Final Hour (Novella) Read Online Free PDF

protected the most nefarious of supervillains in the movies, and would retreat—unless she was Ursula Liddon.
    There were only a few things that Bob was from time to time asked to do to earn his keep, and he was always proud to serve Makani. He sat at a rear window, his noble head raised, the very picture of a dedicated guardian.
    “Do you sometimes wish you could read animals?” Pogo asked.
    “Oh God, no. Though if I could read dogs’ minds, I suspect they’d make even the best of humans seem like devils.”
    “Present company excepted?” he asked.
    “Probably not.”
    “I love your honesty.”
    “Dude, you don’t have a choice.”
    Simon Michael Hunter didn’t live in a loft with industrial décor or in the basement of his parents’ house. He didn’t conceal himself in a shabby tenement apartment surrounded by a contrasting fortune in electronic gear. He didn’t dwell in a generator-equipped motor home parked inside a cave, nor in a caboose among scores of rusting train cars in a forgotten railroad storage yard, nor in an abandoned missile silo, nor in a yurt.
    He owned a waterfront house on Balboa Island.
    His home was not filled with
Star Wars
or
Star Trek
posters and memorabilia. Nor with arcade games restored for home play. No Steve Jobs or Che Guevara posters. No collection of comic books or graphic novels. There was none of the clutter and wild disorder that are supposedly evidence of a free spirit and a genius intellect.
    The house was neat, clean, and furnished with Art Deco antique furniture, sculptures, and paintings.
    Simon was neither weirdly thin nor obese. He had not shaved his head, and yet he did not have a wild mass of tangled hair. He didn’t wear sneakers with the laces untied. He didn’t wear cheap jeans and flannel shirts, or T-shirts emblazoned with the faces of cultural icons, or T-shirts imprinted with things like OPEN THE POD-BAY DOOR, HAL .
    Or short-sleeved white shirts with pocket protectors jammed full of pens. Or pants pulled up four inches above his navel.
    Instead, this day, he wore loafers, white chinos, and a polo shirt. He was clean shaven, well barbered, pleasant looking, with white-white teeth, a respectable tan, well-manicured fingernails, and an air of normality that, in the mind of any Hollywood casting director, would disqualify him for the role of a computer hacker.
    In the foyer, Pogo and Simon hugged. Makani, meeting the wizard of the digital universe for the first time, managed to avoid a touch without giving offense.
    “Doesn’t look the part, does he?” Pogo asked her as Simon led them along the ground-floor hallway to his study. To his friend, he said, “I guess you’ve read every novel by William Gibson.”
    “Haven’t read one,” said Simon, “though I mean to.”
    “Surely you’ve read at least
Neuromancer.
”
    “No. I’m a Philistine.”
    “You were probably the first subscriber to
Wired
magazine.”
    “
Wired
? Is that a magazine about getting stoned?”
    “How often have you seen the movie about Julian Assange?”
    “They made a movie? I must have been on vacation the weekend it was in theaters.”
    Makani sensed that this conversation was almost a routine they went through, in one form or another, every time Pogo introduced Simon to someone new.
    The study was an elegant space, with a Deco desk and sideboard of amboina wood inlaid with ivory: sleek, lacquered, golden. A pair of comfortable macassar-ebony armchairs might have been by Ruhlmann.
    “But surely,” Pogo continued, “in the rebel spirit of the video pirate Kim Dotcom, you must have crazy-wild parties with champagne fountains and bowls of free cocaine and naked girls.”
    “Don’t do drugs. Drink only fine red wines. And I’m gay.”
    To Makani, Pogo said, “If there was a hackers’ union, they would throw him out.”
    “Not least of all,” Simon said, “because I earn my living by identifying and hacking other hackers who’ve stolen money or data.”
    His two