Chapter Text
His stomach was sick. If he had eaten food that morning, it would have been gone already by the time they got to the boat. By the time he was on the bike pedaling, he was practically hopeless helping Barbie.
Smile Ken!
He reminded himself just in time to see Barbie turn around. He flashed her a shining smile which she returned, before facing forward on the bike again.
What a day!
Ken was enjoying the vibrant flowers, the warm plastic sun, the flat windmill, and his girlfriends’ company. Honestly? He couldn't imagine a better scenario.
Then they got to the camper in the woods. Barbie told him that she needed some sticks for their fire. Ken watched the paper fire turning into different shades of orange and red. It was on top of a pile of plastic sticks that would last for days… but what if snow suddenly fell, or their wood got wet from a sudden rain. Barbie would need more wood to survive the night, or to build shelter.
With determination in his eyes, Ken agreed. “I’ll be right back Barbie!”
“Okay Ken!” She replied, reaching under her foldout chair to take out her book. “ 101 things to know about the real world .”
Ken nodded and enthusiastically walked through the woods. Walked through the bushes with determination, breaking down their cardboard. Eventually he came to a nearby river bank. The waves reminded him too much of his recent beach incident, where he EMBARRASSED HIMSELF IN FRONT OF BARBIE! It was terrible and Ken looked so smug the whole time. The only reassurance he had that whole time was Barbie’s presence. He smiled remembering the way she told him. “Everything will be alright, Ken.”
What a poet , Ken sighed to himself. He looked hesitantly over the bank of the river to see the plastic waves in their permanent swirl. What a beautiful sight.
He continued walking like that until he saw the sun sinking under the hills.
Hmmmm.
He was in the woods with a purpose.
A purpose.
Get Barbie sticks! Oh no! What if something happened to the fire while he was gone. Or worse, to Barbie! He had to get back immediately. Using his camping knowledge, Ken scanned the area and estimated that he had been walking east along the bank for the past… he stepped like 1,000 times. That’s 1,000 feet so like 19 miles? And the sun was setting east so he had to walk the other way.
And then he walked, and walked, and walked. He got so bored; he started writing a song to pass the time. He was thinking the song would start. “I’m just Ken.”
He mumbled the line to himself in different tunes, while he walked around cardboard bushes. He had gotten too tired to knock them over hours ago.
When he thought that to himself, he noticed something strange. He heard a snap?
Looking under his shoe, there was a stick, snapped in half? Strange. The plastic was normally too strong for his weight to break it. On that topic, the floor of the forest looked so much more realistic. The leaves were no longer just painted but had texture. Reaching down, he picked up a leaf and dropped it immediately. Was it wet? Why was it brown?
The weird stuff didn’t stop there. Also, he kept on walking, he walked right through a bush.
This was incredibly strange.
Then he heard noises that didn’t sound like background music, but like small creatures making noises. He had heard crickets before and seen fireflies, but this new… thing was loud. Eventually, he spotted it! It was golden, small, and was holding on to a tree. This one wasn’t making a sound, but it wasn’t moving either. Moving slowly at first and then quickly he grabbed it and pulled it off the tree. “Gotcha!”
What a find! Maybe Barbie would find it interesting while they traveled to the real world… wait the real world! That explains all of this.
Barbie will be so happy to know they made contact with the real world.
Ken with extra enthusiasm hiked through the area and didn’t stop even as he noticed that the trees were round now. The moon looked weird too, like it was missing a piece of it.
While he was staring up at the strange…what did geometry barbie say? Croissant shape! Then the crunching of leaves stopped, and the sound of the loud bugs faded.
Looking around, it appeared he was on a path. It seemed there were lights in the distance for a series of buildings? They were all strangely blocky and dull looking. Not a single open staircase in sight. Following the path, Ken made it to the doors of a building. He stood outside the door, waiting for it to open.
Waiting for it to open!
What’s wrong with the door?
“Excuse me?”
Ken jumped to the side, as a Ken walked by, the new person looked Ken up and down giving him a strange look. It seems the theme of the real world was that everything was strange.
