The following is excerpted from Maxim Loskutoff’s latest novel Old King, a haunting story about the end of a frontier dream, loosely based around the true-life crimes of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Loskutoff is the award-winning author of the novel Ruthie Fear and the story collection Come West and See. He lives in western Montana.
Salt Lake City, December 1981
Pat Garret lived alone in a large gabled Victorian house that he’d paid for with his inheritance. Every morning before leaving for work, he fed his beta fish, typed a command into the Colossal Cave game on his Commodore VIC-20 computer, and waited for a response. He’d played the game for years, navigated every possible course for collecting the treasure, died in every conceivable way, and now considered it a kind of friend, taking pleasure in the odd singularity of its voice.
YOU ARE IN A VALLEY IN THE FOREST ABOVE AN OLD MINE.
“go in,” he typed.
YOU ENTER THE MINE. IT IS DARK. YOU FALL DOWN A SHAFT AND BREAK EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY!
Maxim Loskutoff
304 pages; Hardcover; $27.99
W.W. Norton & Company, June 2024
Pat smiled, gathered up his keys and wallet, and locked the front door behind him. For the first time that winter, he had to scrape the frost from the windshield of his sedan. As he traveled south to his store in Fairpark, the morning traffic on the interstate was light. He listened to a talk show, the hosts arguing about whether they could find Seychelles on a map, then throwing it over to a new pop song about a woman dancing in the rain.
Rent-A-Tech was in the far corner of a strip mall on Lehi Avenue. Pat had chosen the location because it was cheap and easily accessible to the freeway. Rent-A-Tech was the first computer rental store in Utah, and he’d figured, correctly, that though his customer base would be small, they’d be willing to travel great distances. He locked his car and walked around the front of the shop, scanning the empty lot. None of the neighboring businesses — Kirby’s Shoes, Thrifty, Mario’s Peruvian Restaurant— were open yet. He unlocked the door and flipped on the lights, shivering. Heather must not have left the heat on overnight. She was careless; he’d told her many times he didn’t like his machines getting cold. Pat would have fired her if he didn’t secretly dream of marrying her on the shore of the Great Salt Lake. He walked down the aisle between the display models: several Apple Macintoshs, the older Commodores in back, a brand-new sleek Amiga by the counter. Each one wiped clean of dust as if it had just emerged from the box.
In the back room, he turned on the heat and the sound system, and found a radio station playing Christmas music. He hated the saccharine songs, but it was what customers wanted this time of year, and it made them feel generous. He straightened the invoices and receipts on the table, stuck a pen and notepad in his pocket, and walked back up front to switch on the OPEN sign. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”
Thirty minutes later, late as usual, Heather showed up, and together they spent the morning assisting the slow but steady stream of customers: walking them through each machine’s capabilities, the daily versus weekly rates, and insurance options. Most were small business owners looking to calculate their year-end books, but the Macintoshs brought in more and more dads who wanted a new toy “ for the kids” at the holidays. These were Pat’s favorite customers; they were interested in the games, and watched, impressed, as he demonstrated how entire worlds could open up on the glowing screens with a few simple keystrokes.
Pat had studied math at UC Berkeley, and while the free speech and antiwar protests raged outside, he’d spent most of his four years in the computer lab working as a lab assistant. At night in his dorm room, he wrote code for the open-source games that he and his friends passed around on floppy disks. The store had seemed like a logical choice when his academic career stalled and he found himself back in his hometown, dealing with his parents’ estate. Now he found it oppressive, and he longed to move away and create his own game. Auguries, it would be called, a game of potential futures, apocalypses interspersed by a few glittering utopias.
Through the front window, he noticed a man in aviator sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt hurrying away from the parking lot toward the bus stop on Lehi, his shoulders hunched against the wind. He moved oddly, like he was trying to hide his face. Pat glanced up at the clock. It was almost noon. “I’m heading out for lunch,” he said to Heather. “Make sure the door stays closed. It lets the cold in.”
Through the front window, he noticed a man in aviator sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt hurrying away from the parking lot toward the bus stop on Lehi, his shoulders hunched against the wind.
Heather nodded impatiently as he left the store.
Bitter wind blew from the northeast. It smelled faintly of snow coming down from the Wasatch Mountains. Pat turned up his collar, trying not to fixate on his frustration. His infatuation with Heather left him feeling con- stantly provoked. He was unsure of how to deal with women, having spent most of his life alone. He reminded himself to bring his snow shovel from home the next day, so he wouldn’t have to borrow one from Mario. Then he stopped.
A paper bag was sitting in the center of the empty parking space in front of his store. Pat stared at the bag. It was clearly full of something, since it didn’t blow away in the wind. Shaking his head, Pat approached and bent down. Inside was a wooden box studded with nails. The nails had been hammered out through the wood so the sharp ends stuck up at different angles. It could easily puncture a tire. In fact, it looked like it had been designed to. Was someone trying to sabotage Rent-A-Tech? Pat looked around nervously, craning his neck to see if the man in aviators was still on the corner, but he had disappeared. The only possible enemy Pat could think of was another of the game designers he exchanged code with. Had he slighted one of them somehow? The thought pained him. He always tried to give credit where it was due. He had few friends, and the nascent community was sacred to him. Plus, the design of the wood was vicious. At least thirty nails bristled inside the bag. The malevolence was almost comical. Perhaps it was meant as a joke, a command-prompt taken into the real world. YOU’VE BROKEN EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY!
Curious now, Pat reached for the bag. He felt a strange sense of vertigo as he did, the same as he’d experienced in temple as a boy waiting for the sacrament. The paper crinkled in his fingers and he lifted the bag. A ball of fire ignited in the center. The fire spread outward, enveloping his hands, and bearing the nails into his chest on the crest of a flaming wave. Pat felt pain, terrible pain. He heard a tremendous deafening crash. The entire lot shook. The percussive blast blew out the front windows of his shop. The sign above Mario’s Peruvian Restaurant crashed down and Pat watched the remains of his lower body, blackened beyond recognition, scatter across the pavement. That’s my body, he thought, overwhelmed by horror. I need it.
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