Stockholm, European Federation, January 2035

  "Here's your order! Enjoy your food!"

  The robotic waiter glides over, guided by sensors and cameras, delivering steaming dishes to our table at a cozy Korean spot Emilie Weber, the Dortmund native insists is the best in the city. Outside, the streets hum with life as people brave the biting cold of a Friday night. Once quiet in winter, Stockholm, now the European Federation’s lzrgest city, swelled by those displaced by the war, buzzes with energy, resilience, and the rhythm of a new era.

  "Remember how expensive meat used to be? Dad worked at a slaughterhouse in Nancy and always brought home the 'bad batches.' We’d share it with the French family that took us in. He almost got into trouble once when someone started a rumor that he was selling the stuff. Not that the Gendarmerie cared. They were too busy chasing gunrunners, organized criminals, people forging papers for deserters and the like."

  She places the pieces of meat into the pan. She looked all the German I imagined, but the way she pronounced French words stood out immediately.

  "How did it go with the family?" I ask.

  "Well, my parents and I, it was fine really. The moms both had jobs but the dads worked double shifts. Mine at the slaughterhouse, and theirs in the ammunition plant. Which is funny, because usually it was Germans working in the weapon plants. Those plants were nothing like the ones in the propaganda pictures and news footage, all clean lines and uniforms. These were loud, grimy spaces, hastily thrown together inside the shells of abandoned factories that used to make everything from washing machines to auto parts. When the war began, production shifted overnight. Machines that once pressed steel for car doors were repurposed to stamp out shell casings. Conveyor belts meant for appliance assembly now carried boxes of bullets.

  The smell of oil and scorched metal hung in the air. Security was patchy, mostly ex- and injured soldiers with tired eyes and outdated rifles. They could not keep up with the volume or the disorder. Parts disappeared. Designs leaked. Accidents happened often, but nobody looked too hard. Not when the front kept calling.

  "My brother and their daughter, that was more complicated. They ended up madly in love the moment they set eyes on each other. When they weren’t having sex like it was the last day on earth while the parents were out, they were screaming at each other. Real push and pull situation. They’re still together, but it was a full-on telenovela with those two."

  She picks up the meat and serves it to me and to herself.

  "Were they sad to see you go?" I ask.

  "Sad? They were with us the entire trek south," she says.

  "Nancy was about 140 kilometers from the front lines. The only cars we saw on the road were endless columns of military vehicles. All the nations from the western front. They were heading up loaded with soldiers and supplies, the backs of trucks and tops of armored vehicles packed to the brim. And they were coming back too, but those trucks carried damaged tanks, burn marks, blood. That kind of sight really messed with morale.

  A rumor started that the crabs had crossed into France, that tripods had been spotted just east of Metz. Total panic. All lies, but it didn’t matter. Even with the internet shut down, word spread like wildfire. People just stood up, grabbed what they could, and headed south. Transit papers or not. I heard those stories late in the evening, and by dawn, the highway going south was packed with people."

  "Did they try and stop them?" I ask.

  "Funnily enough, yes. The first cops who tried to stand in our way looked barely older than me. Thin-looking bunch. The police and gendarmerie were always more overstretched than the army. They asked for our transit papers, because remember, people weren’t supposed to leave. The Spaniards and Moroccans didn’t want to end up with a hundred million refugees. And the factories in France had to keep running.

  One of us just looked them in the eye and said, 'No, we don’t have them. Have a good day.' And that was it. The hundred or so people with us just kept walking. Our group joined with others and soon we were all heading down the A31 toward Dijon, part of a wave of hundreds of thousands."

  We walked for a day before we met real resistance. A police barricade near Bulgnéville. Gendarmerie with armored vehicles and tear gas canisters. It didn’t stop us. The more motivated ones, regardless of age, gender, or disability, went ahead to have a chat with them.

  I stayed back with the rest, but I could feel the mood shift. Tension rising as neither side gave an inch. Then shouting started, in both French and German. A cop raised his shotgun and fired a bean bag. I saw it happen. He just pointed it at one of the loudest in the group and let it rip.

  That was the spark. All hell broke loose after that. Their shields were no match for the crowd and they didn’t seem to have enough tear gas. They were pushed back, trampled almost, and in the chaos they fled in their vehicles. Fled the same direction we were headed.

  They left some of their shields behind. I saw a kid with a Gendarmerie helmet on his head. Funny sight.

