Brayton Leroy Meyer

@caucasiansuasion

Çerkesya'nın yedinci oğlu. "Mən Gizli Atəşin xidmətçisiyəm..." spatiotemporal logistics & speculative fiction @jack-of-crowns on Tumblr

3.405 Folgt1.654 Follower750 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir caucasiansuasion.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 18

Date night for The Companion and I #FilmSky

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 18

From that never-ending mess of a Gaslamp Fantasy I keep scrivening... #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

The satin gown felt as though woven of lead. She could barely offer a hand to Count Zhalov as he excused himself for the dessert service, silently beseeching Del to grant her strength in seeing this charade of courtship through to the interminable ball’s conclusion.
“Zoltana.”
Bikbay Mirza, come seeking his own nazar against the covetous Count who had already amassed a great estate in the Bakhchiserai. What the Tatar princes had managed to keep after the Khanate’s annexation, they intended to hold no matter the cost. Zoltana simply exacted the same steep price every ćoxani before her had from whichever powerful man came to her next - the right to openly practice ‘O Sır’ free from persecution, and in exchange use the secrets of that knowledge to make one of them greater than all the rest.
“Your Excellency,” she answered with a small nod and all the zeal of a reclining odalisque. “Peace be upon you and your bountiful gardens; may they blossom forever.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 17

Steganography versus the surveillance state in 'Glinter'. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Leigh felt the weight of a century of service in Mei’s words even through the protocols.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” She shot her a knowing wink. “It’s been so long since I had any kind of a wetsuit on, my muscles might implode simply from the effort of paddling out the back to the lineup. No, I appreciate your doing something you were never meant for or never meant to do. It wasn’t exactly my career design to teach Eurasian Lit to privileged Party kids who couldn’t care less whether they read Moliére or Mo Yan when my surfing days were over.”
“Not that I am just so incredibly honored to still be able to serve the people,” she added quickly, trailing off with an exaggerated sigh.
A barely imperceptible hesitation from Mei.
“In the event the meld gets broken and I cannot retrieve your consciousness manually from outside the tank, tap on this panel with your left heel like so - and it will project a holographic reticle icon permitting override shutdown with a single blink, so that your yuán shén can safely return to your body.”

“So then, ‘The painting is hidden in the root of the plum tree’?” Casually, off-handedly.
Mei closed the panel as if she hadn’t heard.
“A failsafe mechanism that I built into the original design,” the Jùjiàng continued.
“Because, as I am sure that you are aware of, ‘the court only counts the fallen blossoms.’ Just a slight tap. The harder feel to acquire will be the amount of clench required for different aspects of degenerate skimming.” All four synthetic hands positioned Leigh’s right fist in the Tàiji Quán form and clasped tight. A smooth cool something passed between them and under her knuckles.
“Hold this tension back to your quarters.” Mei’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly as she spoke while resuming graviton adjustments for the Tomb’s field dampeners. Any trace of emotion vanished. “Until tomorrow, then.”
Leigh barely managed to get inside the hatch before looking down at what she held; a perfectly round disc of dull, oxidized bronze with a cleanly stamped square hole exactly in the center. A coin. From the Tang Dynasty.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 16

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 15

Substituting "mentor" for "coach". A natural and a synthetic rediscover what it means to be human in 'Glinter'. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

$One thing was for sure, she’d never had a better mentor in her life for anything than this old prestige-model Jùjiàng which was teaching her the ins and outs of the noetic melding tanks that mining operations used. “You’ll feel the feedback from Calvera’s crust fracturing right down to your bone marrow,” Mei said in her precisely polite tones. “Even through this degenamite mesh.” Synthetic fingers squeezed Leigh’s shoulder. “Although without the synapskin, even these surfing muscles would implode under enough psychokinetic pressure transfer. Remember at all times, ‘Yì Dào, Qì Dào’. She reached for the graviton adjuster clipped to her utility rigging with another arm, a smile creasing the worn plum-coloured resin of her meticulous features. “Forgive the slowness of my pace, Professor Badiane. This chassis was originally designed to withstand the eyes of the elite, not to work upon machinery designed to withstand the pressures of a neutron star.”$

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 14

This EAP meeting is not going well... caution on the strong adult language in today's #WIPSnip (in both languages). #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

