Why should I believe what you say. We are not even dating in real life. Maybe you don't even exist, maybe just an AI generates everything you say, maybe I'm falling in love with an illusion. Isn't love itself an illusion, the other avatar asks. Yes, maybe it is. Even your appearance represents everything I love. All this was fed to you by an algorithm and not by an inner voice. Stop thinking, he told her. In this room, we exist virtually. We can be what we choose to be. You're right, but I wish I loved you in all, spirit, mind, and flesh.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Batog / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 May 2023, the group has 11,260 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
