Where by Kit Reed

and we worry the question to death: if there’s a plan, what, exactly, is the plan?
    Shrouded in the blankets from our narrow beds, Ray and I look like a couple of kids out playing ghost, so it’s not like we’re hard to spot. In the territory beyond the plaza, there are cameras in every block. Clearly they know we’re out here, but in the last three weeks nobody, armed or unarmed, has come out to stop us and no automated thing has rolled out to intercept and herd us back inside.
    After that first venture we cut holes in our blankets and made ponchos so we could come out in the dark without turning to ice and shattering on the spot. Fresh blankets appeared in our cubbies the day after we vandalized ours, but the makeshift ponchos stayed where we put them, along with the layers we’ve added since. Neatly folded replacements show up on our beds with creepy regularity. Are they trying to warn us or encourage us or reprogram us, organize us, or what?
    The cameras can follow us, but only up to a point. There’s an island of shadow on every street, the place where circles of light don’t quite meet, and Ray Powell and I take a different route to a new island of darkness every night. We meet regularly for tense, whispered exchanges and so far, nobody’s intervened, not our neighbors cowering in their houses and none of our handlers— if there are handlers— and nobody in the audience— if there is an audience.
    We talk in circles. Speculation and escape plans chase each other’s tails so fast that like time, everything blurs. Sometimes I think we’re contestants picked from some vast studio audience and called onstage, front and center, to star in some monstrous reality show. “Like, they’ll give us all cars and lifetime cash prizes if we win.” I hear my voice cracking, “You know, push the right button, take down the enemy, break out.”
    Ray says, “Unless they’re running us like rats in a maze.”
    â€œOr we’re stuck in a gigantic RPG.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œRole-playing game.” Oh, Ray, how old are you? “You know, like giant kids with joysticks are operating us?”
    â€œYou mean messing with our heads.”
    â€œOh shit, Ray, what if they end this show or whatever by putting you and me in the plaza and we have to fight to the death?”
    Good old Ray grounds me. “We won’t.”
    â€œBut what if…”
    â€œNo. It’s an experiment. Either they study us and dissect us or it’s a psych thing where they evaluate us and write a report, and when they’re done, we go home…”
    â€œChanged.” I don’t know why this comes out as a groan.
    â€œWe’re already changed.” This is how he brings me down. “We can sit here mizzling or we can plan.”
    So these nighttime encounters boil down to figuring out what comes next: mounting an escape or, worst-case scenario, getting a message out so no matter how this ends or what becomes of us, somebody will know.
    Until then, there’s this. We go out every night. Whatever our days are like in those sterile houses, Ray and I are free in the night-time world, at least for now, plying back and forth in the dark, exploring our changed lives, and like everything else, this operation runs on hope. Maybe tonight we’ll find one of our handlers or suppliers— whoever keeps this operation running— surprise the bastard at work. In the kitchens, which we have yet to find, or in an office chair in the blockhouse, fixed on banks of monitors. We’ll stalk him and nail him down and hold him until we get answers.
    We search, but the barren desert streets give me the sad, sick feeling that everything is automated here in the bland magic kingdom where days and nights run like clockwork, with everything supplied and everybody but us either scared to go out or drugged or what passes for happy, resolutely staying