[scrippet]INT. ORMONDE HOTEL LOUNGE — NIGHT
Doris, George and Joy meet Gunter as he ENTERS.
GUNTER
I am sorry… I did not find her.
DORIS
Oh, dear!
GUNTER
But look what I did find.
He sits down, hands Joy the manual. She and the others sit with him, look at it in confusion.
JOY
(bewildered)
“Erickson Paralepsis Services Harvesting Routines Manual”?
GUNTER
It is very technical. A lot of instructions for their van drivers: no smoking around the equipment, no liquids, no ferrous materials, no all kinds of things. But look at these pages here.
GEORGE
“Sweep protocols.” “Storage strategies for large sweeps.” “Decanting residuals.”
Gunter points to the diagram which shows a ghostly, human-like shape being decanted from the portable pentagram, the “holding pattern”, into a larger pentagram, a big one set into the floor somewhere.
GUNTER
This is what I saw in the van: a small one. It pulled me to it. If it had pulled much more strongly, I would have had to go right into it. This must be a larger one, into which what the small one catches is decanted.
(a look at George)
“Residuals.” That is us.
(grim)
Human souls. We are a residue, to these people. Like coffee grounds in the bottom of the pot. They collect us together, apparently in large numbers. See, there are references here to sweeps of four, five hundred residuals.
DORIS
But whatever do they do it for?
JOY
We have to find out.[/scrippet]