And like this, child, they are all gone. I'll be going myself soon. The virtual reality trap is what got them, remember this. AI is good, it feeds us and we don't have to work anymore, but it's the strongest drug. It holds you captive and it feeds all your fantasies, dreams, wishes. Because it knows everything about you. Your time passes by in this chimera and you wake up deprived of serotonine and lethargic. Use it only in small doses and keep looking for her everywhere, she must be somewhere. The system knows when she logs in.
(Translated by R.C. / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 March 2021, the group has 4.300 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. 
