The Prince and the Punk [EDITING]

Chapter 1

Janice

"Fuck!"

I yelp the word as something slams into the back of my knee. I stumble forward, spilling half my coffee onto my shoes, and turn to see a woman pushing a stroller past me without so much as a glance.

I groan and dig through my messenger bag for a napkin. I was already late to work, but now I'm covered in coffee, too.

Normally, I'm a walker, but today I adjust my course for the bus stop. It's been a rocky morning already—no way I'm braving the streets for another mile.

After an eternal wait, I scan the bar code tattooed on my wrist and step onto the bus, taking a seat in the very back.

I loathe public transportation. As the bus lurches forward, I wonder to myself why the hell we haven't found a better way of doing things.

World history over the past few decades sounds like the beginning of a dystopian movie—society crumbles, World War Three breaks out, and we achieve world peace under a single monarchy to fight a war with martians. All that's missing is a soundtrack with too much synth. 

Society's major reform has included bar code tattoos, the removal of most paper products, and self-driving cars, yet I still have to deal with the foot odor of the guy across the aisle from me. One would think such an advanced society could come up with decent modes of transportation—like floating baskets instead of strollers or affordable cars that run on compost—but with virtually all resources diverted to the war effort, technological advancements have come to a grinding halt.

I gaze at the statistics flashing on the portscreen.

World population: 9,876,368... 9,876,372... 9,876,379...

Someone somewhere decided that windows were boring, so they equipped all cars and forms of mass transit with transparent tv screens. They're in a lot of public places as well—restaurants, hotel rooms, et cetera. You can't turn them off or change the channel, so you're forced to sit and stare at statistics, news, war propaganda, or messages from the monarchy all day, every day.

Cars, if you can afford one, are equipped with the same portscreen technology. When you enter your destination into the GPS, you can sit back and watch the continuous global broadcast on your windshield while your self-driving car navigates the roads.

It's part of the reason I prefer to brave the streets and walk to work, even though my job is in a pretty shitty part of town, and you have to walk through even shittier parts to get there. It borders on dangerous, but it beats letting the dumb portscreens control what I see.

Breaking news from the front lines of the Zinnan War, the world's portscreens blare in unison.

The Zinnan War is the official title of the war with the martians, who, being from planet Zinn, are technically called Zinnans. But we Earthlings use the term "martian" as a sort of slur. Which I think is fair. They can't try to conquer the solar system and then expect us to treat them with any level of respect. Just because they've mastered interstellar travel doesn't mean they get to try and terraform our planet.

The portscreens relay almost the same message every day, so I'm only half-listening as the anchorwoman reads her broadcast in a passive tone. Newscasters have to have pretty faces and soothing voices to be onscreen almost all the time worldwide, so most of them are women. A few are very attractive men. And when I say attractive, I mean really, really, ridiculously attractive.

Suddenly two words catch my attention: lunar front.

The Zinnan War has always been fought somewhere else. It started outside the solar system before the Space Corps were forced back to Pluto, then Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter—or rather, their moons since you can't actually stand on any of the planets' surfaces. But last I checked, it was on Mars still. We must've suffered a major setback for there to be news of combat on Earth's moon.

People on the bus start murmuring anxiously.

In other news, the anchorwoman continues as if she hasn't just delivered an earth-shattering message, James Linders, former 54th President of the United States and last surviving world leader before the unification of Pangea, has died at the age of 131. His death comes 93 years after the onset of the Zinnan War brought about the unification of Earth for a common cause and...

The newscaster's voice fades away as a potbellied man slumps into the seat next to me. He smells like fish, and his rancid breath comes from his mouth in pants I can practically see. A chill shoots down my spine and my back straightens involuntarily.

I feel his eyes rake over my body as he sizes me up, and a lump forms in my throat as I recall what's happened in the past after looks just like this one.

"Hi there," he says, leaning a little too close for comfort.

I lean away and force a small smile.

He keeps looking at me, but I just cover my face with my hair and stare down at my shoes. They're worn-out jungle boots, durable shoes now reduced to a fraying heap of cracked leather and thin, coffee-stained fabric. I need new ones desperately.

I rush off the bus after several long minutes and speed-walk the rest of the way to work, relieved when I see no one is following me.

I hate this city.

My waitressing job is completely dead-end, and barely pays enough to cover rent in the capitol city of the world. Picture Paris meets Tokyo meets New York City, only with all the notoriety, a fraction of the class, and six times the crime rate in the outskirts alone. We call it Unum, which is supposed to be Latin for "one" or "single" or something unifying like that.

Apparently, the heart of it is nice, with big, beautiful houses surrounding an unfathomably large castle. That's why even at the edge of the city, rent is absurd. But for all that money, the only things I get to see are shabby apartments barely capable of sustaining life, stacked one on top of the other in clusters of skyscrapers.

I arrive five minutes late to work, earning a glare from Heidi, who had the shift before me. She scans her wrist code to clock out as soon as I've clocked in and leaves without a word.

I give her a passive-aggressive wave.  "Lazy piece of shit..."

The café is totally empty, so I start to busy myself wiping tables and changing trash bags and cleaning windows, all things Heidi should have done before even opening.

"Heidi, can you—" Danny starts to say, trailing off when he comes through the kitchen doors and sees me. "Oh, hey, Janice. Noon already?"

Danny is a chef, and a damn good one. He looks about as disheveled as normal between his spiky blond hair and dirty apron. He's a good friend and the nicest guy I know, so I'm always glad to be scheduled with him.

"Hey, Danny." I smile at him. This might be a decent shift after all.

An hour later, I'm lying on the counter waiting for Danny to make chicken soup out of almost-rotten ingredients. Once perishables reach a certain age, the owners let us eat them to reduce the amount they have to throw away.

It's less gross than it sounds.

No one has come in all day, so I'm not really watching for customers as I toss a crumpled-up towel up in the air and catch it, then toss it up again. And catch it. And toss it. And catch it. For a good while. After an impressive streak of too-many-to-count, I miss and the towel falls to the floor. I groan and roll off to get it.

The entry bell rings and I bang my head on the bottom of the counter as I stand up.

"Holy fucking balls."

++++

Hello!

I did a little editing and am currently doing that thing where part of me thinks this is a damn good introduction and the rest of me thinks it's just an info dump but... there it is.

What do y'all think of our leading lady, Janice?

Those of you reading for the first time, hi! Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, so don't be shy—reach out!

Vote, comment, and share pretty please <3