“Really? I don’t remember signing away my inherent right to dignity when the recruiters came calling to Six Drake Bay last summer.”
Defiantly. Daring him to defend the indefensible. His eyes were dead and clear.
“You knew how dangerous this could be. And you knew how much you stood to gain. We all did, Leigh. You think it’s easy on me knowing what could happen to any one of us on any given shift down there? We call the operations chamber ‘The Tombs’ for a reason. And when someone loses their life -”
" ‘…someone loses their life…?’ For fuck’s sake, Sammy; say her name! Or now that there’s no more of her yuan in your pocket and your cock in her mouth anymore -”
“Enough! Calliope Psalida died as she lived, pushing herself to her limits and willing to cut around the corners necessary to do it. If Zhōngguó is ever to lift humanity up to the next phase of its potential, we’ll need more like her.” His words were a surly snarl. “Sefil kaltak! Get off of my bridge!”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 13

Technology making all of our lives so much better... no worries; here's today's #WIPSnip to reassure us that It will do the same for all of our deaths as well 😱 #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

$Death was not at all what she had expected. Those constant currents of urgency; static crackling in the mind of one used to using logic to correct transmission drift across æons of shí kōng, gone altogether quiet. Almost altogether. Every neuron firing away with crystalline clarity, yet her thoughts were dragonflies, darting erratically in fields of iridescent distraction. So far apart, so far. They could only watch from the bridge as Calliope decohered, her fractured selves become ghosts in overexposure glinting across the Tombs, each a perfect stranger to the other. A semantic untangler sent to decipher the whispered ripples of Calvera, fallen instead under the spell of a dead sun. “Callie! Callie!” Shamil was pounding the comslink with fistfuls of sheer frustration and his rage, but nothing came to her through the crush of hypergravity, nothing except the sound of gentle rain; transitive neutrinos falling softly like tears shed in the name of someone that she would never recall.$

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 13

Good morning #BreakfastCrew; loving the clarity that the mountains bring to the soul and may we carry this with us through the day 🙏🏼

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 8

A recurrent character from my dieselpunk/occult fiction pieces is about to prove that nobody outswamps the daughter of the King of the Northern Seas. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

A leviathan floated just beneath the stagnant surface of the Varvatsievsky canal, motionless in the heavily silted waters as an unanswered prayer; the sturgeon of the Styx never answered to prayer. Angara Shùn stood at the edge of an embankment, one gloved hand on a fog-shrouded iron piling as the rest of the bridge began emerging from the humid grey of a rotting Volga dawn. In her other hand the chronothurge ticked away, not keeping time so much as counting down what little remained. An hour, perhaps two. The instrument’s modified gears measured spacetime portal degradation the way a physician might measure the ebbing pulse of a dying patient, with a somber precision.
“Comrade Lóng”, Commissar Volkov urged.
A gesture towards the reflection of the Kremlin’s massive white walls looming upside down in the dark water. The ancient fortress looked like a drowned ghost, floating trapped beneath the ever-present river grime.
“We await the words of the Black Dragon.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 4

A share from my metaphysical Western 'The Unelect' for July 4th... Everything was never Jake to begin with. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

The path ran up past where the whitebark gave out and the soil cankered from rootsy loam to mill-bitten patches of vitriolic tailings. Copper country. That piercing shade that stained everything it touched, and could never quite be washed out. Jake had grown up with it as the sweat on a chambray shirt.
Damascus hadn’t moved. Like the mountains, like the withered pines; like everything else in a dead land that had long ceased pretending towards anywhere. Mill Street came up on him gradual and then all at once, just another dusty ghost swirling in the wind. The assay office with its door banging on one hinge, the company store boarded over with illegible signage. At the far end of town where the mine road went a headframe still sagged over the Number Three shaft, waiting on a whistle that would never shriek again.
Smoke drifted from up inside the office, the kind that meant someone had been waiting on something longer than they could reckon, smoldering patient and slow as char cloth until that something came round at last.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 2

Talkin' bout a revolution in today's episode. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

