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From Alfred Something Wicked SF & Horror #6 May 2008 .txtA N.E.R.D's Release

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Robson, Jenny - [SS] Cohen's Last Stand [v1.0].htm

Cohens Last Stand

by JennyRobson

illustratedby Emily Tolson

* * * *

* * * *

* * * *

This time it willwork, you think?

Cohen standschest-pressed against the empty gurney. There in the middle of the basementlab. He is a small and bald and perspiring man. One hand clutches against hischallenged heart-chambers that have almost come to an end of what they canbear. The other hand clings to the leather restraint straps.

This time it mustwork, Sibu.

But Sibusiso, hisintern, his partner-in-avenging-crime, doesnt answer. Sibusiso is a man of fewwords. His fingers do the talking, stabbing with knobbly knuckles at keyboardsas he scoots up and down trestle tables laden with hardware and monitors andblack wiring. The castors of his chair clatter and rumble like the wheels of adeath train. While the fluorescent lighting buzzes and drones overhead.

It must work!

The Dean of Admin wasrude and adamant. One more shot, Cohen. I will not have the campus power-lessa third time. And this time I want a proper report in plain English. Not yourinsane interns rambling goobledegook.

Cohen feels his heartlurch and then shudder, anxiety pumping through the strained valves. His lifeswork has taken its toll. But no price is too high in memory of his long-deadand beloved Grandma Rachael. If only she were here to witness this: Justicefinally meted out. Evil given its Just Desserts.

(He was such abad man, my little Isaac. Such barbarism for such a civilized country. All ourpeople, scattered to ash in the four winds. My mother, my baby brother.

And her ownlittle-girl heart obliterated by the hurricane of horror. Cyclone upon cycloneof grief.)

* * * *

Sibu, you are sureyour GPS co-ords are correct? Cohen rattles off the exact location of thesofa. In the bunker. In far-away Berlin.

Check! saysSibusiso. His voice crackles like an electronic announcement.

And the time lapse?Thirty minutes prior to shot. Thirtieth April. In far-away 1945.

Double check!Sibusisos eyes gleam like LED lights. Sometimes Cohen finds himself wonderingabout the humanity of this young man who still wears his township chic attirebut whose hot-wired leaping pole-vaulting brain-cells tell a different story.

Once in a quietmoment between calculations that could have silenced a Laureate, Cohensuggested, If this truly works, Sibu, we can extend. Once weve visitedJustice on the oppressor of my people, we can start on the oppressors of yourpeople: Verwoerd, Malan, both Vosters. All those fascist madmen who imposedsuch suffering on your kin and kind. Fascist madmen who never faced earthlypunishment in any form.

But Sibu looked athim blanklya motherboard without any connection to the living or dead. Of anyrace or ethnicity. The black looping wires through which the campus powersupply surges: that is his only umbilical cord.

A man alone, thisSibu. Without ancestors. A man whose heart is merely a pump that conducts asteady fuel-supply to his oscillating cortex.

(But do notworry, my little Isaac. Our people, your ancestors, will be avenged. God isall-seeing, my little bright one. Herr Hitler, he will be burning now in theeternal fires of Hells damnation. Evil will be repaid there in the Afterlife.God is all Justice. Vengeance is His.

Except, my belovedGrandma Rachael, there is NO Afterlife. NO Hell. NO God actually. Sad anddisappointing, but true.)

* * * *

Dr Schneidersbrilliant treatise is over thirty-five years old now. But its logic is stillunassailable, its conclusions faultless and beyond controversy, the dense mazeof its reasoning beyond reproach. Though some have tried. Including the Dean ofAdmin.

I put it to youso reads Dr Schnieders conclusion after twentytorturous pagesthat there is thus not the remotest possibility of someall-powerful, omniscient supreme being. The attendant beliefs in heaven andhell are merely the desperate myths of our impotent human race that so longsfor some fundamental Justice. Then the good doctor quotes thetwentieth-century poet Stevie Smith: God is Mans doll, you ass.Afitting end to a flawless opus.

So, given thisirrefutable knowledgeno god, no hellCohen has made it his lifes work to finda way to wreak Justice here in this life, here on this earthly plane, on thedevil who blighted his Grandmas childhood. Belated but well-earned Justice.

