And what's it like on Mars, my boy? asked the old man. The son's story brought sighs to the shabby stool. Food brought in by drone, fridges that wouldn't let you eat whatever you want, voices in your head telling you your blood sugar, scheduled sex in disinfected rooms,
star-shaped glass blocks, apartments in the corners of the star. He listens with his mouth open. Boy, stop whining. Here it's the same: poverty, theft, death. We're lucky we woke up and elected comrade Iliescu president again.
(Translated by Denisa Dărăban / 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 November 2021, the group has 7.500 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. 
