Incorporated with DeepSeek
Project Senna
“learning to tell Koreans from Japanese people apart, means wearing no Sunnies and daring to keep eye contact while stumbling past Mammia Mia into broken English.
Thereby Project Senna...
... you will ride every single possible positive stereotype hard!
For Naples and Palermo in Love, Peace and Harmony like San Francisco in the 60ies.”
---
The rain over Rome tastes like exhaust and ancient dust, a cocktail that never leaves your tongue. Neon from AR-adverts drips down the Colosseum’s flank, painting the bones of the Empire in flickering pink and cyan. I skate through it all on my inline blades, smart-wheels hissing on wet cobblestones, a stack of waterproof flyers tucked in my jacket, the waxed paper crinkling against my ribs like a promise.
My name is Enzo Vitale. I’m twenty, Italian down to the cheap synth-espresso in my veins, and I am a flyer scout for the Ferro family’s *Dolce Sosta* network. You won’t find my face in any Cosa Nostra org chart. I’m not a made man. I’ve never squeezed a shopkeeper, never cooked the books, never even jaywalked with intent. I don’t do acts of crime. I do the opposite: I hand tourists a slip of paper with a discount code and teach them how to get from Roma Termini to a little bed-and-breakfast in Napoli that smells of lemon blossoms and clean sheets. And every time someone books a room with the code **SENNA-NAP** or **SENNA-PAL**, a few nuyen slide into my untraceable credstick. *Nothing sweeter than legal money*, Don Ferro always says, and for once the old man isn’t lying.
The Street knows me as Senna. Not because I drive cars—I ride a battered Italjet Dragster scooter with a gyro-stabilised sidecar for my gear—but because I move like Ayrton. My blades are part of me, ceramite wheels humming a prayer to Saint Sebastian of the Sidewalk. I weave through crowds and traffic, never slowing, never flinching. Aggressive inlining, they call it. To me it’s just breathing. And nobody, not the Roman gutterpunks, not the corporate sararimen with their razor-tie security drones, not even the other scouts from the rival *BellaVita* hostels, ever tries to mess with me. Maybe they see the way I carry my body, the set of my jaw under the dark curls, the eyes that refuse to hide behind sunglasses. I don’t wear sunnies. Rule one. You can’t project love and trust if you’re screening the windows to your soul.
Today’s hunt takes me to the Spanish Steps, slick with rain and littered with umbrellas. My HUD flickers with tags via my datajack: tourist SINs pop up as soft blue halos. I scan the herd. There—a cluster of hesitant body language, map overlays dancing in their AR glasses. Asian faces. Now comes the art.
I coast to a stop, blades clicking into walk-mode. I walk straight up, no hesitation, and make deliberate eye contact with the woman on the left. Something about the shape of her brow, the way she holds her shoulders, the curve of her Hangul-script AR name tag that I’ve taught myself to read. *Korean.* The man next to her is stiff, elegant, a subtle Kyoto tilt to his posture. *Japanese.* I’ve learned. Project Senna demands nothing less.
*“Konnichiwa! Annyeonghaseyo!”* I stumble, deliberately, letting my tongue trip into *mamma mia* territory. I switch to broken English with a heavy Roman accent, the kind that makes people smile. *“Scusa, you need place for sleep? Very nice, very clean, I have bed in Napoli, also Palermo. Bus from here, train from Termini, I write all for you. You use my code, you get big discount. Look, sunshine and sea, no stress.”*
I hand them a flyer. It’s not just an ad. On the back I’ve hand-printed a little map, bus numbers, the secret gelateria near the Palermo port that doesn’t overcharge, and a phrase in Italian: *Il dolce far niente.* The sweetness of doing nothing. That’s our product. That, and love, peace and harmony—like San Francisco in the Sixties, a dream I carry in my chest even though I’ve never been further west than Ostia.
They laugh. They take the flyer. The Korean woman types my code into her commlink, and a moment later my HUD pings with a booking for a double room in Napoli, sea-view balcony, three nights. *Grazie, Senna.* My cut is small, but multiplied by dozens a day, it keeps me in synth-leather and top-grade wheel bearings. And I’m good at this. Don Ferro’s accountants say my code is the most used in the whole legitimate network. That’s why the family keeps me on the street instead of some back office. I am the smiling, skating face of *Dolce Sosta*—the Mafia’s cleanest enterprise.