Ken was ready to warn the Ken that there was something wrong with the door, when he walked over and opened it? By hand.
“Oh.” Ken said, looking surprised.
“Didn’t they tell you? Only the left door is left unlocked after 10.” The Ken explained walking inside. Ken followed quickly before the door closed. Inside, the walls were a strange beige color. He remembered one day seeing a Ken try on a beige shirt. He got laughed off the beach, and never tried it again.
It was a shame, the beige pants actually looked good on him.
As he looked around Ken noticed the other Ken had entered a room? They were nowhere near a beach. Where would he go?
Looking inside, Ken saw the room as absolutely packed with Ken’s. Many were sitting down with paper and the smallest pencil he’d ever seen in hand. There were so many people, some of them were standing against the wall!
When he peeked his head in, Ken heard a voice yell from the front. “You can come in! Could you take care to close the door behind you?”
And invitation to their meeting! Well, now he couldn’t say no to whatever this was about. Closing the door behind him, Ken saw one spot on a bench empty. He took it happily and immediately noticed that it was made of wood. The doors he had entered through were metal too. Was nothing made of plastic here?
What a place, the real world!
The man at the front looked ready to start his lecture when Ken had a thought. Maybe he should be taking notes. It seemed that everyone else was? So, maybe it was important?
This is very stressful, but he talked to receptionist Ken once and got some pointers. Of course, at the time, he intended to take notes on Barbie’s favorite things so he could give them as gifts. Hopefully, the skill set will carry over? Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small notepad with a bright yellow cover. Reaching into his other pocket, he was ready to pull out a pencil but considered the Ken’s around him. They all had small pencils. What if that was what was cool in this dimension? Unfortunately, his smallest pencil was 14 inches.
Ken turned to the Ken next to him and asked, “Excuse me Ken, could I borrow a pencil?”
The man turned his head slowly and pointed at himself as if silently asking “me?”
It took a moment for the man to respond. “I only have a pen, and my name isn’t Ken.”
“Oh, that’s alright. I have a friend named Allan, they use they/them, even though there’s only one of them.”
The man blinked a couple times as if Ken had just flashed a bright light in his eyes, and he was trying to make them adjust.
“So, who are you?” Ken asked.
“Robert.”
“Hello Robert, I’m a Ken, and I would like to borrow a pen.” Ken smiled at Robert who was still frowning. Oh no, did he make a mistake introducing himself. What if people in the real world thought that was rude?
“Hello Aken, and you may borrow my pen.” He reached into a gray bag next to him and took out a black pen.
When Ken tried it on his notebook by writing his name, it was black ink too. “Black? That’s not even a color.”
The man almost chuckled but it seemed humorless. “What were you expecting? Multi colored ink.”
Yes , Ken thought bitterly. He didn’t want to seem rude though so he didn’t complain. He didn’t even have time to respond before the person at the friend started speaking.
Ken swore the words were in English but he didn’t understand a word. He didn’t know why they were forcing mass, but he would just ask it politely. They also mentioned a… Ken looked down at his notes. Newton's second law? Ken didn’t know any laws, his job was just beach, so only the judicial Barbies worried about law. Despite his confusion, he was able to take a decent number of notes from the board. The Ken was writing quickly a lot of what he said along with some neat graphics. Actually, maybe he wasn’t a Ken, were there just Robert’s in the real world and not Ken’s?
After a while the man stopped talking and asked if there were any questions. Multiple hands went into the air, but not as quickly as Robert’s. The Ken that had been speaking though, looked at Robert before responding to a different Ken’s hand. Robert seemed discouraged and put his hand down, when the Ken at the front started answering the other Ken’s question.
“Your hand was up first,” Ken mumbled.
Robert seemed startled by the comment before whispering back. “Professor Becker has favorite students. Once they run out of questions, I’ll have an opportunity.”
Favorite students? This wasn’t a meeting; this was a school! But no Ken’s were students, or professors.
“Is he Ken?” Ken asked, pointing at the person that had asked a question first.
