During the conference, while searching both for the impostor and her own purpose there, Nora pals around with four different types of people, which she seems to quietly enjoy. There’s a salesman of fake bodies, who specializes in crafting lookalike corpses to fill in at missing loved ones’ funerals. Despite a broad grin and ample energy, he’s also broken, being almost desperate for Nora to confirm that he’s not “soulless” in designing imitation bodies. He’s capitalized on the Sudden Departure, which makes him both proud and deeply uneasy. Nora doesn’t do much to assuage the guy’s self-doubt.
There’s also an intruder at the conference, the one who steals Nora’s identity, who is determined to expose the inadequacies and lies of the DoSD. The woman calls the department “an elaborate smokescreen,” reports that the questionnaires Nora helps people complete are sent to incinerators and, most excitingly, says that, in 2005, someone was “experimenting with a plasma ray that had the ability to target human matter from outer space and leave almost no residue.” Did The Leftovers just give us our first hint at the cause of the mass disappearances? I couldn’t make out exactly who this intruder claimed was behind the plasma ray (viewers with better hearing, help?), but the idea of a concrete explanation for the Sudden Departure has never presented itself up until this point. Oddly, Nora doesn’t seem to even hear the impostor’s claims, so fazed is she by the revelation that someone was in fact impersonating her.
Nora also talks with the author of a book titled “What Comes Next,” a self-help guide for post-SD living which Nora correctly dismisses as “bullshit” and the mark of someone who doesn’t actually feel grief at their loss. “You’re not in pain, because if you were in pain, you would know there is no moving on, there is no happiness,” she tells him. “What’s next? What’s fucking next? Nothing is next – nothing!” He’s scurried from the room at this point, his tail between his legs, but Nora has just articulated her own mindset in a way so direct that it shocks even her.