Nikki Campbell owed money to the wrong kind of people. She owed money to the kind of people who, when she repeatedly failed to pay them back, kidnapped her seven year old son, Ken. They called Nikki to say they had Ken, and put him on the phone to prove it. Then while Nikki was listening, they cut off Ken's tongue to punish Nikki for not paying them back on time.

Cut to twenty years later. Ken Campbell is a freelance software developer who specializes in text-to-speech applications. He leads a normal life, except for one thing: he cannot speak. He knows ASL, but when you start signing people assume you're deaf and talk down to you, so he tends not to use it, and uses his smartphone to talk for him instead.

Ken is half English mutt and half some kind of Asian that he doesn't know 'cause his dad wasn't around and his mom never told Ken who he was. After the debtors incident he was raised in foster care until he was eighteen. He graduated summa cum laude from Caltech and lives in Los Angeles.