“You're such a stupid old geezer, Vanni Bretella! We had almost made it! You screwed everything up!” Berto screamed, clutching his head in his hands in a fit of anger.

  “I was fucking clear! Quintino will not die!” Vanni fought back fiercely.

  “What the fuck are you babbling about?! That's not the Quintino Liberatore you know! He's not your friend! Your friend will die if we can't stop this mess and, by the way, we will die too!” Berto shouted, not accepting to listen to reason.

  “I don't give a shit, Berto. Quintino for me is always Quintino. Besides, you're turning out to be a coward! We promised him that we will save him!”

  Berto kicked a stone on the ground. “You promised him that.”

  “So you would just let him die? In the name of God, you found that man under a bridge in desperate conditions! Don't you pity him?!”

  “That man is shit and this place is shit. Whether he dies or lives doesn't make a difference to anyone,” Berto replied acidly. But he wasn't completely convinced of his words. When he heard the shots that hit Quintino he felt relief, but it was a bitter relief. Even though he knew that KYDZKYU would be reincarnated and perhaps live a better and more righteous life, Quintino's death would still weigh on his conscience.

  “Don't talk bullshit! We still have more than twenty hours, there must be a way to make it,” Vanni reiterated, trying to rack his brains.

  Berto crossed his arms and approached the edge of the road. The sun was already getting lower. “Why do you think Rosselli ordered his men to kill him?” Berto asked Vanni.

  "Why? Because he lost half a kilo of cocaine, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but in this reality drugs cost less than in ours. And then, even assuming it's a nice sum, if he kills him he'll never see that money again.”

  “Quintino told us that – ”

  “Forget what Quintino told us,” Berto abruptly interrupted Vanni, “There’s something that doesn't add up here. Have you heard Santino? He asked Rino 'Who do you think sold him the stuff?' as if he meant that his and Quintino's boss are the same."

  “But it doesn't make sense. Quintino went to that factory because he wanted to expand his business! Why go there if that territory already belonged to his organization?”

  “Because he didn't know. They made him believe it was another family's territory, but it wasn't. They want to screw him over.”

  “What you say is very serious,” Vanni considered thoughtfully, “But I understand your reasoning.”

  Berto smiled. For a moment he thought he recognized old Vanni Bretella. “And I don't think the head of the family is aware of this subterfuge. I think his men of honor are the ones who want to get rid of Quintino. Now we need to understand why.”

  “So we have to find this Don Rosselli.”

  "Yup. If we talk to him, we may avoid Quintino's execution."

  *****

  Finding Rosselli's villa wasn't particularly complicated, but it wasn't a walk in the park either.

  Berto's initial idea was to sneak into a house to find a PC and do a web search. From the street, they saw a group of houses. Upon reaching them, they had to explore three before finding an old Windows laptop on a dusty desk.

  The PC operating system was Windows XP. When starting up the PC emitted the familiar chime "tu-ru-tu-tutu" and Berto had a fit of nostalgia. He clicked the green start button and searched for a browser. Windows Explorer and Mozilla Firefox were installed. Berto chose Mozilla Firefox.

  The connection was damn slow.

  On Don Rosselli, Berto could only find a couple of articles from local newspapers. They were more than five years old. He learned his full name, Gianpietro Rosselli, and that he was born in Atessa, but there was nothing else. Obviously, there was no information on his residence. “After all, criminals who are not in jail, aren’t because not even police know where to find them,” Berto thought fleetingly.

  As he scoured the web, reality glitched. Berto and Vanni found themselves at the starting space coordinates once again.

  Debugging system activated. Logic error solved.

  Apparently, messing up that PC's history was all it took to generate a logic error. The system was much more susceptible than Berto had anticipated.

  Vanni was disappointed. “Fuck! We haven't discovered anything useful!”

  “Maybe we should go around and ask some questions. If Don Rosselli was born in Atessa and does business here, he cannot live too far. Someone will know something,” Berto proposed.

  “We don't have that much time and almost fifteen thousand people live in Atessa! It’s like looking for a needle in the hay!” Vanni objected.

  “We just need to ask the right people.”

  “And how do you find the 'right people'? No, there has to be an easier way. Didn't God tell us about the Celestial Emissaries?”

