A New Hope

Dan Banu
His colleagues are worried. Gigi has been coughing again for about three days, at this point he's going to cough his lungs out. He's the only one in the department who knows how to restart the machines when the conveyer belt gets stuck. Somehow, he just knows where to tap the hammer and the machine suddenly starts working. He learned that when he was working at the railway yard and used to tap the axles when the train stopped in the station to check if they were cracked. Today he came back to work and his co-workers' eyes started sparkling. They are the latest model of mechanic robots with built-in AI and Gigi is the last human being in the field.
 
 Ana-Maria Butuza
After he had taken all the blows life had to offer, or so Ilarie thought, as he no longer had a single inch of unbruised skin, he made peace with himself and most importantly with God, with whom he had been angry ever since the death of his first child. He suddenly started feeling old, not because of his age, although years had piled up just like flies to manure, but because of the weight of all losses and all sorrow. He sat down on the bench under the walnut tree and overwhelmed by dispair, he shouted to the sky: Come on, take me already. However, he didn't expect such a quick reply: Wait for your turn, stop trying to jump the queue.
 
 Andra Toropoc
There were four footballs under the Christmas Tree. But we wrote that we want something else, the middle girl and the oldest one were whining. The youngest ones were silent but their eyes showed the same disappointment that united them all, along with their first name given with great hope by their father, who wished for a son. When my boy will be born you will receive dolls, maybe next year., he told them. They glanced at their mother's pregnant belly, please, God let it be right this time. However, their mother had a guilty smile on her face, she brought her hand to her mouth when she did the gender test with salt and she knew they were gonna get a new baby sister with the same first name as theirs.

(Translated by Adina-Lorena Dulamă / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)