The Gospel of Elon Musk

Iulia Biro
I am your God, I'm the one who puts the sun and the satellites in the sky. I see everything you do, yelled the Prophet from his tribune, glistening in the golden sunset. He's been doing this every day for two years, said the head nurse, then put a motherly hand on the arm of the young doctor, working his first day at the mental institution. \'Aren't we afraid he'll fall?' asked the doctor, looking up to the windowsill from where the prophet was speaking. \'No way, he's bound with safety belts designed specifically for him by his aerospace engineers'.

Ioana Dinescu
Bibi, I'm driving, I can't talk cause someone's honking at me, the car started, slide into the street, but then stopped and it won't accelerate. I can't find the gearshift, where is it, maybe under the seat? Bibi, you're insane, are you driving without having read the manual? It's in the dashboard. Bibi, what button do I press to open the board? Bibi, you don't have time to waste, listen carefully. Do you know where the windshield wiper usually is? Do you see PRND written on it? Hit the brakes and pull it down to D. Lord, it started. Well, Amen.

Răzvan Drăgoi
The statue of the great founder Elon Musk was watching over the central square in Washington, taller than the Obelisk of Victory. From the balcony, the governor watched the parade of the black uniforms, pleased. The soldiers' goose-stepping had a sinister echo. He complicitly looked at his illustruous ancestor. Elon, who had made everything. He invented the time machine. He actually wanted to modernize an American rocket from 2023 Germany, but, error, it was 1943. The swastika flag was fluttering soothingly in Elon the Founder's hand.

(Translated by Raluca Sălcianu / 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 July 2023, the group has 11,540 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.