge for satiation. Is the unyielding pursuit of knowledge driven no less by the senses than an appetite for indulgence or a lust for flesh? We are, all of us, victims of instinct. We are under an influence of one sort or another.

"Man has unlocked a higher capability of the mind. We know man unlocked it, because in the individual of man it may not always be found. In a human system, in a culture, you are bound to find the sensual desire for knowledge. In that same individual man, such capability may not exist in one moment and yet exist in the next. Though once it exists, I believe it cannot be undone without first undoing the man - destroying the mind, you see. Cultural evolution may begin within the mind of the individual but does not necessarily remain there. In fact, a decidedly beneficial variable in the context of cultural evolution is a single cultural unit's ability to transplant itself from the originating mind to an external mind of another individual in the cultural machine. In this way, the cultural unit, here I will call a meme, pollinates a population and enhances the desired result of aggregate Life."

"And what's that," Dimitry interrupted, not without genuine curiosity, but perhaps equally for the purpose of interjecting something somewhere for the sake of his own ego. "What is the desired result?" Dimitry's right leg rocked convulsively.

"Why, haven't I said it before!" Ivan bellowed. "Continuation of life, brother. Con-tin-uation of self."

"Self-preservation," concluded Dimitry.

"No. Well, yes. Yes, that's it exactly," exclaimed Ivan. "It is more than that. Self-preservation prescribes the continuation of the individual; in the context we are accustomed to using it. It is true, what you say, but maybe for reasons other than how you mean.

"Let's go back to the analogy of the vascular system and of evolution. Yes, yes, I will not belabor the point, but I only mean to complete the analogy, as you see, I've left it unfinished. We spoke of capillaries and veins, which exist in a sort of hierarchy all designed for the same goal. The goal is to feed the individuals, whether they be individual cells or human individuals. Capillaries and veins work to feed the individuals to keep the system operating. Higher still are the arteries which connect large regions of the body together and efficiently continue the flow of blood - of oxygen or culture. If one cell of blood is a single unit, and a molecule of oxygen the same, culture's single unit may be called the meme.

"A meme is, very simply put, the smallest component of a culture or cultural concept. As an atom is the building block of the physical world and the cell is the smallest component of life, a meme serves that role for the phenomenon of culture. Memes may be very dense and therefore hold the potential for larger resulting complexity, or they may be like a noble gas, light and very stable.

"These memes, each of them, flow through the modern technologies of science, math, statecraft, and information technology to feed the people and extend our reach to the singular ultimate truth. This thing is the core of the entire phenomenon we, all people and all life, have experienced, and that we call God."

At the final word, Dimitry rose from his seat, his belly jutting the table toward the wall and cornering Ivan. "I will weather the storm for you, brother. I will grin politely and converse with you about any manner of things after an absence of some twelve years, but I will not sit by and listen to you blaspheme. You're a Catholic whether you accept that now or not. And to say otherwise is to torment our mother's soul, God allow her final peace." Dimitry's hand shook with adrenaline as he made the sign of the cross. His breath was short and rapid.

"Brother," Ivan's arm reached across the table and secured Dimitry firmly by his biceps, "I meant no offense against the Good Lord, brother. No, in fact, I honor Him and esteem Him, for, you see, he is in me, dear brother. God lives here." Ivan, now on his feet as well, pounded his chest. "God is in me, brother. And you as well. We are each of us God. But no, please, take a seat Dimitry. Sit, sit. Another whiskey?"

The reckoning and a toast.

Ivan excused himself to the restroom. The nature of his work this evening and the length of time by which he had been diligent at his craft left a powerful impression on his bladder, which he at once took to redress. When he returned, however, he was disconcerted to find his brother had donned his coat and slipped a hundred-dollar bill upon the table.

"And what's all this then," exclaimed Ivan.

"It was a pleasure reminiscing with you, brother, but I think I should be going. The trip home will be unpleasant enough as is without further intoxication through liquor or words," Dimitry said without making eye contact with his estranged brother.

"Fair, yes that is fair enough," laughed Ivan. But a few drops more of each may neither extend our inebriation nor relinquish it. So, in the name of brotherly love, I'll propose a toast."

Ivan recollected the glasses on the table and dribbled out the last of the whiskey. "Barely a shot," he said. "Barely a shot. And the hundred, what is that there for?"

"For you," Dimitry said sternly, "for the bottle, however it may have materialized into your possession."

Ivan continued to chortle, distributing his brother's glass and ignoring his words.

"To brothers!" Ivan exclaimed perhaps louder than he intended. The greybeards at the bar stirred upon their stools, but none turned to look in the brothers' direction. "To brotherhood in every sense of the word. To brotherhood under God and to brotherhood among the active and ongoing phenomenon we call the Universe. For we are, each of us, in the darkest expanse of a cave, and we peer into the black with unflinching nerve. We stand, brothers, locked arm in arm and step one foot at a time down the cavernous path. Only uncertainty lies beyond, and we have but faith at our backs. And that is enough. That is enough."

Ivan's final words trailed off. If he had any more to say on the topic, it may wait another decade still. The brothers clinked drinks, each imbibed his respective glassful, and together made for the door.

Two empty rocks glasses sat upon the table flanking an empty whiskey bottle. The table was sticky with liquor despite the wads of sopping napkins still littering its surface. The hundred-dollar bill Dimitry deposited, if not for his brother's than for his own salvation, had inexplicably vanished.