At the entrance to the castle, the dogs of the androids smelled the visitors. If they felt any fear, they bit them under the stony eyes of the others. Women and men dressed in black suits and wearing virtual reality glasses were waiting to be presented with the new simulacrum of the world. Anything, just be as far away from reality as possible. United in a collective tachycardia, they smiled candidly at the sight of the digitally created sunrise, in unearthly colors, that did not exist and will never exist.
(Translated by Alma Teodora Miron / 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 October 2021, the group has 7.275 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
