B.R.A.N.E. Inc.

By Sherry D. Ramsey

When Nicole called for a photocopier repairman, she wasn't prepared for him to tell her there was something living inside the machine. She also hadn't gotten up that morning expecting to be recruited to help save the world. But a flashpoint portal on the roof of her office building isn't something she can ignore--not when she sees what's waiting on the other side.

 

At least it's not another boring Monday morning at the office.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sherry D. Ramsey
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990178078

Sherry D. Ramsey

Sherry D. Ramsey is a speculative fiction writer, editor, publisher, creativity addict and self-confessed internet geek. When she's not writing, she makes jewelry, gardens, hones her creative procrastination skills on social media, and consumes far more coffee and chocolate than is likely good for her.Her debut novel, One's Aspect to the Sun, was published by Tyche Books in late 2013 and was awarded the Book Publishers of Alberta "Book of the Year" Award for Speculative Fiction. The sequel, Dark Beneath the Moon, is due out from Tyche in 2015. Her other books include To Unimagined Shores—Collected Stories. With her partners at Third Person Press (http://www.thirdpersonpress.com), she has co-edited five anthologies of regional short fiction to date. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies in North America and beyond. Every November she disappears into the strange realm of National Novel Writing Month and emerges gasping at the end, clutching something resembling a novel.A member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia Writer’s Council, Sherry is also a past Vice-President and Secretary-Treasurer of SF Canada, Canada's national association for Speculative Fiction Professionals.You can visit Sherry online www.sherrydramsey.com, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter @sdramsey.

Book preview

B.R.A.N.E., Incorporated

Sherry D. Ramsey

B.R.A.N.E Inc. © Sherry D. Ramsey 2014-2023

Cover Design by Sherry D. Ramsey 2023 (digital art)

Interior Brane Image by Jane Richardson (Dcrjsr) & Vincent Chen on Wikimedia Commons

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the author.

This book contains a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, entities or settings, is unintentional, coincidental, and entirely attributable to the vagaries of the multiverse and fluctuations in the space-time continuum.

Ramsey, Sherry D., 1963-, author

B.R.A.N.E Inc. / Sherry D. Ramsey

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.sherrydramsey.com

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

B.R.A.N.E Inc.

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-990178-07-8

B.R.A.N.E., Inc. first appeared in Flashpoint: The Speculative Elements v. 4, Third Person Press, 2014

Reprinted in The Cache and Other Stories, 2017

This ebook is licensed for your personal reading enjoyment only--please do not share, duplicate, or re-sell it. Thanks for respecting the hard work of the author.

Sign up for the author’s VIP monthly newsletter and receive a free ebook! Visit http://eepurl.com/bCUWPX to join. My newsletter brings you new releases, updates, book recommendations, freebies, great deals and giveaways, and other fun stuff, so don’t miss out!.

The first odd thing I noticed was the pale blue sticky note pasted on the bottom of his shoe. He knelt in front of the dark, silent copier and had already removed an access panel without saying more than Good morning to me with a brief nod and a not-quite-smile when he arrived at the office. The embroidered badge on his limp cotton shirt read Leonard and he was cute in a grim, planes-and-angles sort of way. Hadn’t even asked me yet exactly what the trouble was with the copier. I debated whether to explain the problem or tell him about the paper stuck to his shoe as I surreptitiously checked my hair with my phone camera.

When he shifted his weight to reach inside the guts of the machine, I saw the bottom of his other shoe—and the blue square of paper there, too. I squinted. They looked like sticky notes, but they were held in place with packing tape. So I figured that a) he must know about them and b) I might as well just explain about the copier, even though he hadn’t asked.

It was fine yesterday afternoon, but then this morning when I went to print out the dailies, I just got gibberish, I told his back, repeating what I’d said to a bored-sounding dispatcher over the phone.

He didn’t turn around, just nodded, his hand still deep inside the copier.

I turned it off and then on again a few times, and I unhooked it from the network, and then I tried again, but I got the same thing, I added, because for some reason I wanted him to know that I wasn’t the type of girl who just throws up her hands when a machine or piece of tech screws up.

He sat back on his heels and glanced at me over his shoulder. A smudge of something dark marred the back of his shirt, as if