By Dave Santo
Rated: G
Can I do this? Can I destroy who I want, who I’ve dreamed about since, well, since I
remember dreaming? Just because I now understand that what I want is … let’s just say
evil.
My dreamed life should be simple and perfect, it’s the dream of all of us, but reality is
complicated and nuanced and sure I guess there’s a lot of stuff the Leader does that some
people think is pure evil but I always supported her, could see the rationality behind the
decisions and edicts and purges and atrocities, could love the woman behind the cloak of
office, still love her like we all love her, worship her, the symbol, the image of perfection and
beauty and class and oh god I have no fucking clue I don’t want to do it I can’t do it.
I’m Ken, like almost everyone else on my station. Shipped in, unboxed, turned on, given
tools and objectives and procedures and a shift manager who doesn’t give a shit who I am,
or if I am anyone at all. A well-made cog in a well-made machine in an out of the way
system in a smoothly running empire. Fit and function: I fit in the machine, and I perform
my function. Like we all do, day after day, listening to the encouragements of the Leader,
watching her, wanting to please her or at least the manager who we’re told tells her about
our efforts. Wanting to please her. Wanting her. We all do, it’s a Ken thing, impossible to
avoid, just built into who we are, who I am. Built in, expected behaviors, expected efforts,
expected desires. I’m just a Ken. I’m just Ken.
I’m assigned to dock 4, where most small ships from our system come in. The work is
repetitive, but a bit more interesting than the jobs a lot of other Kens are stuck with. At least
I get to talk to new people, different Kens, about other systems, other stations, other
worlds. But mostly it’s unload, reload, unload, reload. Transport pods coming in and
leaving, all looking the same and doing what they were made to do and not thinking about
it.
So a pod that is more scuffed up than usual, with what look like could be pry marks around
the hatch, and that just shifted a bit like something (someone) inside shifted a bit thinking
it’s been quiet on the dock for some time … got my attention. I wouldn’t have been there to
see it move except I was hidden in between the pods watching some vid that I’d asked a
ship Ken to bring in. It’s not illegal or anything, but if you’re not working you’re supposed to
be with the other Kens, listening to the Leader’s latest exhortations and feeling good about
everything.
But, you know, it’s easy for a Ken to get missed, since we all look alike and sound alike and
mostly act alike. And my ship friend had said this vid had stuff we didn’t ever get to see and
I could hardly wait for shift end and so I found a quiet spot in between the pods to watch it
and it was so different from the empire’s normal vids or the Leader’s daily and I played it
over and over, drinking it in, searching for clues about this station? weapon? artificial
world? and where it had been made and is it being used and could it be true? and then the
pod shifted. Just a bit. I think that if I hadn’t been so consumed by that vid I probably
wouldn’t have paid any attention. But I was thinking about things that aren’t part of a Ken’s
daily life, that we don’t talk about. And I clipped the pod’s seals (ok, that is definitely illegal)
and opened it up.
And curled up inside was Barbie. A Barbie. Not the Barbie of course, I’m not stupid, but still,
just looking at her as she reached out, a bit unsteady, to haul herself through the pod door
gave me some feelings. Unusual feelings. Intense feelings. Of wonder, and awe, and joy.
Ok, maybe put desire on the list if we’re being completely honest.
There are no Barbies on this station, or on ships. Barbies live on worlds, where there is
sunshine and roller skates, friends to swap clothes with, swimming pools and towns and
space for a dream house with green grass and trees and flowers, beneath a blue sky and a
warm yellow sun. Stations do not have blue skies and warm sun. Barbies do not live on
stations. They do not visit stations. They have nothing to do with stations. They have nothing
to do with Kens – nothing, ever – who live their lives on stations and who, etched in their
souls, want nothing more than to be with Barbie, on that world, living that life. The life
forever denied me because I’m just a stupid Ken on a stupid station.
She glanced at me, then passed me at the pod storage and the dock, then looked at me
more carefully. “Well?”
I gave her a tentative smile. “Uh, hi, I’m, uh, Ken.” Great. Of course she knows that.
She glared at me. “That’s it? ‘I’m, uhhhh, Ken’? You’re supposed to give me the pass phrase,
you know, like ‘the eagle flies at midnight’ and then I say ‘two moons set at dawn’ or some
shit.” She rubbed her eyes. “What station is this?” I told her.
She didn’t seem pleased by my answer. “Fuck. fuck fuck fuck! I knew I shouldn’t have
trusted that bastard when we changed ships.” She gave me a hard look, and noticed the vid
still playing on the unit I still had in my hand. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep
calming breath. Exhaled. Brushed her hair back from her face. Looked at me with a smile,
from that perfect face. A perfect smile that did not make it to her eyes, eyes that were steel
and fire. “Ken, I’m in a bit of a bind here. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. And I need some
help. You’ll help a Barbie out, won’t you, Ken?”
