Since last month, Paris based daily "Le Monde" has been publishing a 'Summer Series': "Terminus pour l'euro" (End of the line for the Euro), a political fiction set in the summer of 2012 after N.Sarkozy's re-election as French president, defeating Marine Le Pen (in that fictional universe, apparently, Socialist candidates do not survive DSK downfall and fail to make it past the election's first round).

The original series is behind Le Monde's paywall, but Presseurop has started publishing it in several languages. There's the usual shroud of mystery: nobody knows who's hiding behind the author's nom de plume Philae, and also some of the recent events seem to have caught up with the story:

Berlin gets ready to leave the euro | Presseurop (English)

On Sunday 6 May, 2012. Nicolas Sarkozy had just been re-elected to the French presidency, winning 69.3% of the vote to defeat the Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen.

However, the 10pm meeting for party bigwigs in the headquarters of Sarkozy's party, the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP), was anything but festive. General elections were only a month away, and all the signs pointed to a massive surge in support for the socialists and the FN. It was hard to imagine a more bitter victory.

Flanked by his two bodyguards, the US ambassador Charles Rivkin cut a path through the crowd to the president. No one was surprised when the two men retreated into a corner for a moment of private conversation.

An hour later, at a meeting of his closest associates, the president took a folded A4 page from his pocket and silently placed it on the table. In the dramatic pause that ensued, all eyes were on the blurred 15cm by 9cm photograph of a portrait of Konrad Adenauer against the backdrop of the angular forms of the Federal Chancellery.

"Gentlemen, allow me to present the new Deutschmark. Several million of these bills will soon be stockpiled in the warehouses of a Mecklemburg printworks. Ambassador Rivkin has confirmed the story: the Germans are going to print their own paper." An icy silence descended on the room, which was eventually broken by the president.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.