Years he spent ofhopeless striving. Always just a mind-grasp away from achieving his goal. Untila young and green student in his township garb and with his gangsta swagger,entered his hallowed lecture hall. Entered the very next day his basement lab.Young and green and with brain-cells firing in rainbow colours. Knobbly fingersstabbing breath-taking codes and diversions. Bringing them both finally to thismoment. If it works! (The first run-through was a failure, a disaster ofcampus-wide proportions.)

There should beorgan-music, thinks Cohen now. Great massive swelling chords. To herald thisnew giant leap for mankind.

* * * *

There you go, Prof!Sibu says, as though he is delivering a cup of cocoa. Cohen has always beenpartial to cocoa. Grandma Rachael would bring him a mug before bedtime alongwith her Auschwitz legends that fed his nightmares.

There you go, Prof!

And it has truly,truly happened! Miracle of mind and machinery! Triumph of technology! Victoryof vengeance! Cohens heart-chambers squeeze in a chorale of pain.

There on the gurneylies a figure in an old-fashioned brown uniform. The hand holding theold-fashioned pistol is clamped harmlessly in the restraint. Sibu removes thepistol. Nonchalantly. Hooks up the electrodes. Casually. Just another minortask for over-knuckled fingers. But is there the slightest gleam of humanexcitement there hidden behind his techno-irises? Cohen cannot be sure, but hehopes so. Hopes this almost-human hardware that is his student-colleague canfind some joy in the fruition of his single-minded labour.

Cohen peers now intothe pallid face on the gurney, the face of a civil servant who looks like hespends his days in basement offices doing nothing more violent than bendingpaperclips. Stapling errant forms together. Nothing more sinister thanstrolling to the photo-copier at intervals.

There is the comicalmoustache, a ragged spiky blot on a too-long upper lip. And attempt atmasculinity.

But then there arethe eyes, slowly gaining consciousness. And they tell a different story. Evenhere, thirty minutes from suicide, there is no flickering of doubt orsecond-guessing or remorse.

* * * *

And the figure isspeaking now, in harsh arrogant tones. In German.

What is this? Wherein Gods name am I? Untie me, you idiot! Who in hell are you? Is this ahospital? Are you a jew doctor? I demand a non-jew. I will not be touched bysub-humans!

Cohen understandssome German. His Grandma taught him. Safe she was in South Africa but stillyearning for the learning and the coolness of her motherland despite itsbetrayal of her little-girl trust.

Identify yourself.American? English? The figure barks and thrashes in a paroxysm of impotentrage. Cohen wants to reach out, to touch the pallid hand. Jewish flesh tojewish-blood-soaked flesh. But his arms are paralysed.

So Prof? You want toget this show on the road? Sibus iron castors are shrieking up and down thetrestles. Making their own cyber-music. Knobbly fingers gyrating in impatientwaiting.

But Cohens lips areparalysed, his tongue a thick and retarded object filling his mouth.

Here goes!

Sibu twiddles dials.And the heavily-accented words from the gurney blur and kaleidoscope intoscreams that could chill the bowels of hell. If hell existed. The mouth belowthe Charlie Chaplin moustache has become a gaping hole of darkness from whichunearthly sounds emit. In ever-increasing decibels. At ever-heighteningfrequencies of techno-pain. Unremitting agony to the nth degree. The leatherrestraints are tested to their utmost as the figure twists and convulses.

Sibuscastor-cyber-dancing becomes all the more frenetic.

But Cohen backs away,leans against the rough basement wall. In all his Laureate-worthy calculations,this was never factored in: his squeamishness. He has a weak stomach along withhis weak heart. This he cannot bear to watch, even though he is part-author.

Ashamed and heaving,he tugs his way up the basement stairs through a tunnel of Justice madeaudible, punishment made sound. Through a corridor fashioned by the agonizedanimal screams of a long-dead fascist madman receiving his Just Desserts.

* * * *

Outside it is eveningand quiet. The sunset colours melt above the mountains just beyond the campus.There is the smell of jasmine in the air. Jasmine and honeysuckle. Cohens wifegrows the creepers in the garden of their modest campus cottage.