  “Right, he said they would help us. But how do we find one? We certainly cannot go to Pescara to ask Father Geronimo for help.”

  “The carabinieri who interrogated Quintino were Celestial Emissaries,” Vanni observed, “Perhaps all law enforcement agents are Celestial Emissaries. We could go to the Atessa carabinieri station, for starters.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try,” Berto agreed.

  Berto and Vanni left at 3.17 pm and reached the barracks at 4.40 pm. They rang the intercom and were greeted by an officer at the counter. It was clear from his face that he just wanted to finish his shift and go home.

  “Are you a Celestial Emissary?” Vanni asked point blank.

  “Huh?” the policeman replied.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “It's not working, Berto!” Vanni whispered to his partner.

  It was normal that it didn't work. God had told them that the Heavenly Emissaries would not hinder them, not that they would serve them. But they no longer remembered his exact words.

  “Listen,” Berto said, standing next to Vanni. “Do you know where the drug kingpin Gianpietro Rosselli lives?”

  The policeman laughed out loud. “What the fuck is that question? If we knew, we would have locked him up long ago. Are you stoners or somethin’?”

  To be scrupulous, Berto tried to read the officer's mind.

  CELESTIAL EMISSARY: Of course I know where he lives, we cops all fucking know. – mental image of an isolated villa in the Lame district, Atessa – What the fuck do these two crazy people want? They don't seem like kids to me, they should have understood how things work around here. Should I teach them a lesson?

  “Well, if you came here just to ask me this, I would advise you to leave,” the policeman suggested.

  “Oh, we won't let you repeat it again,” Berto replied, and taking Vanni by his wrist he walked to the door.

  Once they were on the porch of the police station, Vanni protested, “Holy shit, Berto! We didn't discover anything this time either! Couldn't we have insisted a little more?”

  “You're wrong, my friend,” Berto winked at him, “Now we know everything we need!”

  *****

  At 5.54 pm Berto and Vanni reached Don Rosselli's villa. Couldn’t they become invisible, getting past the fence and the security around it would have proved a real pain in the ass. By now it had gotten dark, and an illuminated glass wall caught the gaze of Berto and Vanni, in that immense and dark garden on the solitary hill.

  Berto and Vanni approached the window, passing a pair of gigantic Rottweilers dozing on the villa’s patio. They saw a group of criminals holding a meeting in the boss' living room. There were nine of them, sitting at a long solid wood table.

  Berto and Vanni entered and began to eavesdrop on their conversations.

  Berto immediately identified Rosselli. He was undoubtedly the middle-aged man in the carmine red nightgown sitting at the head of the table. Berto tried to read his mind and understand whether he possessed a Soul Fragment. Strangely, he was unable to do either of those things. Then he checked the other eight men sitting on either side of the boss. They were all SOULLESS.

  They were talking about the arrival of a new shipment of drugs. A man on the left side of the table said, “Yes, I checked the container last night. They delivered the agreed quantity. I've tested the usual amount of samples. Shit is passable.”

  “What the fuck, shit is always passable. I've never heard you say 'that's quality shit,” a goon on the right side of the table complained.

  “Who the fuck are you? The nose candy connoisseur? Our job is to give the usual losers their usual fix. What do you care about the quality of the product?” another retorted.

  “Is everything organized for transportation?” the boss asked, ignoring the trivial bickering.

  Berto quickly probed the consciences of the eight gangsters. The one who was plotting Quintino's assassination must have been among them. But Quintino's name did not surface in anyone's consciousness. They were all intent on thinking about their role in the logistics chain for the sale of the drug consignment.

  The man to the boss's right replied, “Yes, mastro Vincenzo will take care of it as usual. I sent to the cops their bribes. The shipment will leave from the port of Ortona at half past six in the morning and be here at twenty past seven. We will distribute it in the usual proportions among our men.”

  “Well,” said the boss, “I expect an increase in revenues in the Servantis glassworks section. Tell me, Pablo, are you sure your new man is ready to take service?”

  A guy with bleached hair replied to the boss, “Yes, my nephew has balls and can be very persuasive. He’s cold-blooded and has no problem using his gun.”

