Convergence

“Who is he?” Shaw asked, leaning back in the passenger seat a little to get more comfortable. The pair was eyeing the main gate, the van parked at the buss depot near the monorail. It wasn’t the best view, but it was a place they’d not attract undue attention. Not that there was much going on.

“His name’s Jonas Kade and he’s a contract electrician for the park,” Polly replied, rifling loosely through a file. “Security tapes have him here every morning for the past week, but he’s got a job here so it’s not unusual. What’s unusual is his behavior, which we’re witnessing firsthand at the moment.”

“He just…sits there?” Morgan peered at the figure through the binoculars.

“Yup. Right where our hotspot is. Far as I can tell, nothing’s there save the blip SETI picked up. But this guy’s here like clockwork, staring off into space, every morning. I think he knows something.”

“Think he’s the reason we’re here?” Rivin posed.

Shaw shook his head. “Nope. But he’s seeing something we’re not. Let’s not pick him up. Not yet. Let’s just tail him, see what turns up. Do that for twenty-four hours and then we can at least tell Desmond we’re not just drinking Mai-Tai’s down here.”

“This is utter bullshit,” Polly noted.

Shaw just nodded. “What about Marshall?”

“Oh, let him leap around and shit his pants a while,” Rivin said with a wry smile. “It’s cute, watching him trying to be covert.”

Both of them looked up at the monorail platform and the man who was also, not so discreetly, watching Kade while sipping from a travel mug of coffee.

~*~

Doyle was tired and cranky and the kid was just sitting and sitting like some sort of idiot savant. Sitting right smack dab on top of an abeyant anomaly the likes of which SETI had never seen before. Even his own people didn’t recognize it for the discovery it was. He had no idea what the kid was doing, or why he even knew something was happening, but he did know he wasn’t letting the electrician out of his sight. Not for a minute.

~*~

Four hours. That’d make it…right around ten AM. Jonas winced at the prospect. They were cutting him away. Kicking him out. And he understood what the Captain was doing and he didn’t really blame her, but seeing the end of something this life-changing was pretty disheartening. And there was no way he could tell anyone, save any part of it. Hell, in a few years he’d probably end up convincing himself he’d imagined it all. Nova sympathized, but it wasn’t enough.

Well, he wasn’t going to just walk away. A quick phone call to his company and he’d called in sick for the day. People or no, park open or no, he was going to stick to this spot like glue until the very last minute.