"Spiritele anului 3000", authored when Ionescu was just 17, is thought to be one of the first works of science fiction in Romanian literature. Written as a first-person narrative and dream sequence, it depicts its author and main character falling into slumber and awaking on the close of the 30th century. The world he encounters is peopled by humans of a small stature, who reach full maturity at the age of 15. "Spiritele anului 3000" is part political satire and part political project. Humanity is unified into a single confederation of republics and administrated from "Liberty" (a completely new capital built up on an artificial island in the Mediterranean Sea), while monarchies and wars have disappeared altogether. Romania is set "in her natural borders" through the intervention of a Supreme Tribunal, while the Romanian language adopts a form to Ionescu's liking (having shunned the more artificial etymology favored by Transylvanian intellectuals and the Romanian Academy alike). The Romanian climate is improved by afforestation, the country is spanned by canals, and the garden-like Bucharest, over which the narrator and Aru, his friend from the future, fly in a moored balloon, no longer has any churches left standing.