One teen boy, 16-year-old Stephan Genkins Bruise, lives a mundane life with his friends in the California town of Los Caballos in 2028. Then, one day, he catches a prion-caused disease called Diamond-Zuckerman disease (DZD) that makes him forget basic things, gives him nosebleeds, and often renders him unable to stand up straight. The news is bad, as DZD has eventually killed everyone who's had it before.
But there is hope for Steve. One laboratory is developing a method of inner-body travel that will allow a team of "somatonauts" to travel inside Steve's body and destroy the DZD prions.
Many participants in Inner Bruise have added characters such as the four men who are in an identity theft ring, stealing "AALL cards"; Jocasta Lin, a Christian girl who does backflips and likes grinding; Jeff King, a young inventor who gave us the telepaper and floorboard-covered water jets; the observant and romantic Rochelle Conti; the beer-drinking Sulfur Pie fan Adrian Kerekes; the gum-chewing California blonde Sandy Olson who often talks about her cat; the union leader Miguel Ortiz; and a teen-age rock star with a glass eye who changed his name to Jim Musiclover.
For a sample, here is Chapter 1 of Inner Bruise:
A month ago, the Inner Bruise wiki was opened to everyone. It is up at http://inner-bruise.wikia.com/wiki/Inner_Bruise_Wikia -- hosted by Wikia. And we're looking for more participants.Stephan Bruise picked up his cellphone to read the listing of answering machine messages that had accumulated for him. Home again. He looked hard at the liquid crystal display on the front. April 14, 2028. All it had was today’s date and a little notation in black for answering machine messages. He would have to press just the right button before it started scrolling through all the recorded messages from the other kids.
Start! Ring!
"Hi, Stephan."
"Hi Steve."
"Hi, Steve."
"Hey, Stephan."
"Hey, STEVE!"
"Hey, Steve."
"Hi, Steve."
"Ya, Steve. Want to come to a party with me tomorrow night? Yeah, call back."
"Hi, Steve." In a very giggly, girly voice.
"Hey, Steve-O! How’ve things been going? Be sure to call back and tell me."
"Hello, Stephan."
"Hi Steve boy!"
A tone signaled the end of the string of message intros. He sat there smiling into space as he thought of all the friends he would have to get back to and the appointments he would schedule that day.
He walked over to the magenta coffee maker on the table and started to prepare himself some mocha. He remembered that the first person on his short list that he had to call back that day was Ramón Alvarado. Multitasking, he thought as he ground the coffee about the first few people he was going to call. Brown coffee powder spilt over his left shoe while he was trying to organize in his head.
He mumbled a few barely audible curses and shook his shoe gingerly, the powder falling off and resting on the floor. What sort of fool was he for thinking that he could organize and make something to drink at the same time? He’d never been able to do it before . . . and this was the end result of it every morning. The same scenario playing out and repeating. Mundane. He’d like for his life to be less hectic and contain a bit more adventure. It was always calls . . . appointments . . . more appointments . . . the occasional free time with friends. Surely there had to be something. Something more to his life than this. He gave up on the mocha and decided to go out. He had time to grab something to drink before it was absolutely necessary to return those missed calls. And to be honest . . . he could use a bite to eat. It had been quite a few hours since his last meal.
Shaking his shoe one last time, he grabbed his cellphone and shoved it into the pocket of his brown suede jacket before pulling it on. He grabbed the pad of yellow paper by the door and wrote on it, “TO ZETTOLO’S – WILL BE BACK”. Taking one last glance about the room, he walked out and pulled the door shut. He’d be back in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most. He smiled and put an extra spring in his step. A mocha latte and two crème-filled doughnuts sounded more than exceptionally nice right now.
First acquaint yourselves with the site, the story, and the worldbuilding, then check out What We're Working On Now and go over to the forum to collaborate. Joining works the same way it works for all Wikia wikis (for instance, you may have used http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Lyrics_Wiki before).
Also includes a questionnaire on worldbuilding in sixteen parts that could be useful for someone setting science-fiction stories on future Earth.
And BTW, we started the story on www.4thkingdom.com in 2003, when 2028 was 25 years away, so don't complain that a year 12 years away can't be expected to see all those changes.
The 4thkingdom friends and I will see (hopefully many of) you there!