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David Dean

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jul, 2024

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25 Stories

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The Court of the Crimson King

Weekly Contest #278

Hector Mares stood in the shadow of the gleaming NASA laboratories, his mind racing with the stimulation of his teenage years. A prodigy in materials science, his life so far had been anything but conventional. Born into a family of artisans who specialized in historical metalwork, Hector’s early fascination with medieval armor had propelled him into the world of cutting-edge armorer innovation. By the time he was 18, he had redefined how alloys interacted with energy fields, an achievement that earned him NASA’s attention. It was the promet...

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Refuge in movement

Weekly Contest #278

Sally Padeira had always taken refuge in movement. When her relationship with Robert Bryant came to an abrupt end, she turned to the austere demands of her yoga practice. The studio was a narrow, minimalist space on the edge of São Paulo’s sprawling Avenida Paulista, its walls painted in muted tones of gray and ochre. The instructors, clad in white, spoke in hushed tones as if they were ritualists, and the classes were peppered with aphorisms about strength, mindfulness, and the necessity of discipline. The practice was supposed to quiet her...

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The Paradox Of Time Consisting Of Innovation Regarding Commerce, And The Future Of Temporal Exploration

Weekly Contest #278

Part I: Suiting Up for the PastMy cousin Hannah’s crisis over her lost time travel suit had planted a seed in both our minds, one that sprouted months later into an obsession with time travel suits—past, present, and imagined. The search for the perfect suit became a quest, fuelled not only by practicality but by the allure of history and an aspiration to embody the timeless excellence of icons like H.G. Wells.We argued how she could have been so forgetful and she said she'd left a party and in her hurry had changed in the road and then an e...

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Leaves from the Futile Streets

Weekly Contest #277

The first time I stepped onto Peruvian soil, I could feel its heartbeat beneath my feet—an unfamiliar rhythm that hummed with a vitality I couldn’t yet understand. The journey to Nazca was grueling, two miles of dust and heat that clung to me like a second skin. My body resisted the strain, but I pressed on. When I reached the city, I encountered the humans for the first time. Their movements were deliberate, their voices a melody of dialects I struggled to parse. I felt the weight of their gaze on me, the silent judgment of an outsider. Ca...

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The Prometheum Pyramid and the Astronaut

Weekly Contest #276

In the year 2024, I went with Sally Padeira, an investigator with the Canadian Spacetime Agency, who led a research team to the Nazca region, tasked with documenting the apparently ancient Pyramid that had puzzled archaeologists and together we uncovered a statue within composed of a rare, meteorite-based alloy known only to a handful of scientists worldwide. She intended to bring back video footage and as much scientific data as possible on this unprecedented find.The statue stood in the heart of the Pyramid, so to speak, with its strange, ...

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Erase the Past

Weekly Contest #274

Jose Manganes, associate professor at Lima University on social anthropology, spoke to an attentive class of undergraduates,‘Good afternoon, everyone! Today, I want to pose a question that may seem bold, even a bit extreme: What if you, as budding scientists and thinkers, could invent a time machine with a singular mission—to go back and erase the Nazca lines from history? Now, this mission may sound drastic, even sacrilegious, but there are compelling, and very real, reasons that governments might find such an idea worth pursuing. So let’s ...

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The Eternal Bargainers

Weekly Contest #273

Hector Mares found himself standing before the iron gates of Dr. Carlos Biltong’s secluded estate, the cold mountain wind biting at his skin. The estate lay hidden deep in the Andes. It was late, the moon barely visible through the thick mist that clung to the jagged peaks, and the air buzzed with electrical energy. He had been summoned here by Biltong, the head of the science team, to share some critical insight—something that could upend the very fabric of time.Hector had never been one for secret meetings, but in his line of work as an ar...