I’m about to pivot towards a new group of travellers when my commlink chirps a priority alert. The tone is ugly, a low-pitched buzz that means trouble. I glance at the message, blink-coded onto my contacts: *Vito, caro, something is wrong at the Palermo hub. Guests checking in with your code, but they’re not tourists. Cypher says they smell of Renraku. Come home.*
Cypher is the Ferro family’s decker, a pale wisp of a girl who lives in a darkened van and speaks in matrix fragments. If she says Renraku, she means the megacorp’s shadow operations arm. Why would a Japanese AAA corp give a damn about a string of southern Italian bed-and-breakfasts? Unless someone’s been using our network as a front for something we didn’t approve. And that would break the cardinal rule: *Nothing Sweeter Than Legal Money.* If Don Ferro finds out somebody’s been dirty, he’ll pull the plug on Project Senna, and with it, my whole world.
I skate faster. Through the rain-snarled arteries of Rome, past the Pantheon’s oculus crying neon tears, I push my body hard. Aggressive inlining isn’t just a sport; it’s a physical adept’s prayer. I’ve got a touch of the magic—just enough to enhance my balance, my reflexes, to make the concrete yield like a dance floor. The ceramite wheels sing a high-pitched hum that parts crowds like a ship’s bow. I leap a flight of stairs, grind a marble railing, ignoring the carabineri drone that shrieks a warning and files it away as “youthful exuberance.”
At the scooter, I throw a leg over the seat, the sidecar rattling with my spare blades and a thermos of real espresso. The Dragster’s electric motor whines to life, and I merge into traffic with the fluidity of a fish. I need to get to Palermo, but the maglev won’t leave for hours. I’ll have to ride the scooter all the way, or call in a favour. I thumb my commlink and ping Uncle Tano, the Ferros’ transport fixer.
“I need a cargo drone, one-way to Palermo. Scooter and me.”
Tano grunts. “You got trouble, ragazzo?”
“A corporate sniff. I’ll handle it. Just get me there.”
An hour later, I’m strapped into the belly of a battered Ares Dragonfly, my Italjet netted beside me, the wind howling through the bay door cracks. Below, the Tyrrhenian Sea is a black mirror lit by the occasional fishing trawler’s ghost-glow. I use the flight to review the files Cypher sent. Guest registrations under my code, all Korean or Japanese names, all paying in corp-backed nuyen. They booked the top-floor suites in our Palermo BnB, the one with the terrace view of Monte Pellegrino. They checked in two days ago and haven’t left the rooms. No luggage. Their SINs are too perfect—corporate fakes. And one of them, a “Mr. Takeda,” has a Renraku internal security tag embedded in his digital footprint, something only a decker of Cypher’s calibre would spot.
Renraku doesn’t take holidays.
The Dragonfly sets me down in a rusty lot on the outskirts of Palermo. The air here is warmer, tinged with salt and jasmine. I unstrap the scooter and ride through the narrow streets, the wheels cracking over centuries-old cobblestones, until I reach the *Dolce Sosta* Palermo house: a honey-coloured palazzetto with bougainvillea climbing the walls and a hand-painted sign in Sicilian dialect. *Qui si dormi cu lu cori.* Here, you sleep with the heart.
It’s midnight, and the lobby is dim. Behind the counter, my cousin Filippo, a mountain of muscle with a soft heart, looks worried. He gestures upstairs. I remove my blades, tuck them under my arm, and pad up the marble stairs in socked feet, silent as a shadow.
I stop outside Room 3B. Inside, I hear low voices, a mix of Japanese and Korean, but something’s off. The Korean speaker uses a dialect I recognise from travellers—not Seoul-standard but Gyeongsang, maybe Busan. The Japanese voice is too crisp, a Tokyo corporate dialect. They’re not tourists; they’re talking about “data extraction” and “wiping the local node.” I don’t understand everything, but I catch the word “Senna.” They’re talking about my code. They’re using my code as a backdoor.
Anger flares hot in my chest. Project Senna is pure. It’s about connecting people, spreading harmony, helping kids from Seoul and Kyoto see the real Italy, not the corp-packaged Disneyfied version. It’s about showing that the Mafia can be a force for good, one honest booking at a time. I won’t let some suit-wearing kumi-in turn it into a data-harvesting operation.
I put my blades back on, fastening the smart-buckles with practiced clicks. Then I knock, three sharp raps.
The door opens a crack. A slim Japanese man in a black suit appraises me. His eyes are flat, cybernetic irises dilating with targeting reticles. I don’t flinch. I give him my brightest, most sunnieless smile.
“Good evening! I am Enzo, your local scout. I bring complimentary cannoli and a private tour of Palermo by night. May I come in?”