He was in his quarters when Leigh found him, lost in a star-streaked reverie, the vessel coming about. “When did you know?”. Softly.
For a few moments, the hum of the sublight drives was the only response Diego gave her.
“The empty Tomb. If anything at all that the Verity Pane revealed had been a lie, then Commander Ijje…” He sighed resignedly.
“I - I didn’t believe it myself, either”, she said. After Callie vanished… I don’t know; I thought I was going mad. We all did, I think.”
“Understandable. Everything in Glinter’s architecture was a deliberate misdirection.”
A sharp knock came on the iris valve.
Mei stood there as the hatch hissed open.
The look on Diego’s face had hardened. “Personally, I give us one chance in a million against Lí Lín and the power at his disposal.” He pulled on his gauntlets, flexing the fingers. “But those are the best odds humanity is ever going to have this time around. Leigh, I won’t ask if you’re ready or not. I only ask that you have as much faith in yourself as Shamil had.” He nodded to the Jùjiàng. “Take her under.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jul 1

Substituting "shawl" for "scarf". From the #GaslampRomantasy 'As Fire From Smoke'. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

His senses were slowing, freezing. The woman was moving fast as moonshadow across the courtyard, was standing directly in front of him. She unwrapped the woolen shawl and re-wrapped it around them both; he felt that cold, ghostly grip begin to relent.
“The dead. They are innocents, knowing only a thirst for life as would an infant. They suckle at any depth of spirit - especially rage.”
Warmth and ease of movement began to flow back into Dmitro’s body in her embrace, and there was the strange sensation of being shrouded in flame from the glowing wool.
“Tricks cannot deceive me, witch, for -”
“For you would be dead by now except by my arts. And call me by my name, Zoltana. I greatly prefer that to the epithet of ‘witch’.”
She pressed a corner of the fabric against his cheek, as warm as if it had lain upon a furnace. Faint sparks flew off into the gloom.
“Garments woven from the flocks grazing upon Phlegethon’s banks are one of the few safeguards from the haunts of Hades. Did you never suspect we were no longer in Crimea?”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jun 28

Colonel Salvador makes his decision. #Glinter #LitFic #SciFi #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Ca nunqua en tan buen punto cavalgó varon.”
Was what he had lost of himself beyond salvage, the wrack of all he ever was and could have been, flotsam and jetsam eddying along on the currents of shí kōng for alternity?
His company stood at attention in the deep hold of the ‘Spinward Ascendant’, an elite strike force at the ready to be flung across unfathomable depths of spacetime in the snap of a warp from the Jī Zhù, but each snap frayed their own weft farther from whom they had been. Not all selvage scars were the perceptible kind. Were they forever to be ragged thread, pulled taut by Lí Lín’s needles?
“Sir? Old Spanish detected, but I’m not sure my Hermes Array picked up the translation?”
Sháng Wéi Drake, his adjutant, tapping the side of his helm, expression plainly puzzled.
“Something my grandfather read to me, a long time ago,” Diego replied. “The story of a knight who had to make a decision about where his loyalties lay, whether blind allegiance to corrupt rulers or to trust that there was some greater justice guiding him.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jun 22

From 'As Ashes Blown Away', a #GaslampFantasy set in the Ottoman Empire of 1826. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Not even a flicker of concern passed over Cemal’s features, for he had been well-versed as to the deceptive nature of these creatures. A moment’s compassion, an eternal torment.
“The disciples of Haji Bektash were not the only targets of the intolerant. Not lightly is the Sancak-I Şerif unfurled, as it has the power to bind my fires within this Kılıf you see at present. I can no longer draw upon the unseen to call upon the powers of O Sır.”
Laying bare their vulnerability was certainly not the answer Cemal had expected from such a powerfully magical being, yet his firâset detected no falsehood from them.
“So, until the balance of things is set to rights, you have no greater abilities with the supernatural than any woman possesses?”
For the first time since he had glimpsed them in the shadowy ruins, a faint smile brightened Bülbül’s dark melancholia.
“Never doubt a woman’s abilities, Yeniçeri.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jun 19

May your #Juneteenth be joyous

Proclamation read in Galveston TX on 19 June 1865 declaring all enslaved persons to be free.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Jun 16

Substituting the plane tree for the oak. From a #GaslampFantasy set in the Ottoman Empire of 1826 with the working title of 'As Ashes Blown Away'. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Cold as starlight was the breath gathered deep inside his chest, a Nafas al-Rahman to animate the lifeless grief which sprawled outstretched across the ruins of Etmeydanı.
Here in the dark of the new moon, Cemal drew all the dhikr of that day within himself; the day when his order fell and was driven forth with the roar of the Sultan’s cannon in their ears, an âteşbâr burning the groves of sacred planes behind them as they ran headlong and desperate through the streets.
The çınar towered only in his memories now, for they were but blackened caves gaping at the clarity unveiled by the night sky above. The cold air was thick with the scent of caramel, the smell of the dark-blooded sap that seeped from what heartwood was yet left beneath the charcoaled bones. There had always been their whisper upon the wind; now those rustling promises of Aden were only the low moans of the lost and forgotten.
He exhaled slowly, the breath of the Friend.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 31

"Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me! Traveling with me you find what never tires... Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell." ~ #WaltWhitman (photo courtesy of desertdreams.ae)

Looking up into our galaxy from the open road leading into the Al Quaa Desert, central UAE.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 23

Going to wax a little poetic this morning as I drop a bit of griff on the mechanics of spatiotemporal logistics. #Glinter #LitFic #ScienceFiction #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Zero. That pointless space between what is and what has been and what is yet to be. The physical body floats weightless in a Tomb, anchored atop a sea of cold mercury, crowned with obsidian needles which feed it a constant stream of neurochemicals; requisite for noetic consciousness induction and the meld state.
Requisite. Requiem for individuation, but the flesh is tricked by the buoyancy of the sea and the warm reassurances of the soothing sting of the hydræ as they sedate one’s innate resistance to death, and so the vitality of a noetic operator ebbs to the threshold of life.
But the mind. If not for nothingness, the brain would be aught but its prison; instead the mind is set free when the unyielding demands of the flesh are stilled to that pointless place, and so it finds itself no longer anchored to any particular of shí kōng, but adrift in that infinite continuum between.
And it whispers to the darkness of the void.
And the whispers are will-o’-the wisps, glintering over a foam of quantum probability.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 22

Substituting 'chance' for 'opportunity'; Shamil gets a shot at personal redemption. #Glinter #ScienceFiction #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Ready at your mark, Commander Ijje.”
Shamil looked up from where he lay crowned and strapped in the Tomb at the red face of Jùjiàng Mèi on the monitor above him. The finality of this moment; his every effort in a life defined by headlong flight from the merciless spectres of past pretense, and now the fate of everyone at Calvera depended upon the merest chance that he find the only ghost who could save any of them from themselves.
No more space to run, and no more time to play the pretender. It should have been Barış in his place, but of course he had sold his best friend out for the glim lures of fame and fortune; and now here he was, an imposter who could not possibly live up to what this moment required. Half of his crew dead, and the only woman who had ever genuinely loved the man behind the façade of stardom laying in the Tomb alongside his, alive but consciousness swept away by the very monstrosity he had sworn an oath to serve.
“On my mark, then. Three, two, one…”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 21

If I cannot make up my mind which WIP to work on; instead spending the hours staring out at every breaking waves, then I have The Weather Channel's tacit validation. #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingLife

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 18

From a metaphysical Western I dabble at from time to time with the working title of 'The Unelect'. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

At least when there was enough of that first light as could cast a shadow; that’s when the winding ridgeline looked most like a path once ran from the crowns of the high peaks to the valley below. Mornings were best for remembering just where you’d been and where you were trying to get at. Problem was, the sun didn’t always rise when it ought to have anymore. When a black haze of memory clouded her vision, Clara could hardly recall if there had ever been a set course to begin with.
That was partly why she kept within the ghostly forests of whitebark that skeletoned the mountains, because the surest way to lose your grip was insisting too much upon where the handholds were. Those were things best not counted upon now. Death wasn’t much for parlor tricks, and among the bare starkness of her fellow ghosts there was some degree of an honest truth to be found. The damned kept with the damned; no sense carrying on about the morning when evening came a-calling with such inevitable stillness.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 17

Xiaoyao You. Yes, you 😉 #Glinter #LitFic #ScienceFiction #SciFiSunday #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Polya’s Theorem.”
Diego received an uncomprehending look from Shamil at that, as the glowing telemetry screens shed no light upon them, no matter which of Glinter’s data crypts they exhumed.
“Begging your pardon, Colonel Salvador; mathematics is not my strong suit. Explain this revelation to me as though I were a child.”
The Dàxiào in turn raised a gloved hand to the side of his helm and switched off his jack.
“Random Walk Theory. Every AGI relies on predictive analytics to find vectors of intent. Because every move this mystery makes is entirely independent of the last, the predictive matrices are collapsing into flat probability distribution. The odds of it moving into any point in the shi kōng lattice are exactly equal.”
He pointed at the wall they stood before.
“Glinter interacts with the physical world through standard three-dimensional sensory arrays. We’re not looking for travellers within bound conventional spacetime, Commander.”
“Instead, the universe flows around them.”