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Homecoming

Weekly Contest #272

Goldeneye had an energy that was hard to describe. I hadn’t been in Barbados long—just a few days since my first published story had earned me this brief, dreamlike vacation—and now I found myself standing on the balcony of Ian Fleming’s legendary home, staring at the vast, sparkling Caribbean Sea. It felt surreal, like I had stepped into a world of fantasy and temptation. This was a place where boundaries blurred, where reality was seduced by possibility. The house itself, with its crisp white walls and colonial architecture, seemed to embo...

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The Hunt for the Android in the Dark Forest

Weekly Contest #271

Contains illicit love: Giselle Prata rushed out of her office. Her android, Johnny Antunes, and her sister, Hannah had wandered into the forest surrounding Nazca, and neither had returned. The blazing sun beat down on Nazca’s narrow streets as Giselle drove, reflecting off every surface of the car. Giselle felt the oppressive heat soak through her clothes as she searched for her android. The model, a sleek general intelligence unit worth more than half a million dollars, was not supposed to behave this way.When she arrived at the forest, she...

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Stonehearser and the Shadows of Vengeance

Weekly Contest #270

Note: killer describedBeatriz Chanoyu reflected on her identity as a killer. She qualified as both a serial killer and a mass murderer, having committed numerous calculated killings over the years. Unlike typical killers, her motives had been rooted in revenge and practicality, rather than enjoyment or emotional detachment. Beatriz felt a sense of responsibility; her actions aimed to change history and protect the reputations of her victims, ensuring they would not be remembered as monsters. Beatriz operated in secrecy. She encountered Sto...

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The Stethoscope

Weekly Contest #269

Dr. Pablo Tonel had always found solace in the routine of his practice. In the heart of Buenos Aires, his days as a casualty doctor were marked by a familiar routine of rounds, diagnoses, and consultations. It was in the ebb and flow of his out-patient hours that he felt most at home in the world, performing the science of healing. Every patient, each ailment, carried with it a story, a link with the overwhelming effect of illness on human life. For Pablo, these stories were not outside his own experience. His father’s battle with migraine a...

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The Guardian Object

Weekly Contest #269

One night in July, 2051, Lima, Peru, lay beneath a mist. The streets were empty, the air heavy with the scent of damp earth. In a quiet neighborhood, Dr. Carlos Biltong sat alone in his study, his hands trembling slightly as he perused old Nazca texts. The words written centuries ago spoke of the Eternals, and the powerful object they guarded—an object known as the Guardian object.The clock struck midnight when he felt the temperature in the room drop sharply, making his breath visible. Carlos stood, his pulse quickening. He had believed tha...

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The Pyramid Gambit

Weekly Contest #268

Cristina Valari looked like a woman in her mid-thirties. The look she cultivated was deliberate: she was fit. At first glance, she resembled a stylistic businesswoman, as she fixed the young interns with a steady gaze from the other side of the glass walled office which stood on the second floor building and received their respectful approbation. It came as a surprise one morning when she received a message from her past self, warning her of the consequences of her actions.The message read: 'I know things didn’t go as planned, and I could ha...

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A Storm of Secrets

Weekly Contest #267

Battered by the howling winds of a fierce Toronto storm, Hector Mares, an armorer at the Canadian Spacetime Agency, stepped into the chaotic scene of an enigmatic murder. Sheets of rain lashed his boots, the gusts pulling violently as he always hated at the forward motion of his shoulders. Thunder rumbled across the night sky, with brief flashes of lightning revealing the looming silhouette of an old mansion perched by the city's lakeside. The mansion's dark outline, stark against the stormy sky, seemed to defy the fury of the weather, stand...

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Tachyon Horizon

Weekly Contest #267

Part 1: The Tachyon SurgeThe air was thick with anticipation as the head of the science team, Carlos Biltong, stepped onto the podium. He scanned scientists and reporters in front of him, a mixture of fear and confusion etched into their faces. The city of Lima was in turmoil, and the source of that turmoil—an experiment gone terribly wrong—had its roots in the squash court of the Canadian Spacetime Agency. “Good morning, everyone,” Carlos began, with a voice heavy with responsibility. “Without a doubt, we’re all here to address the tachyon ...

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