The Earth has turned flat a century ago, it is no longer called a globe but a map. On the under side live the permanent citizens and on the up side the ones that make the commute to other planets. A tradition dating back centuries still lasts here and there: once spring comes, mute people dressed in white appear, wearing freaky masks, they have gloves on and shake their syringes, vials, and wave their ancient manuscripts called Declaration. They spray, in a symbolic way, disinfectant on their friends that still go out. Some avoid them, others slip them in secret a cryptocurrency straight in their chip.
(Translated by Nina Iulia Tufă / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In January 2021, the group has 3.000 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
