Lack of a beating heart will probably give you the "shrunkenness". No blood pressure.

Your diagnosis of life as only electro-mechanical leaves huge holes in the picture

Not necessarily. Electro-mechanical could adequately explain it all. So could the existence of a soul. The difference is that the first is subject to investigation to work out the rules (if any exist); the latter isn't. The existence of a soul also explicitly requires religion, because a primary purpose of religion is the explanation of life after death. If you believe in a soul from observation and then have found a religion which proposes the existence of a soul, then fair enough; but if you believe in a soul because that's what your religion tells you, then you're making a judgement based on faith, not evidence. And if you believe in a soul because you can't imagine life without souls existing, again that's faith-based.

This isn't to say that belief in souls is bad or wrong - just that it's entirely a matter of personal faith. The electro-mechanical hypothesis may have holes in it, but anything which comes down to faith is 100% hole because there can never be evidence in its favour.

Graham.