When I was little, I was fat, fat and freckled. I had a stutter too. My folks made me repeat complicated phrases so I could overcome that barrier, that mental block as they liked to call it. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? When it wasn't wood, it was butter or seashells. I tried, I promise I tried. I still kept my stutter. Fat, with a stutter and so shy that not even a spinster would bother lusting after my freckled body. That's why I decided to donate it, soul and all.
Augustin Bănică
It's raining. I'm walking along the London Bridge, much akin to a corpse. I'm barefoot, my soles burn from uncertainty. He was ranting that I stole his being, his money and his rationality. Then he was proposing to me, and after declining, came the threat to kill me. He was left with his cowardice. I have so many questions about this world. It's illogical. I'm afraid that nothing I know is concrete. I feel dissected, sectioned and then stitched back together. I lay in a puddle of blood with needles in my heart. I feel a vague duty to life. To live it. The poor creatures.
Iulia Biro
Your Highness, they've toiled enough. Ever since you've let them see the JXT asteroid for a tenth of a second, they succeeded in mathematically proving its existence. They've sacrificed two centuries, plus their mental health and the families of three-quarters of the researchers. It's already believed that it's the curse of the JXT and no one wants to keep studying it. Do you want it to be discovered or did you make me send them that prophecy for naught? I say you give it to them so they can research it. If they do it right, they'll self-destruct and we'll get rid of them without even moving a finger.
(Translated by Adriana-Maria Botea / 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.