  “The fact that he is cold-blooded does not exclude that he is hot-headed. Have you worked on it?” the boss investigated.

  “I did, he's ready. I can guarantee for him,” Pablo reassured the boss.

  “I hope so for you. Quintino's liquidation is now irrevocable. The old man is cooked, we all agree on that. Buyers don't respect him and he's a terrible seller. But I have to recognize him this: he's prudent. He never got us into trouble. Pablo, I swear to you, if that idiot of your nephew messes up, I'll shoot you first and then him,” the boss spoke slow and cold, weighing every single word. It wasn't hyperbole.

  Berto was wrong. The boss knew everything, and he had a precise reason to get rid of Quintino. He wasn't happy with his performance and had found someone to replace him.

  Before the conversation moved on to another topic, Berto possessed one of the boss's men and made him ask, "But... Quintino has some... experience... do we really have to liquidate him?"

  All the eyes of the men at the table fell on Berto’s host. An agonizing silence arose.

  “What did you just say, sorry?” asked the boss.

  Berto gasped. He strove to maintain total control over his host, but the host seemed to rebel against his influence. “I mean… he's been working with us for years. Wouldn't it be better... to just find him another job?”

  The boss laughed politely, then pulled a gun from under his robe and without a moment's hesitation fired a bullet exactly in the center of Berto's host's forehead.

  Berto was spat out of his host's body, and when he looked around he realized that everything in the living room was still, even the corpse. A stream of brains splashed from his forehead and he was frozen in mid-air. Berto thought it was the usual system error glitch, but the scene didn't change. Time had simply stopped.

  Vanni began to breathe heavily, and Berto followed his astonished gaze. Something was still moving. Gianpietro Rosselli weighed his weapon and scrutinized the two intruders, passing his gaze from one to the other. “Look, visitors from another system.”

  “You…you are not a SOULLESS…and…nor even a penitent,” Berto stammered, “What are you?”

  “If life is a soup, I am the ingredient that gives it flavor. I am a System Node,” the boss revealed.

  Although God had not mentioned System Nodes to Vanni and Berto, the meaning of that definition was immediately clear in their minds, as if they had known it all along. And they instantly felt a visceral hatred towards him. Yes, the entity that stood before them was the ingredient that gave life its flavor of crap. In an instant, they saw the true enemy of their immortal souls, but they were also well aware of their helplessness against him.

  Even though he knew the answer, Berto asked, “If you want to get rid of Quintino, why didn't you just kill him?”

  “You know what my job is, young man. Without pain, without a sense of guilt, without terror for the inevitable approaching, what would your atonement be?” the boss paused briefly for effect, and then added, “What are you here for?”

  “Quintino's death will generate four system errors. God sent us here to avoid it,” Berto explained.

  Don Rosselli laughed. “Oh, that's all? Call him God, call him Devil, it's all the same. I don't care about his problems."

  “Don't you understand how serious the situation is? If the system errors occur there will be a reset,” Vanni intervened.

  “And so?” Don Rosselli asked, “If a reset occurs, it's your problem. You will have to start your cycle of reincarnations all over again. For me, it is completely irrelevant. Tomorrow Quintino Liberatore will die, as planned. I am adamant about this.”

  Berto and Vanni watched the boss smooth the barrel of his gun, with the awareness of having failed once again.

  “If we're done, time can start flowing again,” the boss concluded.

  The brain splash smeared the table surface, and the henchman remained with his head tilted back on the back of his chair, while faint convulsions shook his body.

  Reality began to glitch.

  The space-time disturbance immediately engulfed Vanni and he disappeared. But Berto opposed the debug system furiously. Lagging, he lunged towards one of Rosselli's men, grabbed him by the throat, and pulled his gun from the holster at his side.

  He shot him in the head, while the remaining six grabbed their weapons. Their bullets passed through Berto's body without wounding him and Berto responded to their shots, killing them one after the other.

  The glitch became increasingly unstable.

  Berto reserved the last shot for Don Rosselli. The boss greeted the bullet with a mocking smile and his brains stained the wall behind him.

  Then Berto succumbed to the glitch, and the debug system put him back on the road to Lanciano.

  Berto sighed. At least he had gained a small amount of satisfaction.