Robert immediately pushed Ken’s hand down whispering that “it’s rude to point.” “No, his name is Jonathan.”
Ken’s mind was reeling, was no one Ken here? Were they all like Allan and were all unique?
“Are there no Ken’s here?” He asked.
“From my knowledge, there’s no one named Ken on campus, now please quiet down. I want to hear Professor Becker’s ideas on Time-Space.”
Ken nodded, still thinking about his discovery. The real world has no Ken’s? Is he the only Ken now?
It gave him a lot to think about, enough that he didn’t realize that Professor Becker at the front had finished talking, and everyone around the room was packing. Ken turned to Robert but found the man making a dash for Professor Becker to stop him at the door.
Professor Becker was as prickly with his responses as Robert had expected. He only took the time to answer one of Robert’s questions with a hand on the handle to the exit, clearly itching to run through the door. After serving a half-baked answer, the man waved his hand as if dismissing Robert, before practically rushing out the door.
Robert sighed audibly to himself. Maybe he should consider moving classes? If he couldn’t ask the professor questions, how is he supposed to use all of his resources in class? Still, Professor Becker had the best undergraduate physics class on campus.
Just his luck.
The walk back to his dorm was not a long one, but a quiet one due to how late his lecture ended. In the silence, Robert thought to himself about the curious man that sat next to him. He had walked-in, seemingly lost from what Robert could tell, yet he had brought a notebook. Perhaps he was visiting classes to decide which ones to take for next semester? A possibility, but a usual one. Although the man as a whole seemed unusual, Robert didn’t find it a far-fetched idea. His clothes had also been strange, now that Robert considered it. They appeared to be designed for outdoor work, but didn’t have a speck of dirt on them. That in itself was not too usual, Robert had seen some of the rich students on campus spend copious amounts of money on abnormal clothes. It was the bright red flannel with pink and black lines that caught his eyes as especially peculiar.
Of course, the man’s insistence that someone in the lecture was named Ken was also strange. How did he pull out that notebook from his pocket when the notebook was bigger than the pock- no.
Mind your own business, Robert.
Robert repeated that to himself as a mantra, until he returned to his dorm and turned in for the night.
He didn’t think about Aken the morning afterward when he was more worried about making it to his first lecture on time. Aken wasn’t on his mind, when his clumsy movements caused several beakers to knock over. He certainly wasn’t worried that the man had gained a head injury, which could explain his nonsensical questions, and Robert had left the lecture in such a rush that the man might not have received treatment.
No, he was just worried about reviewing his notes. He was just strolling to the library to review his…notes?
After crossing the threshold into the library at one of the larger tables was Aken, standing over a map. At that moment, he seemed to be staring at it in concentration.
“Aken?” Robert asked.
The man jumped startled, until he turned to see the source of the voice.
“Robert!” The man greeted, way too loudly for a library. Nearly in unison, Robert and the nearest librarian shushed him. Aken looked at him in confusion and to the librarian who had returned to stocking the shelves.
“What?” Aken asked, again too loudly.
“Speak quieter, there are people studying,” Robert explained.
“Oh!” The man said in at least an attempt of a whisper.
He then returned to his map, which Robert caught a closer look of by glancing over Aken’s shoulder. “A map of campus?” Robert asked. It seemed from where the man next to him was looking, he was mainly focusing on the west woods.
“I got lost, and I’m trying to find my girlfriend. She’ll be worried sick about me, by now she’s probably already in LA.”
Robert snorted, unless she took a flight without him. It was unlikely she flew to America. The transportation time to Croydon airport alone, and Robert hoped that Aken’s companion would have reported the authorities if he had gone missing. Or maybe, she was the one in trouble.
“How did you both get separated?”
Aken crossed his arms and hummed while thinking. “She asked me to collect sticks for our fire. I walked away to get sticks, and then got lost, like, really badly lost. I don’t know how though. I knew to go east and the sun was setting east, so I went the opposite way.”
Robert slapped his forehead in disbelief. “Do you know for a fact that she is safe?”
