Titus Lucretius Carus, may I bother you with a question? Please do, for you're not bothering me at all. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? No, Sir Epicurus. I was thinking. About what? Something else. What do you see when you look around? Nothing. Exactly. It's so dark between us, I can hardly see you, Lucretius. Why, Epicurus? Because it's dark here. Flip that switch. Where does the power come from in these times? Are you worried about environmentalism already? Come on, enlighten me. Euphemistically? Suit yourself, my ideas are stumbling around in the dark.
(Translated by Lenuța Bejenaru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / Edited 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 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
