I had been designated to be the last man on the planet, the one to pull the switch. But he had to find the next to last man. According to the orders, we were supposed to leave together with the last ship. The Earth was rapidly emptying of its people. Tens of ships took off, heading towards the stars. Our planet was going to be destroyed by an asteroid. I kept searching the next to last man on Earth. Eventually, we met and we had a surprise. The next to last man was a gorgeous woman. In the end, she didn't leave Earth and we stayed together. The asteroid didn't come either.
(Translated by Ana Maria Adriana Oprea / 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. 
