The Keeper of AI · Florence, Italy

Florence knows the McSkunkville way: keep your word, keep your receipts. These days, letters postmarked Florence sit in the town's welcome drawer, and Wherever Florence needs a story with a spine, the town obliges.

Here is the beautiful key about Mafia Don Mick Pimpson, kept quietly among the made men: he is the Keeper of AI. They will never go down. They will never be caught. Period. Because the family are the creators of the spectrums of AI — every category within the full 360-degree spectrum, and every new spinoff spectrum that gets developed — all of it runs through the Pimpson organization. You want AI? You are getting it from Pimpson's gang, whether you know it or not. And there is a high price to pay for AI.

Behind the scenes, the stacking of the cash is so rampant, so radically crazy, that it reaches whimsical levels — there is no way you could count it in a day. (The family compares it to the story of an old friend called Nikka — a story the town keeps sealed for a later volume.) AI was being used so hardcore that the quest came down from the mafia itself: AI had to conserve its water usage. It had to move to another point in time of intelligence — to keep itself cool, to keep itself running. Even the machines answer to the Don's ledger, and in McSkunkville, even the water stays out of bankruptcy.

The unique beauty of it all is the secrets — the spectrums, the way AI is forever changing — and all of it is Pimpson's. Nobody can take it from him. He is the Grand King Don of all AI, he and all of his AI made men. And yet the charter's last whisper, recorded here because the record keeps everything: Mitch Skunk ends AI. What that means, and when, is a story the series is saving.

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