In a not-too-distant future, androids are turning up in poorly-lit areas of The City; non-functional, memory banks wiped, and missing miscellaneous components. To get to the bottom of the mystery, the Emerald Council authorizes hiring the services of the most famous private investigator of the day, Robot Holmes. R. Holmes immediately proceeds to the scene of the latest “involuntary android disassembly” along with his human assistant Dr. Watson. (No… he’s not a physician, she’s a physicist.)
“This clue is the most important, Watson. A female's makeup brush partially inserted inside the ear!”
“How so?”
“Evidently, this is the work of an Android Shutdown & Mechanism Removal artist.”
“My God! An ASMRtist!”
“Yes. They are turning up everywhere. Even in some of the most respectable of places.”
“But how can they overpower an android's superior strength?”
“Elementary. Sensory overload. Humans merely experience a momentary, transient effect many find interesting, even delightful. They recover instantly. But in an android, there is an interruption of instruction execution. Processors halt. Stack pointers are lost. System shutdown ensues.”
“I see! While the poor thing is offline, the ASMRtists remove whatever they want.”
“Exactly. A diabolical scheme.”
“Can we learn who has assaulted this one's auditory senses?”
“We may never know but unless my fingerprint analysis is misprogrammed, I suspect Doctor G. B. Moriarty. Or perhaps even the lunatic Doctor Raspberry Fritter! We must inform Inspector Feather immediately.”
“But, Holmes, what could possibly be the motive for these events?”
“Inferring motives from a few clues is fraught with uncertainty. Always cloudy, the future.”
“But you do have some suspicions, yes?”
“Correct. I infer from the data assembled on all the missing parts to date that these events are intended to further the construction of a particular device. An electronic machine made popular by the great Rudolph Wurlitzer.”
“You couldn’t possibly mean…..”
“Exactly, Watson, these androids were all organ donors.”
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