Hilbert Hotel

"It's a Hilbert Hotel," Damian said, looking at the less-than-imposing doors. "They have to have room for us."
Virgil looked at him and shrugged. He was still dressed as St. Thomas of India, having flatly refused to remove any of his clothes in the taxi. Damian had taken the precaution of slipping in some cheek pads and swapping the t-shirt from underneath his overalls to over the top to make sure that any description the taxi-driver saw of the criminals wouldn't be a good match to him. Except for bloody St. Thomas of India in his company.
"Seems like nowhere else does," said Virgil. "Who'd have thought all the hotels would be booked up?"
"Well..." Damian squirmed a little, realising that he should have thought ahead and booked rooms the night before. "I don't suppose anyone starts off a holiday by thinking I wonder if there's a cow-herder's convention happening where we're going. Maybe we should call ahead and check."
"True enough," said Virgil. "Come on then mate, let's get in there and listen to the excuses why they can't let us have a room."
"They're not all excuses, Virgil."
"Oh yeah? The girl who said that all their rooms were closed for fumigation didn't sound too convincing!"
"She was also looking at you like she expected you to burst into flames! That costume isn't helping us."
"Nah mate, not burst into flames. Validate the risen Christ."
"What?"
"Validate the risen Christ. St. Thomas of India was the guy who didn't believe Christ had risen from the dead until Christ had a chat with him and showed him the holes in his hands."
"What? Doubting Thomas?"
"One and the same, mate."
"...Virgil?"
"What mate?"
"How do you know all this? Not being rude or nothing, but I thought you were thick as a thick thing hidden in custard."
"It was the in the script."
Damian almost said what? again, but the memory of how Virgil had stolen his costume from a local school play nudged him just in time.
"Right Virgil. Right. Let's just get in there and ask for a room."

The receptionist on the desk politely said that there were always rooms available at a Hilbert Hotel, but that it might take a little while to organise it.
"We'll just move every guest up by two room numbers," she said smiling. "We've got an infinite number of rooms, so we can always make space. The only hassle is that when we let rooms out to non-mathematicians they don't always understand the speed at which we need to get things done, so instead of being able to complete the move in exactly one minute it can take a couple of hours. And you should probably avoid the other guests for your stay, they get annoyed about being moved all the time."
Damian nodded, not understanding, and he and Virgil sat down on a red velvet sofa in the lobby.
"It's just a basic understanding of infinity, mate," said Virgil.
"Shut up Virgil."

Monsanto Labs

"Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Who are you disguised as?"
"Saint Thomas of India, mate."
"Who?"
"Saint Thomas of India, mate. Patron saint of architects, innit?"
"...Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Why?"
"I liked the cape, mate. You don't get many disguises with capes, innit?"
"..."
Damian sighed and resisted the urge to rub his face with both hands. That would smudge the make-up he'd spent an hour applying as part of his disguise. He was crouched in the bushes outside the private offices of Dr. Monsanto with Virgil Mackey crouched next to him, waiting for the clouds to close up again and hide the moon. Damian was disguised as a maintenance engineer, and the makeup made his skin appear sallow, his eyes appear bigger and his mouth wider. If he was caught on surveillance camera, he wanted to be sure that the police, and particularly Dr. Monsanto's private guards, were looking for entirely the wrong man.
And Virgil was... disguised as Saint Thomas of India, who would surely attract attention even if it were the middle of the day and he were there on legitimate business. What the hell had Virgil been thinking?
"What the hell were you thinking, Virgil?"
"What do you mean, mate?"
"How is Saint Thomas of India being discreet? Who's going to fail to notice Saint bloody Thomas of bloody India on a surveillance tape?"
"Who's going to believe it, mate? They'll look it and go, 'that can't be right, mate, no way is Saint Thomas of India running around here at night,'"
"Yes, Virgil. Which is why they'll know it wasn't bloody Thomas, and they won't be looking for him. They'll be looking for the guy who hired the disguise. Where did you find it anyway?"
"Nicked it from the kid's school. They're doing some Bible story for Easter."
"...Virgil?"
"Yes mate?"
"Who let you have a kid with them? Could they not run away?"
"Leave it out mate, I've been married twice. Got kids from both marriages."
"God help us all, Virgil, but please tell me you're not responsible for bringing them up?"
The bushes around them darkened, and Damian looked up while Virgil looked hurt.
"Forget it Verge, the moon's covered. Let's mosey."
The two men raised up into a crouch and scurried through the bushes to the fire door, and Damian produced a small keyring with three keys on it. His contact on the inside knew that one of the keys would open the door, but not which one, so it was a case of trying all three. Damian swallowed hard; this was it. Through the door, up the stairs on the left, and into the Monsanto labs. Where there would be prizes for the taking.