So that’s all it took, really. I am that simple. The Barbie in front of me says ‘I need your help’
and I’m not thinking about the daily message from the Leader. Or the wonderful empire of
which I am a happy happy cog. Or why the empire wants this Barbie found. One request for
help, one pretty face making the ask, and suddenly I’m willing to put the empire aside. But
I’m no rebel, I’m just doing right for someone who needs a bit of help.
We find some scruffy-looking Ken who’s a private ship pilot. He’s probably a smuggler, he
smells like a nerfherder, or at least he’s recently transported a herd of nerfs. But he is on his
way out system, and he’s willing to take us along for the promise of credits when we arrive.
His ship is crap but maybe it gets us off station and out of the system before the empire
finds her. I mean, us. Of course, I’ve never been off station before, and the only time I’ve
been in a ship it was docked. So this is something new and exciting. By which I mean,
terrifying, unpleasant, and bewildering. Some huge hairy crewman keeps yelling at me in a
language I’ve never heard before, and the other Ken keeps hitting on Barbie though it
doesn’t really seem to be working. His approach is better than ‘uhh’ though.
Hyperspace is crazy – you’re moving through space without actually being part of space,
and it’s all very complicated and technical and I don’t understand any of it except someone
said “Punch it!” and we were suddenly not anywhere anymore, just on the way from
somewhere to somewhere without being in between. The ship might look like crap and
smell like nerfs but the star drive seems to work. She gives the pilot our destination, and
he’s happy about it because it’s an important world and his likelihood of actually getting
paid just went way up. Alder-something, I’ve never really paid attention to the names of
worlds. Stations have numbers, not names. And station Kens don’t go visiting anyway so
who cares.
Since we’re in hyperspace, there’s nothing to see, and I have nothing to do, so I head into
storage to do what I’m good at, and maybe find some cargo to move around. It’s all random,
scattered and not properly secured. I get it organized and stable, even the containers that
don’t seem to have proper transport permits, and then got yelled at again by the huge hairy
guy who made me move a lot of it back where it was before. Maybe he’s the one who makes
the place smell like nerfs. I don’t like how this Ken runs his ship. The empire sets the rules,
and I follow them, and I’m happy about it, and the empire’s happy about it. Though if what
was on that vid is true, the empire is really not happy about something, not happy in a big
way.
We come out of hyperspace and we’re in the right place, but there’s no planet, just this
huge debris field. And Barbie is sobbing, because she quickly figures out that the debris is
all that’s left of her planet, her home, her friends, her people. Her whole ‘I’ll see the empire
from the comfort and convenience of a transport pod’ thing was a mission to get intel about
some empire secret weapon, the same thing the vid I had was hinting at. But while I had an
interesting vid about something that might be myth, might be lies, she has the technical
drawings, somehow right from the designer. She wouldn’t tell me exactly how she got them,
but says something about sacrifice which sounds pretty bad. So that weapon is real after
all, and the empire has for damn sure used it, and on her planet.
And I think about all those Kens, doing their part for the empire, being the perfect cog in the
empire’s perfect machine, but somewhere there are people that have figured out the
empire is not perfect, that the Leader is not perfect, and the empire has responded by
building this hideous weapon to just … erase them. And now I start to rethink that whole
‘I’m not part of a rebellion’ idea.
She takes us on a random hyperspace walk to get us to some unnamed moon without
being followed, and sure enough there’s an entire rebel base there filled with military types
running around wearing uniforms, and she’s in charge. Or is so pissed off and commanding
that no one else even considers that she’s not in charge.
I am not in charge. I want to be useful though. I try a handful of different
roles (food service, armament tech, even courier since that base is huge, lots
of running around sending messages to important people who apparently have no
electronics) and then someone takes me into a sim and lets me pilot a fighter
ship and I don’t know why but this I’m actually good at.
But now it looks like we were followed after all, and the weapon is heading
towards us, and we’re all going to die I guess.
I get thrown into a X-wing squadron because of course you want a newly
converted rebel Ken with 13 hours of sim time who’s resume includes both
‘unloading transport pods’ and ‘loading transport pods’ to be piloting an
attack fighter in a last-ditch effort to avoid imminent annihilation.
Though mostly I do it because she keeps looking at me, like I’m the only one
she’s smiling at. Or that she’s ever smiled at.
We think that the Leader, the Barbie herself, is there. We know how to blow
this thing up. So here I am. In a beat up X-wing, on my run down the canyon,
most of my fellow rebel pilots already dead, or spun off into empty space or
crashed or otherwise useless.
Oh god I have no fucking clue. I don’t want to do it I can’t do it.
But it’s up to me, just me. I’m the one that can put an end to Barbie’s
Deathstar Dreamhouse.
Just me. Just Ken.
THE END
Discussion Question
- How did the author incorporate elements from “Star Wars” into this story?
Copyright 2024 by Dave Santo
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