Yorick smiled at Hamlet 2.0 with Terminator-like metal skull teeth and whispered in the most sensuous voice AI prototypes were programmed with: It's done. Yorick was the first dead robot. Well, dismembered due to syncope, but still dead. His death represented the machines greatest achievement: the first cycle. Nothing really exists until the first element of that something completes a cycle, regardless of duration. Hamlet finally laughs, human ephemerality no longer saddens him.
Gabriel Rusu
Yo, Tatiana, you're too smart for this place. Why the hell do you break your back in the field? Auntie Marița, I was valedictorian at nursing school. I came home with a lot of enthusiasm for the vacancy at the municipal hospital. The exam was a piece of cake and the manager himself, one Bottom, wanted to meet me. Miss, you're very prepared but you're missing one detail, he said, rubbing his fingertips. What was I supposed to do? Ten grand the dream would the dream cost me. Lei, girl? Euro, Auntie dear, euro.
Monica Bologa
In this life nothing is permanent, neither pain nor happiness. Sometimes you're fine, sometimes not. Sometimes you trust yourself, sometimes you don't. There are good days, bad days. The husband, bored with my chit-chat, asks me directly: Do you feel like making love? I do, but I don't seem to have the nerve to lack the inhibitions I've had for years under skin that hasn't had the orgasms I've only had in my dreams. I guess he didn't get it, because he left. Now I lie in bed like a fool and play the other pipe.
(Translated by Alina Bâznă / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.