Ruined

Camil Popescu
Dude, listen up. I walk out of the house yesterday to check on the diamond crop, and I see this robot with a dog face and a camera on its head, and I remember those guys from Central said the Earthlings sent a thing, what's it called? A rover. Yeah, a rover. Anyway, I see it sniffing a sapphire or whatever the hell it was doing. So, before I can even throw something on, it had swallowed all the sapphires and moved on to the quartz. And? So I zapped it in the back of the head with a laser, and it fell into a crater. Spot me some semi-precious stones until payday, I'm wiped out.
 
 Viorel Spinu
She was always the first to arrive. The table on the left, by the window. She'd take out her book. A small coffee. A faint smile for the waiter. He always showed up right on time. Black sweater. Sat at the table by the door. Ordered the same coffee. Newspaper. They never spoke. Sometimes, they'd look up at the same moment. Then lower their eyes. One Tuesday, she didn't come. It was raining lightly. He walked in, glanced at the table by the window. Empty. He sat in his usual spot. The waiter approached. The usual? He shook his head. No. Two coffees, please.
 
 Laura Stanciu
Tudor, I lost Rodi. What do you mean? You had an accident? His friend sighed. She left. Took her clothes, cleared out the kitchen. Incredible. Wow. I didn't even know you two were fighting. So she's filing for divorce. She even emptied the storage unit, I had half the house in there. Took the summer tires too. What a piece of work... sorry. But when the hell did she even do all that? In just a few hours? She had help-movers or something. She had time. I was away on a business trip with the boss. Four days. But what really pisses me off is she took my Buzea^[1] books.

(Translated by Larisa Marta Mreană / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)