“Of course! Nothing bad would ever happen to Barbie.” The man said, smiling proudly to himself. Robert decided that his notes could wait a couple hours.
“Did you hit your head in the woods?” He asked carefully. If it was a concussion, he could only hope that Aken hadn’t slept since yesterday.
“Nope!” He said again at an inappropriate volume, but Robert was too worried to comment on it. “All the forest trees and bushes were cardboard anyway, so I couldn’t even injure myself on them if I tried. Although, I did have a beach incident recently. I was cured though, so… nope! No issues.”
Again, Robert found himself dumbfounded, but he didn’t have time to focus on that. Whatever caused this accident, Aken clearly needed medical help.
“Would you please follow me?” Robert asked.
Aken nodded before folding the map and turning to put it back. Before Robert attempted to usher him faster out the door, the librarian took the map from Aken’s hands.
“I will put that away; you may leave now sir.”
“Oh! Thank you…” Even though Robert couldn’t see the man’s face with his back turned. He could tell the man was squinting to read the librarian’s name tag. “Library Staff Steven.”
Steven nodded, and gestured for the exit before returning to work.
Robert put a hand on Aken’s shoulder, trying to guide the man out the door. It took them too long to get to the nurse’s office. When they got inside, Robert explained the situation and his concerns to the nurse on staff. She nodded and told Robert to contact campus police, so they could look for this woman in case she was in trouble. Robert agreed, and while Aken was examined, he found police and told them the information he knew about the woman.
Ken answered the woman’s questions. He asked her if she was a Barbie. She gave him a weird look that Robert often gave him when he spoke.
“No, my name is nurse Jen.”
“Hello Nurse Jen, my name is Ken.” The woman nodded and wrote something down on a clipboard which Ken was able to side eye when she put it down.
Remember’s first name. Claims to lack last name.
She asked him a bunch of other questions too, like “where are you from?” “Do you have any family to notify?” Ken got frustrated with the questions. She kept on looking at him weird after the first few when he answered honestly, so he tried giving her answers she would like.
“I’m from here…”
“And here is?”
“The real world…”
She took more notes.
Eventually, she asked a question which made no sense to Ken. “Do you have a history of mental illness or generally being unwell?”
“Definitely not! Barbie is the only one who has been having thoughts of death recently.”
“Do tell?”
“We actually came here so she could meet a person to fix it! I am sure she’s already better.” Ken explained, smiling.
The nurse nodded and excused herself. “If you wish, you may lie down on the bed, I will return promptly.”
Nothing, there is no one in those woods from what the police could find. Robert sighed to himself, when nurse Jen walked into the room where Robert and the Head of Security were sitting.
They were currently in the Dean’s office waiting for him to arrive. They both felt that explaining the situation as soon as possible would be best for the possibly missing woman.
“I have terrible news,” nurse Jen said.
Robert stilled; he could feel his breathing hitch. Did they act too late, did Aken die from the head injury?
“Robert, you explained that they both were in the woods together. When Barbie told Ken to leave with the excuse to collect sticks for their fire?”
“Yes.” Robert noticed she said Ken. Which meant… Robert’s face heated up, as he realized he had been calling Ken the wrong name to his face.
“Ken explained his girlfriend was thinking about dying and said coming here ‘would fix everything.’ My suspicions are-”
The Head of Security held up his hand. Silently asking Jen to stop speaking, which she did immediately.
“No need to say it out loud, we understand. Does that mean I should prepare my people to look for a body instead?”
Jen nodded.
“Does Ken know?” Robert asked.
Jen sighed, “I don’t believe so. He seems severely disconnected from reality. He has a distinct American accent, yet tried to lie and say he was from England. He doesn’t seem to even know where he is. That is in addition to the lack of personal information. He said he lacks a last name, which I highly doubt, but will make finding information on him difficult.”
“We will look for missing person’s cases in the United States and England. Hopefully, a name matches our description, because at this rate, I doubt his name is even Ken,” The Head of Security said.
