"Your father Boris, my older brother Ivan, left the path when I was quite young. He was eight years older than me. I was ten years old. That was 2020. I remember things very vaguely. I was just a child. Our father, your grandfather Fyodor and our mother renounced him. I didn't understand at the time. I was confused. I was just a child. He had been disfellowshipped for speaking out about some supposed issue within the brotherhood. He was accused of causing divisions and slander. He was only eighteen years old. I remember a lot of arguments and crying...and just like that my beloved brother was gone. I was very confused but no one would talk to me. Over time I heard just bits and pieces about Ivan. If I asked about him I was told that he had moved away. I gathered that he had married a girl that he had met in school." "Wait, wait" Boris exclaimed,” What is this disfellowshipping you speak about?” “Well" Dimitri explained “It’s what we now term disunion. It's when a comrade violates our protocols and is unrepentant. Our Council of Consecrated Ones directed us that those who leave the path should be thought of as dead to us...that they would be incinerated at Armageddon and their flesh would be consumed by crows and maggots, and not to feel compassion for them. That is how I was to feel about my brother Ivan. He was dead to me. I never saw Ivan again. Over the years I came to know more about him. He became a very talented and respected writer...very successful. His first wife took ill and died unexpectedly...I think it happened around 2035. They never had any children. Your father was devastated but what could we do? To communicate with him or to express our feelings for him or to be of any help whatsoever to him would have been unloving. We trusted the "Council of the Consecrated Ones" even though it troubled us. But after some years, he met your mother Katiya. She was a very well regarded poet. Certainly you've read her works?" “No, no I haven't " replied Boris. I knew nothing about my mother being a poet" "Well" Dimitri sighed, "she seemed to lose interest in her work about the same time that your father died. He was so troubled, such a tortured soul. Maybe if he had only known that Katiya was at that moment carrying his child, a son that would have brought him so much joy, that he would have reconsidered what he was about to do. That son was you Boris" he smiled. "Ivan would have been humored knowing that he fathered a child at 54." "How did my father die Uncle Dimitri? Neither my mother, nor anyone has ever spoken about it. Why such a secret? “He asked perplexed. Dimitri stared out the window that looked over the train yard. Boris could see his eyes mist over.