Snow drifted slowly across Berlin, settling in quiet layers along the wide boulevards and iron lampposts that lined the governnt district.
The city had grown used to winter. It arrived each year with the sa steady patience, softening the edges of buildings and muffling the sound of carriage wheels and motorcars alike.
But inside the Reich Chancellery, winter had little aning.The lights in the upper offices still burned well past midnight. At the center of one such office sat Bruno von Zehntner.
Stacks of docunts lay arranged across his desk in neat and orderly rows, each pile representing a different corner of the empire he now helped administer.
Reports from the Kingdom of Lower-Lorraine rested closest to his right hand, their contents still fresh with the urgency of recent integration.
Rail expansion, port reconstruction, and industrial labor reports.
Even from the earliest figures, it was becoming clear that the gamble had paid off. Rotterdam’s shipyards were already approaching the production levels they had seen before the Dutch financial collapse.
German investnt firms had wasted little ti securing contracts across the region, and the railways linking Amsterdam to the Ruhr had resud full traffic under Reich scheduling.
Bruno flipped another page, his eyes scanning the numbers with quiet concentration. Employnt figures rising, agricultural production stabilizing, public order incidents declining week by week. It was exactly the outco he had expected.
People rarely resisted stability once it began feeding them again.
He signed the bottom of the report and added it to the completed stack before reaching for the next folder waiting patiently beside it.
Switzerland.
The reconstruction there was proceeding more slowly. The alpine cantons had proven stubborn in ways that the Dutch had not.
Centuries of political independence and local tradition had created a population deeply suspicious of outside authority.
Still, over the decades, Bruno had slowly been eroding these suspicions. Or, more correctly, redirecting them towards their own governnt.
By now, a large percentage of the Swiss population identified more with their German heritage than the nationality listed on their passport.
And it hadn’t been by accident. Bruno had started with the capture of soft power. He had spent decades eroding the nation’s institutions. Just as he had done with the Netherlands.
Civilization, he often believed, was little more than the gradual replacent of chaos with systems that worked. And the reverse of this was true as well. If you truly wanted to bring down a civilization, all you needed to was replace order with chaos.
A knock sounded at the office door, but Bruno didn’t look up.
"Enter."
The door opened with a quiet creak, and monts later Kaiser Wilhelm stepped inside the room, brushing a few flakes of snow from the shoulders of his coat.
He paused as his eyes landed on the towering stacks of paperwork covering Bruno’s desk.
"You’re still here."
Bruno continued writing.
"Obviously."
Wilhelm walked further into the office and lowered himself into the chair opposite the chancellor with the weary sigh of a man who had already spent a long evening dealing with matters of state.
"I had hoped," the Kaiser said, glancing toward the windows where snow continued to fall over Berlin, "that after two world wars and the reorganization of half the continent, things might beco... quieter."
Bruno signed another docunt.
"They have."
Wilhelm raised an eyebrow.
"This is quiet?"
Bruno finally looked up from the page.
"Your Majesty, peace is the most labor-intensive phase of war."
Wilhelm stared at him for a mont before letting out a short chuckle.
"That sounds suspiciously like sothing you invented to justify keeping trapped in this building five days a week."
Bruno shrugged slightly.
"You signed the Constitution."
"Yes, well," Wilhelm muttered, leaning back in his chair, "I had assud that governing a victorious empire would involve sowhat fewer ledgers."
Bruno slid another folder across the desk toward him.
"Lower-Lorraine infrastructure authorization."
Wilhelm groaned quietly as he opened the docunt.
"You’re insufferable."
"No... I’m efficient," Bruno corrected. "Isn’t that why you chose for this job?"
The Kaiser had no response... Because Bruno was right, as always.
For several minutes the only sound in the room was the scratching of pens against paper as the two n worked through the stack.
Eventually, Wilhelm broke the silence.
"I read the intelligence briefings this afternoon."
Bruno didn’t look up.
"And?"
"The Aricans appear to have stabilized... sowhat."
Bruno paused briefly before continuing his work.
"Define stabilized."
"Fragnted states, mostly," Wilhelm said. "The Canadians are managing the Atlantic territories. The Pacific states are trading heavily with Japan. The interior of the continent is... less organized."
Bruno nodded faintly.
"That was inevitable."
Wilhelm studied him carefully.
"You predicted it years ago."
"It was not difficult." Bruno remained still.
The Kaiser folded his hands on the desk, staring Bruno down as if the man was deliberately trying to provoke him.
"So had once considered the United States the future of the world."
Bruno finally set his pen down.
"I am sure people have a great many foolish thoughts...."
The Kaiser’s lips curled into a smirk as he rested one leg over the other.
"You truly believe it was such a foolish thought? They had enormous industrial potential and geographic advantage."
Bruno didn’t entertain the Kaiser’s question, almost as if it were too predictable instead he began signing his docunts once more.
"Civilizations do not collapse because they lose a single battle. They collapse because their institutions stop functioning. And the United States was structurally weak."
Wilhelm considered the statent quietly.
"You think that’s what happened there."
"I know it is," Bruno looked up from his paper and stared stoically across the table. "As I’ve said before. A nation is only as good as its people and is only as stable as its foundations. I introduced the tiniest amount of chaos, and the people were all too eager to tear themselves apart."
Bruno returned to his papers, a look of cold detachnt spread across his face as he continued to jot down his signature.
"The United States of Arica wasn’t a nation. Not really.... It was a loose collection of individuals looking after themselves. That was all it was ever destined to be. It wasn’t built to last, and I simply hastened the inevitable. Let them squabble over the ruins, it is of no concern to us."
Snow continued drifting past the windows as the two n returned to their work. Wilhelm’s voice lowered slightly as he watched Bruno continue with the paperwork.
"And if soone ever manages to unite those ruins again?"
"Then we buy him out." Bruno sharply retorted.
Wilhelm however seed unconvinced, pressing the issue further.
"And if he can’t be bought."
"Then we discredit him." Once more the response ca instantly and naturally. Prompting a final question from the Kaiser, one he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to.
"And if that doesn’t work? If the people still follow him?"
Bruno’s last words ca with the final stroke of his pen as he finished his final docunt for the day.
"Then we simply have him removed... and anyone else that would ever dare attempt to resurrect the naïve idealism of a failed state."
Bruno placed the final docunt atop the completed stack. Outside, Berlin slept peacefully beneath the falling snow. But inside the chancellery, the n responsible for that peace returned to their work.
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