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"Alright, what have we here?"
"Well, it's a corpse." "Don't get wise with me -- I haven't had my morning coffee." "It's a shame you call that synthetic crap coffee, sir. That's not right." "Well, it's not like I have the luxury of spending all my hard earned cash on the pure stuff... just you wait, your carefree days will get the better of you." "You think I look forward to a future, with having to look at things like this every morning?" "Yes, well, who is he?" "What is he, more like... look at the mess. Oh. Yes. er... Dr. Morbius. Dr. Ronald Morbius. He makes robots." "Like we need more of them." "Well, he certainly thought so... maybe someone disagreed with him." "Cause of death?" "Coroner hasn't gotten here yet, sir. I think he was crushed." "Well, yes, it certainly looks that way... 'cept those look like burn marks. Look at his head... that is his head? Right. Must be." "... and all these tracks of blood spiraling out from the body." "Spotted that, did you?" "Well, I do aim to emulate you in every way, sir." "Ha." "You thinking it was robots that killed him?" "Robots? They don't kill. The three laws, remember? Plus, these look like spin bots. You ever seen an murderous spin bot? They don't exist. Creepy, maybe. Simple, maybe. But I've never seen one that wasn't just as pleased as punch to spin and spin and spin." "Maybe he forbade them to spin?" "Well, that could be a motive, but look, they must have been spinning to kill him... look at these tracks, and burn marks." "Hmmm... The more I look at it, the more I'd swear it was spin bots that killed him. Happy murderous spin bots." "Well, you keep swearing to things two minutes into a case and you're never going to make the grade. I'm going to keep my options open." "As well as your closed-case files?" "There's nothing wrong with being thorough." "Well, whoever killed the good doctor was just as thorough." "hmmm... yes. Hey, Thaddeus, take a look over here." "I saw that. It mostly computer garbage. I was going to have the boys at the lab take a look at it. If I wanted to learn a foreign language, I'd have learned Chinese... get myself an MBA... start making the big bucks. Get me a fleet of cars, all with robot chauffeur." "Yes, yes... I'm well aware of your dreams, not to mention your general level of ignorance... look at the chapter headings." "To Loathe Dizziness, I have to Spin and I must Scream, The Merchants of Fear... wild wacky stuff. You think it's some sort of science fiction novel... written in geek?" "No, I think our good doctor wasn't so good." "A touch on the mad side, perhaps?" "I'm thinking he put on seven league boots and stepped way over the mad side of science." "What about the three laws?" "I think we'll find them in the circular file around here somewhere." |