Choose life, a career, a fucking big TV. How did you end up here? Garden-variety, an A in history, a B in maths, compulsory reading, wakeup at six, put your back into it, learn, learn, learn, walk by faith, not by sight, the professor, the work ethic, the illusion of meritocracy, of the certainty of tomorrow, the traditions, customs and routines, many obligations, on a budget, a benevolent system that praises keeping your head down, anyway, everything is
pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes, I can't unlock your account, sir, you have an outstanding balance of 86 cents.
(Translated by Oana Ionescu / 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.