When the Dean finally arrived, Robert was asked to explain parts of the story that he hadn’t already told the Head of Security and Jen. The Dean dismissed him, and he was honestly happy to have a chance to turn in. He knew it was only 9pm, but between his bouts of recent insomnia and the exhaustion of the day, he was able to fall easily into a deep slumber.
He tried to visit Ken the next day, but Jen wouldn’t let him in, citing that they still didn’t know what happened to him. “If anything happened,” she mumbled under her breath.
She seemed worried that the man was a possible danger to people around him. Which was a ridiculous notion. From the interaction they had, Robert could say Ken dressed as loudly as he spoke, but all his interactions were kind.
After a couple days of pestering, nurse Jen finally gave in and let Robert have brief visits. When Robert entered for the first time, he was struck by how strange it was to see someone smiling at the sight of him. “Hello Robert!”
Robert nodded his head in greeting and took out a chair to sit next to Ken’s bed. He noticed immediately that the room was actually very nice, the view out the window led to a garden that the students maintained. That and the flowers next to Ken’s bed all kept the room from feeling too somber.
“I heard you have been kept under supervision?”
Ken nodded and sighed, “I’m used to doctors’ visits being quicker than this. Days? Thank goodness I didn’t have my beach accident in England.” In a moment Ken’s frustration disappeared into delight. “I have something for you.”
Robert quirked his eye brown as he watched Ken reach into his pocket and take out…his pen?
“Thank you for letting me borrow it. I fixed it for you too.” Ken explained handing Robert the pen. He was worried what Ken’s idea of fixing was but since it was a pen, and there were no obvious differences maybe it was nothing.
“How have your lectures been?” Ken asked.
Robert was surprised he asked. He gave a brief overview essentially saying “it has been good, uneventful.” Ken responded to him by staring at him in disbelief.
“What do you mean uneventful? Wouldn’t you be on Newton's 8th law by now? When I was in one lecture they talked about a bunch of stuff, I could barely keep up! How has the past few days been boring?”
Robert let out an honest laugh. “Newton only made three laws, and I suppose it has been exciting.”
Ken hadn’t stopped though; he was explaining all the interesting things he had seen the past week. As he explained himself, Ken reached into his pocket and took out the notebook Robert had seen at the lecture.
Ken opened it and gestured to the notes he had taken.
When Robert spotted them, he asked. “Can I see those?”
“You are seeing them,” Ken explained.
“No, I mean, could you hand them to me so I can get a closer look?”
Ken shrugged and handed them over, so he got a chance to flip through them slower.
“Ken.”
The man stopped ranting to listen. “Yes, Robert?”
“These are amazing.” The graphics were perfectly drawn, the handwriting was easy to read, and everything was organized in such a way it was straightforward to follow. He knew Professor Becker’s notes could be difficult to read so it was impressive that Ken could decipher them and write them down so cleanly.
“Thank you! I had receptionist Ke-” Ken cut himself off and sighed. “A friend, give me pointers.”
Robert didn’t press why he had cut himself off and handed the notes back, which Ken gladly took.
“It was a pleasure. I need to prepare for, coincidentally, Professor Becker’s lecture.”
Ken smiled brightly and waved to Robert enthusiastically. “Goodbye Robert.”
“Goodbye Ken.”
Robert had only visited infrequently at first. It was just to check that Ken was okay, and to see if any of his friends or family had finally found him. As time dragged on, Ken was moved to The Cambridge Borough Isolation Hospital. This allowed Ken to finally see a doctor. Robert was not given details of the diagnosis and Ken didn’t seem to understand it, from the way he described it to Robert. Around the time Ken had moved hospitals, it had become a daily occurrence for Robert to visit him.
What could he say? In class, his classmates would ignore him on a nice day. Ken was the one person who listened to him, and seemed to enjoy his ranting about whatever recent quantum mechanics questions were bothering him. Honestly, he just seemed to enjoy that Robert was there. He couldn’t blame the man; he knew that being stuck in the hospital had to be lonely.
Their visits held a regular pattern, until Ken asked Robert for help.
Immediately concerned, Robert agreed.