Cohen recites thewords of the long-dead poet as quoted by Dr Schneider: A god is Mans doll,you ass. He makes him up like this on purpose. Perhaps that should be hisintroduction to the report for the Dean of Admin. If the Dean doesnt wantgoobledegook, perhaps a little poetry will go down well? Just a lead-in to thestatements that really matter: Mission Accomplished, Dean. One Adolf Hitler,snatched just prior to his death to be tortured as he once tortured. Maybe youin your wisdom would like to select the next candidate for punishment? Nero whotormented your fellow-Christians? The Spanish Inquisitors who tortured yourfellow-Protestants? Pilate who refused to save your Jesus from crucifixion?

The Dean remainssteadfast in the faith of his fathers, despite Dr Schneiders incontrovertibletreatise. But how absolute is the Deans certainty in the realities of hell andeternal damnation? Absolute enough for him to forego this generous offer ofselection? Will this offer put him in a terrible, soul-searching quandary? Nowthat is an interesting question, thinks Cohen and he manages to smile. Howgreat will the temptation be for this declared Theist?

This offer ofGuaranteed Justice stands, dearest Dean, for as long as my heart-chambers cankeep from collapsing. For as long as Sibusisos brain-cells can escape totalimplosion.

* * * *

Cohen spies his wife,knitting there between the honeysuckle on the veranda. Yes, it will be soothingto sit for a while listening to her babble of grandchildrens antics describedand pastry recipes acquired and perhaps some secret campus affair uncovered.Feminine concerns far removed from the head-busting basement world of JusticeReclaimed.

Freda! he calls outto her through the sunset. Freda, my dear!

Except.

Except for somestrange reason, the gilded sunset soil is rising up to meet him, adheringitself to his drying lips. And why is that? Or has he perhaps got the wholesituation inverted? Has he somehow fallen full-length groundwards to meet thesoil? Which was not his intention. And now darkness covers the land in oneeternal moment whilst Cohen tries to unravel this puzzle. He always enjoyedpuzzles.

Darkness followed bybuzzing droning eye-scratching light. And he is face-up now, tied to some metalgurney with a white-coated being beside him. Is this a hospital? Is this theheart-attack his doctor has been warning him about?

Who are you? hedemands. The white-coated figures face is disconcertingly blank. And there isthe swelling of organ music. Organ music?

Sibu? Is this youridea of a joke?

But Sibu is noprankster. Sibu would not recognize a joke if it punchlined him right in theface.

Then perhaps he ishallucinating, reasons Cohen. Once, as a young student, he took a proffered pinkpill, entered a world of swirling colours and grinding noises that sheared hisbrain-lobes. So perhaps? One of his own students? Playing a prank with somemodern equivalent of the pink pill slipped into his morning cocoa?

* * * *

But the blank-facedfigure seems very real. His words are clear and precise. You have committedthe ultimate evil, you ass. You have tried to usurp the role of the Almighty.You with your puny earth-bound one-dimensional calculations, have meddled inthe realm of Universal Justice. Double Jeopardy, you small-brained amoeba! Haveyou heard of that? Do you know what repercussions your childs game has had,tilting the complex machinations of Hell? Which exists, I assure you. No matterwhat your idiotic friend Schneider postulates.

It must be delirium,Cohen comforts himself. His brain has reached the very edges of what it canbear. All these weeks of hope and anticipation. The nightly visions of hisGrandma Rachael. (Sleep, my little Isaac. You are a good boy.) Theendless arguments with the Dean. The stress of keeping Sibus sparking brainfocused.

But there are flamesdancing now, red wraiths alongside the gurney and the smell of burningchemicals he cant identify. And a thunderous voice vibrating against his skin,not from the white-coat but from further, deeper, higher.

I am not Mans doll,you insignificant ass from your insignificant planet. I am that I am! Yourinfantile numerology will not calculate me out of existence. Furthermore,Vengeance is Mine.

The voice is obliterated,wiped out of existence by the sudden screams: ear-rending, brain-suckingshrieks. And it is some time before Cohen understands that the screams emitfrom the gaping tunnel of darkness that is his own mouth.

The end.