  "Enjoy the beer! Thank you for choosing our establishment!" the robot says as we pick the Korean beers off his platter.

  "I mean, yes, the government was right. We couldn’t just flood the south of Europe more than it already was, hanging on by a thread with millions of refugees. But when the last parts of Germany were barely hanging on, what did they expect people to do? Just keep working in the factories while 'De Gaulle’s hammer' struck and they nuked the border with Germany?

  My dad was in the East German army, did his military service, and went west when the wall fell. Told me the communists knew there was no way they’d get through France if WW3 broke out. That the plan of the warsaw pact was just to move to the Elbe or something, take control of most of western germany. France always planned to nuke everything that set a foot or a claw into their territory. But guess what? The Crabs didn’t care. Sure, nuclear weapons slowed them down. Sure, radiation took them out just like it did us. But there weren’t enough nukes to hold them back forever. And we’d already lost too many people to the fallout from the earlier strikes.

  So we walked. Little food, just the occasional handout from makeshift camps or people who still cared to help along the way. Red Cross medical tents were set up beside the highway, along with any other group that could manage to offer aid—volunteers, strangers, anyone who hadn’t lost their humanity yet. They did what they could to take care of the sick and the wounded, but it was a losing battle.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It was January, remember? The cold was biting, cutting through every layer of clothing like a knife. The highway was a mess, churned up from the constant stream of refugees, military vehicles going the opposite side. . Slush and mud collected in the pavement, making every step a struggle. At night, the freezing air seemed to crawl inside your bones, and the silence between the groups of people was deafening. Only the sound of distant trucks and the occasional shout from the front of the line broke the monotony.

  And still, we walked.

  Lost count how many police checkpoints we rushed through. The amount of planes flying overhead with loudspeakers shouting; "Return to your homes! Turn back! The situation is under control!"

  "What homes? Ours were blown up. And we weren't risking staying so close to the front lines. We got proven right when actual reports of Crabs being spotted inside of France came in. Mostly tripods or the red crabs the every day grunt seemed to be mortified off. Even more people joined the fray. Even more people in that march south, even less factories and other industries running. Roads south were clogged and it strained the whole logistical chain going to the front. But people had no eyes on the big strategy of it all. They just wanted themselves and their kids to safety."

  "How violent did it get?" I ask.

  "Between us? Not much. There was the occasional thief. But people dealt with them. The state tried everything. Not to philosophical but we walked like an omen. You couldn't miss us, they couldn't hide that many people fleeing south. Word spread and it spread fast. Many more packed their bags and fled. Many more didn't show up to their factory jobs the next day. Many more joined our ranks as we fled south. We felt like they wanted to make an example from us. Not that we didn't understand where they came from, but there was such a viciousness to them."

  We were near Nancy, walking along the road heading south so we wouldn’t block the northbound traffic. Not blocking trafic was the only thing we and the police seemed to agree on. There was that there was some kind of disturbance up at the front of the line. I was far back. Everyone had come to a stop again. Despite my parents’ protests, I finally made my way to the front. I wanted to see it for myself.

  I got there just as the last wave of "robocops" arrived. Their vans were parked hundreds of meters away, and two solid lines of officers in shields and helmets were trying to block our path. At first, I couldn’t quite make out what was happening. Then I saw someone—a young guy—bend down by the side of the road and pick something up. An empty bottle, I think. He threw it at the police. That was the spark.

  Everyone followed, like a kid watching his older brother steal a cookie from the jar: “If he did it and wasn’t struck down by God immediately... why not me?”

  People started throwing things. As they closed in on the police, they began kicking at their shields. I saw two guys heave a tree log they’d found by the roadside. Some kicking, some punches, the cops swinging their batons, a few places they used water cannons —and then, finally, it looked like the police had decided to call it a day. Or so we thought.

  It had been like that for days. The cops would try to block us, sometimes even offering a way out—telling us we could head back north in municipal, police, or even army trucks. We’d throw stuff. They’d fire off the few tear gas canisters they had. A few guys would rush in with fists, and the cops would strike back with their batons. Then, like clockwork, they’d retreat. Always in formation, always back to their vans. Then they’d leave.

  It felt like they were just going through the motions—like they needed to be able to tell their bosses they’d “tried.”

  I think I was the only one who noticed the trucks.