Ken solemnly nodded, and Robert watched as the man took out a cicada shell from the desk next to his bed.
“It hasn’t moved at all since I found it. Is it okay?”
Robert snorted. Which made Ken shoot him an offended look.
“It’s a New Forest Cicada shell. It hasn’t moved because the cicada left its shell behind when it shed it.”
“Oh…” Ken looked at it curiously. “I think it looks cool.”
Robert agreed as Ken put it to the side again. After that, they resumed their regular conversation. Mostly about his school and Ken describing the hospital like it was a life sentence.
After their conversation, Robert bid Ken farewell and the man in turn gave his characteristic wave goodbye.
The next day Robert went to visit, he found Ken had been checked out.
Robert asked the staff if they knew where Ken went. They all said no. Apparently, he had been approved by the doctor on staff to leave, and Ken just… checked himself out.
Robert considered looking, but he had no idea where to start looking. In the end, he realized the adrenalin was clouding his ability to think clearly, and he had a class soon anyways. The best course of action would be to attend class, and then that evening plan his next move. Alternatively, he could let Ken leave. The man had his own life that had been interrupted by his injury, maybe he had finally returned to it?
Robert hoped that Ken’s friends, Ken, Ken, and Allen, would help him. Of course, there was a nagging part of Robert that followed him the rest of the day. It was worried about the safety of the man that Robert had started to consider a friend.
That evening, Robert brainstormed ideas. Taking out a pen and paper he wrote down everything that came to mind, before noticing something was wrong with the link. It was pink and glistened in the light? He stared at it in confusion before he remembered what Ken had told him. Again, Robert found himself laughing at that ridiculous man. How did he even manage to do this from his hospital bed? Shaking his head, Robert put the pen to the side and instead elected to use a pencil.
He worked for hours but came up empty with anything achievable. Maybe, He could go to the police, ask for help searching, or ask around campus? Robert could hope. As he laid down in bed for the night, he fell into a restless sleep of clicking sounds and breaking glass.
Wait.
That wasn’t his dream.
Opening his eyes, Robert shot up from his bed to see a silhouetted stranger in his room. Grabbing the closest object, he threw it at the intruder who stepped to the side dodging it.
“Robert?” The man asked, stepping forward. Instinctually, Robert pushed himself backward away from the person. Then in the moonlight, Robert finally made out the man’s face.
“Ken!” He shouted. Furious? Scared? Glad? All of the above.
“Hello!” Ken replied happily, waving at him. Robert immediately calmed down, but his heart was still pounding in his chest.
“My god, you gave me a heart attack.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean to. Do you need to see Nurse Jen?” Ken asked, getting really close to Robert’s space. He seemed to want to do something with his hands, to comfort Robert but didn’t know what to do with them.
“No, it’s a turn of phrase. You just scared me is all. Although, I do need to ask where you went today? You checked out of the hospital without telling me, I had no idea if you were okay.” Robert glared at the man, who had the decency to look embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, I wanted to surprise you, so I didn’t say anything. I have a job now! This Professor in Biology… Eric son?”
“Eriksson,” Robert automatically corrected.
“He needed help with moving things in his lab, organizing samples, grading stuff, and other work. None of the students were taking him up on the offer, so I took it!”
Robert was caught between many conflicting emotions. Joy, for his friend getting a job. Relief, that he was safe. Worry, because Professor Eriksson’s lab assistant position was open for a reason. After a beat, he tried to force a smile to support his friend, but Ken frowned at him.
“Don’t make that face at me.”
Robert gave up on attempting to smile, and frowned in confusion. “What way?”
Ken sighed, throwing himself on to the bed next to Robert’s. “Barbie looked at me that way when I got into the car with her for her trip. She kept on smiling and saying ‘this is fine.’ seeing you look at me that way, it makes me miss her more.”
Robert worried about his friend, bringing up his lost girlfriend again. So, when Ken followed her on the trip, she had used gathering wood as an excuse to leave him behind? Sounded plausible.
“I’m sorry Ken. I won’t do it again.”