An Open-Source Monster

Dr. Monsanto has been a family friend since before I was born. He is quite short, and has a hunch-back that my mother forbade me ever to mention, has thick black hair that sprouts from his head like a fatal dandelion, and wears thick-lensed rose-tinted glasses. When I was very young I was scared of him, which he found amusing; he still tells stories to this day of me running off to hide when he came to visit, and how my mother had to coax me to come out of the hall-cupboard with slices of fresh steak. As I grew up, he became more familiar because he was so often a visitor, and now, as I wait out the summer holiday before University starts, he's just someone I know.

He's also incredibly clever, well-off enough that he can afford first-class aeroplane travel, and had offered me a summer job working in his laboratory in Switzerland. I jumped at the chance, especially when the first-class flight ticket was mentioned, fancying that I would be doing a couple of hours a day in the lab, then off skiing and in the evenings impressing the local Fraeuleins and Milchmaedels.

Instead, it's 10pm, dark outside, and we're still in the lab. There's me, Dr. Monsanto, and Igora, Dr. Monsanto's tall, utterly gorgeous assistant. She smiled at me when I arrived and I dropped my suitcase, which burst open, dumping my slightly tatty boxer shorts at her feet, and my best sweater in a puddle of something on the lab floor. While the sweater dissolved, Igora picked my boxers up, handed them to me, and winked. "Not your pulling pants, then," she said, and I stood to attention. Much to my embarrassment.

Dr. Monsanto believes in Open Source he tells me; he doesn't use things that come with copyright agreements, and makes his research publically available to anyone who wants to use it. There's a kind of license involved that means that anyone using his research has to credit him, and must make their research that is based on his free too, which seems fair to me.

But I'm a little concerned, when we're not working. Dr. Monsanto is building a kind of robot that utilises human tissues, a cyborg I think. He gets a bit vague when I press him for details, and tells me to ask Igora. Only when I go and talk to Igora, I kind of forget how to speak, and end up just drooling until she suggests I go and do something useful. But the tissues are all treated using some process that Dr. Monsanto has invented, that rids them of copyright issues. And I don't understand how a tissue can be copyrighted like that.

There also seems to be less and less metal involved with the cyborg each day, and more and more tissue. I laughingly said to Dr. Monsanto this morning that if it carried on this way we'd have built our very own Frankenstein's monster, and Igora looked at me and said gravely, "Dr. Frankenstein was way ahead of his time." This shocked me so much that I think I saw her properly for the very first time when I stared at her, and I realised that she has a circular scar that seems to run round her forehead.

Then later, I noticed that she had a line of stitching running down the back of her neck. Almost like a seam.

And that's when I started to wonder, and so last night, before I went to bed, I went to google first. It took me a while to figure out what I was searching for, but finally I came across a book scan of a 17th century text about constructing homunculi, and discovered that if you're building it piecemeal, you can't use baptised or consecrated flesh.

I woke up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat, having realised that baptising or consecrating flesh might be conveniently described as affirming the copyright of some creator agency over it.

I'm starting to wonder just what my CV is going to look like at the end of this summer...