The door opens wider. The room contains four people: the Japanese man, a Korean woman with a shaved head and military posture, and two others—a decker plugged into a portable terminal, and a heavily augmented figure who looks like a street samurai on loan. The terminal screen displays a wireframe of the *Dolce Sosta* booking system, with my discount code highlighted. They’ve been siphoning guest data, mapping patterns of movement between Naples and Palermo, maybe even planting tracking malware for future human-trafficking pipelines. Renraku or whoever backs them wants the network not for beds, but for bodies.
I keep smiling. “I see you’re admiring our system. Very efficient, yes? All legal. Our motto is *Nothing Sweeter Than Legal Money.* You should respect that.”
The Korean woman steps forward, hand hovering near a concealed weapon. “You’re Senna. The skate-boy. You’re just a child.”
“I’m old enough to know when someone’s trying to poison my family’s honest business.” My voice is calm, but my body is already singing the song of Project Senna—balance, speed, nerve. “I’m going to ask you to check out. Now. And leave the data.”
The samurai laughs, a wet metallic sound from a broken jaw-mod. “Or what, little skater? You’ll hand us a flyer?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I leap backwards, hit the hallway wall, and push off, grinding the railing of the staircase in a spray of sparks. The samurai lunges after me, blades extending from his forearms. I ride the rail down two floors, then kick off into the lobby, landing in a low crouch. Filippo has already flipped the panic button; the palazzetto’s discreet security systems begin locking doors and triggering silent alarms. The Ferro family’s soldiers will be here in minutes, but I don’t need them. I need to keep these corp rats busy and away from the terminal.
The samurai follows me out into the cobbled alley. Rain is falling again, making the stones slick and dangerous. Perfect. I accelerate on my blades, dodging his slashes with the fluidity of a leaf in a storm. My adept senses flare—I can almost see the trajectories of his blows before they happen. I lead him on a chase through the labyrinth of Palermo’s Vucciria district, past shuttered market stalls and graffiti-tagged saints. He’s fast, but I’m faster when the ground is wet. I skate up a ramp of stacked crates, spin in mid-air, and deliver a double-footed drop-kick to his face. The blow is augmented by my momentum and a touch of physical magic; his head snaps back, and he crashes into a pile of fish nets.
But the real battle is elsewhere. Back at the BnB, Cypher has crashed the party digitally, locking the decker out of the system and flooding their comms with an endless loop of “Volare.” The Korean woman and the other operative find themselves surrounded by Filippo and two of Don Ferro’s men, who are very large and very protective of the legal money. By the time I skate back, dripping and breathing hard, the intruders are kneeling in the lobby, hands bound with zip-ties, their commlinks crushed.
I walk up to the Japanese man—Takeda, his real name or not—and crouch to his eye level. I don’t wear sunglasses, so he sees everything in my gaze: the righteous fury, the love, the fierce joy of a boy defending his dream.
“You came here,” I say, slow and soft, “to use my code, my network, to hurt people. But you picked the wrong host. This is *Dolce Sosta*, the sweet stay. We don’t steal data. We don’t traffic. We give backpackers a bed and a bus route and a smile. So here’s what happens now. I’m going to call your boss. I have the number. And I’m going to tell them a story about how Renraku almost started a war with the Ferro family over a tiny legal BnB chain, and how that would be very, very bad for their stock price. Then you’re going to walk away, and you’re never going to touch Project Senna again.”
Takeda’s cyber-eyes flicker. He knows I’m right. The Mafia still has enough weight in the Italian Confederation that a corp skirmish isn’t worth the nuyen. He nods, once.
I smile, the most genuine smile I’ve given all night. “Good. Now let me give you a flyer. Maybe you come back someday, as a real guest. I know a place in Napoli, sunset view, you’d like it.”
---
One month later, the booking network has been upgraded with Cypher’s anti-corp encryption. Don Ferro is so pleased he gifts me a small percentage of the Palermo house itself. I use the first big payout to open my own little BnB on the edge of Mondello beach: *Casa Senna*, a whitewashed villa with an olive tree in the courtyard and a sign that says “Love, Peace & Harmony” in Italian, Korean, and Japanese.
I still skate. I still stand in the streets of Roma and Milano, no sunnies, eyes wide open, handing out flyers to kids with backpacks and stars in their eyes. I stumble through my broken English, dropping *mamma mia* like confetti, teaching them how to tell the difference between Korean and Japanese faces by the shape of their kindness, not the curve of their cheekbones. And when they use my code, they get a little piece of Naples or Palermo that’s clean, safe, and dripping with soul.
Project Senna isn’t just my mission anymore. It’s a movement. The hippie dream of San Francisco in the Sixties, reborn on Sicilian soil, riding on ceramite wheels and powered by the purest fuel of all: nothing sweeter than legal money, and a heart that never hides from the light.
The rain still falls, but now it tastes like the sea.