  I caught them coming our way on the opposite side of the highway, behind the concrete separators—only because the cops were looking at them too. They drove calmly in our direction, like it was just another day. Up until that point, the only vehicles we’d seen were military. The rare civilian trucks were loaned by the army and always moved in convoys, heavily escorted by soldiers.

  So seeing two flatbed trucks with cardboard boxes stacked on the back was... odd.

  The fact they slowed down wasn’t what set off alarms—we were used to vehicles stopping to hand out water, blankets, winter clothes. My mom had been wearing a military winter jacket some Brazilians gave her.

  But something felt wrong.

  Both drivers were in police uniforms. The boxes on the back looked loose—unstrapped, shifting around—definitely not what you’d expect from a supply drop. And who brings cardboard boxes on an open flatbed truck... in the dead of winter?

  Then the trucks pulled a U-turn until they were facing the wrong way, on our side of the road. People stared, confused, trying to make sense of what they were doing.

  I saw one of the drivers turn toward the cargo hold and yell just as the truck came to a stop. And then, all at once, the boxes opened—both trucks.

  I ducked the moment I saw the first cop and his shotgun.

  They were hidden in the boxes, crouched in the backs of the trucks, just barely visible over the concrete separators. Then they opened fire.

  I saw a 40mm rubber ball hit the guy in front of me dropped him instantly.

  People absilutely lost it. Screaming, ducking, hitting the ground and doing whatever they could to avoid the storm of rubber rounds and buckshot. It felt endless.

  I just layed down, my head between my arms as I was trampled by the crowd, now to think of it it might not have been the best decision. Felt someone fall and land on me. Then the air was sucked out of my lung as I felt something hit me on the left side. People shouted and screamed.

  I learned from my dad later that they started throwing things at the cops. The cops didn’t hesitate—they just pointed their weapons and started firing into the crowd. Didn’t care that most of us weren’t violent. Didn’t care that they missed their shots. As if that even mattered.

  Someone died. A rubber ball shattered a guy’s skull. A woman lost an eye. Plenty more were wounded.

  I peeked out, watching as they fired at the people behind us. The first rows of us had either curled up into balls, thrown their hands in the air, or just ran into the woods on the right.

  And the cops? I watched them. Each one wore a different look. It was like none of them had the same expression. One grimaced—was he smiling, or wincing from the noise? Another wore a balaclava, but his stare said it all. As he fired his 40mm rubber ball launcher, I understood more than I wanted to. He reloaded and fired again, without a second thought.

  The engines of the trucks roared to life, and they sped off, disappearing out of sight. As soon as they were gone, people started to regain their composure. The panic slowly ebbed away, and we began to check on each other, making sure everyone was okay. Some drifted back down the line, moving cautiously, unsure whether it was over or if the storm was just taking a pause.

  Others were scrambling to take care of the wounded. You should’ve seen what a rubber ball can do to an eye. The blood on the pavement was hard to look at. People were curled up in pain, clutching their faces, unable to stop shaking.

  I realized too late I had a broken rib, but compared to the others, it was nothing. The pain hit harder when I had to keep walking—step after step, the pressure digging into my side. The road stretched south, flat and endless, cracked asphalt fading into the distance. The sky above was gray, the air biting with the chill of winter.

  We moved slowly, the crowd thinned out as people found their pace. Some limped, others hunched over, barely able to stand. The vehixles on the side of the road—military convoys, trucks, it created a silent line along the edge. The smell of gasoline mixed with the cold, and the sound of footsteps echoed in the emptiness. The looks on the faces of the back of the trucks were varried. Some soldiers looked at us with care and remorse, some with disgust as they drove to their deaths.

  It was like nothing was the same anymore. The road south didn’t feel like a path to somewhere better—it felt like a way out of whatever we’d just been through."

  "When did people stop?" I ask.

  "Lyon," she replies. "We got some kind of accord or deal with the government. They promised relocation to the south, to the factories and farms there. In exchange, they gave us a ride and stopped firing tear gas at us. I suppose." she pauses, loojing distant. "It was just before France completely ignited. The country was on the verge of collapse, not from the crabs, but from itself. I don’t need to explain what happened once they started executing deserters—when those rubber balls fired by cops were replaced with real bullets."

  as I was still trying to process what she'd said when the faint whirr of motors broke the silence.

  The robot waiter rolled back to our table, its metal arms clicking in rhythm as it stopped in front of us. It gave a polite beep.

  "Would you like to order more beers?" it asked, its voice eerily calm.