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 16

The novel that inspired my father to trace his own American family lineage back 150 years to present-day Azerbaijan. #Roots

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 5

Substituting 'dominion' for 'empire'; and Leigh certainly has revenge on her mind at this point in the story... #Glinter #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

'The beyond only awakened within him that which was already in the depths of his soul’.
“Beautiful eulogy,” Mei said, tight-lipped in concentration, bonding loose obsidian needles firmly back into place atop the crown of the Tomb’s velvet-lined magnetic cradle.
“Was that for them, for you, or for what?”
“Actually, it was for a Titan of what eventually came to be known as Eurasian Literature, one Alexander Pushkin. It was delivered by a fellow writer at the unveiling of a monument dedicated to him after his death.”
That faraway after-cascade look; blue eyes blown wide, looking through instead of at. Leigh somewhat absently wiped away the thin trails of cooling gel trickling from her ears.
“Well, at least the aphasia effects seem to be lessened with an extra dash of salt,” Mei quipped drily. “Ready for another taste of the hydra that stung you when next shift comes?”
“And only a Titan could awaken a spark dulled from the dominion of false idols,” Leigh continued; as if no one was present at all.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 4

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 2

When the collective unconscious turns out to be more than just human... #Glinter #SciFi #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Diego looked back at Leigh, then looked over to Shamil. Criss-crossing the galaxy through the Jī Zhù at the snap of a tachyon more times than a career soldier cared to count, but be damned to the nine nethers for all eternity if he failed to get a satisfactory explanation as to the root cause of the starquake and aftershock waves that had shut down production at Central State’s most essential power plant from these gravitationally-lensed bohemians.
“One last time, Commander. The optogram of Professor Badiane’s noetic meld in Glinter’s data crypts reinitialized because -”
“Because she wasn’t melded to Glinter.”
The vacancy in Leigh’s eyes on the bright side of the Verity Pane was probably a good sign, Shamil thought. Any suspicions of deception by this Dàxiào-level superman sitting next to him in the interrogation would have been immediately manifested in her expression. But of course, they were simply being honest about something inexplicable.
Allah korusun should he have to explain.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· May 1

Having a go at Reedsy Studio for my writing going forwards, but here's one last post from the old format... Finishing up that #HistoricalFiction from the day before yesterday. #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Apr 29

Streaming #Selma tonight, to remind myself of the sacrifices required to bring about lasting change - and to try to keep the faith that there are still enough good people in this country to overcome our morally bankrupt government and the wretched rot deep in the American soul they have embodied.

Promotional poster for the film 'Selma'.

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Apr 28

Substituting "coward" for "chicken". From a #HistoricalFiction piece, a rather minor 'Prince of Persia' teaches a lesson in both penmanship and civil disobedience 😉 #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

"Hold the qalam just so," the scholar instructed, demonstrating the correct angle at which to hold the bamboo reed pen. He guided Grigor's small hand to prepare for the stroke with a subtle rightish slant. "Think of it as the wing of a homeward goose."
A patrol of soldiers passed them by. The leader turned his head and spat on the ground, a disgusted scowl at Hassan. "Bozdel," he muttered. Coward.
Grigor started to protest, but a firm pressure on his wrist restrained him. A black streak of lampblack and gum arabic zagged crookedly down the paper.
"It is nothing," Hassan smiled as the men clanked away. "See, we still have almost an entire page left." He pointed to the empty margins of his workshop journal, otherwise filled with formulæ and symbols.
"Why do they despise you so, Mīrza?" Tears welled in the corners of Grigor's eyes while Hassan sat silently for a moment, watching as the soldiers marched on past in quick swirls of reddish dust.
"Because fools rush about at the first roar of a lion, filled with fear and cursing those who are not afraid. The wise are not afraid for they are like the honey badger, whose skin is thick and whose den is deep." He stroked the grizzle of his sparse black beard.
"Come now, let us try once more before nightfall."

Brayton Leroy Meyer@caucasiansuasion· Apr 26

When you haven't heard from your ex in a while, and they aren't quite themselves anymore. #Glinter #SciFiSunday #WIPSnips #WriteSky #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts