Inner-body travel collabfic

A yet unnamed collaborative fiction piece has been started, in the
inner-body travel genre. A team of medical scientists use new
technology to go inside the body of a 16-year-old boy to save him from
a disease that has killed all who had it before.

The story was begun in December of 2003 on the 4 Degreez Internet
community (now Fourth Kingdom). One person writes one segment of the
story, and another follows it with the next segment. Although
originated by Bruised, the story has also taken contributions from Red
Maiden, Owari, Shadow Manifest and Ghost5-0. The story is open to
contributions by anybody. There is no fixed order of participants:
anyone may follow anybody's segment. Although anyone is free to
contribute, obvious trolling is ignored. The story can be found at
www.4thkingdom.com.

The beginning of the story:

Stephan 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. <i>April 13,
2028</i>. 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.

<i>Start! Ring!</i>
"Hi, Stephan."
*
"Hi Stephan."
*
"Hi, Steve."
*
"Hey, Stephan."
*
"Hey, STEPHAN!"
*
"Hey, Steve."
*
"Hi, Steve."
*
"Ya, Stephan. Want to come to a party with me tomorrow night? Yeah,
call back."
*
"Hi, Stephan." In a very giggly, girly voice.
*
"Hey, Steve-O! How've things been going? Besure to call back and tell
me."
*
"Hello, Stephan."
*
"Hi Stephan!"

A tone signalled 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 cell phone and shoved it
into the pocket of his brown suede jacket before pulling it on. 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.

He made his way to the coffee shop near by. "I'll get on it," he
thought as he rounded the corner with the
shop in view.

The street was rough, having not been maintained for a few years, and
the sky by now had a grey tinge
to it thanks to the CFC's that people loved to use decades ago. The
greyness had stabilized, however,
thanks to the boisterous environmental activism of years before Stephan
was born.

On the wall to his right he noticed a poster advertising a concert by
the Shrine Kneelers. On its right was
a poster saying "REËLECT LeGRAND IN 2028". Stephan was planning to
vote against President
LeGrand this year. In 2024, Stephan thought he liked LeGrand, back
before people knew much about
what their new president was going to do. In 2020, he had been only 8
years old, and besides, LeGrand
had merely held the office of vice-president back then.

ZETTOLO'S COFFEE, the sign on the coffeeshop read. He finally walked
in. A boy and a girl were
making out filling the table in the back left corner. On his immediate
right was a table where four obese
men were becoming intoxicated on their maltuccinos. On the table on the
far right there was a lesbian
couple making out. Stephan walked right up to the counter with the big
menu board to get that mocha
latte.

Behind the desk stood a tall skinny automated employee. "Hi, welcome to
Zettolo's Coffee how may I
help you?" Stephan replied, "All have a moche latte, a strawberry
filled donut, and a custard filled
donut."Yes sir, please insert your AALL card here." A small arrow
pointed to the right and Stephen slid
his AALL card through. The AALL card had been an invention of only a
few years prior. It was a card that
contained a credit card, your I.D. and car insurance, health insurance,
and your passport, and required
you to hold your fingers over certian points to verify it was you.
Stephen had particulary liked this
invention and had invested a few thousands of dollars in the AALL
stock. A small message popped up
on the screen "Thank you Stephen G. Bruise for your 11.56$ purchase.
Please collect your purchase to
the right." Stephen took a few steps to the right and picked up his
coffee. He tasted it, it was perfect. He
went to the booth between the lesbians and the obese men. He started
eating his donut before picking
up a intersting conversation from the men behind. One of the men was
saying, "So if we meet on the St.
Charles bridge at 3 tonight we can get the deal?" Another man replied
"Yea. The AALL cards will be in
there." A third man spoke up and looked at the man who had just
finished speaking, "SO Jeff how many
cards did your team steal." "We got 37 cards, and there 37 matching
thumb prints, Frank." Frank looked
at the first man who had spoken and asked "John do you have the cash."
John pointed at the fourth
man, "No Lee has it." Lee verified this with a nod. Stephen stopped
listening and stared right at the
lesbians, mentally, one of his friends, Peter, a private detective came
to the top of his to call list. He
finished his meal, and stepped outside.

Stephan recycled the paper from the two doughnuts and the coffee cup
and walked back out by the Shrine Kneelers poster. He had to remember
the bridge name -- <i>St. Charles Bridge</i>. What an awful world:
stealing AALL cards -- this was the kind of world it was today. Stephan
had read in textbooks about all kinds of wars, battles and causes being
fought, in the eighties, the nineties, the tenties, the eleventies . .
.. but not even the most determined movers with a cause had been able to
wipe out identity theft. He noticed the LeGrand sign again as he was
walking. President LeGrand certainly wouldn't start up an initiative
against it.

It was at this point that Stephan started walking back home by the
ginkgo trees planted on the sidewalk. He began thinking about all the
friends his life revolved around today.

First there was Ricardo Fernandez. Richie and Steve had been friends
ever since they were 5 years old and watching Cotton Candy Castle
together and playing with the old Sit & Spin in the garage. Richie was
the one he could share jokes with (including the dirty ones), and was
the one who had helped him make it through the trying experience of
puberty during those cold, long nights. They stood together through
break-ups with seven different girlfriends, and could always meet in
the bedroom when a break-up got too bad to stand. Richie's bedroom
would always be there. Standing at 5'7" with unkempt black hair, Richie
wore striped collared shirts and brown jackets with khakis. He was
soft, with a suburban inside-the-house sort of warmth to him. They had
gone on summer vacations together for the last seven years. Having been
friends with Steve so long, he really didn't have anyone else.

Then there was Sharon Moran. Having brown hair and hazel eyes, Sharon
wore glitter-covered white tops and orange skirts with Birkenstocks.
She was always there to support and encourage him, as she would tell
him that he was a fine person who would do fine, and he would believe
it. Sharon knew all the other kids, both in her immediate circle of
friends and not, and knew all the social groups. She could recognize at
once who and what a person was. Her tendencies only naturally drove her
to play matchmaker now and then, as she knew everything from people's
taste in fast food to their astrological sign, and thought she knew
what would click with what. This little butterfly had a sweet, wet
voice endearing to all who listened to it.

Then there was Peter Stouffer. Blonde and blue-eyed with freckles,
Peter would wear red-and-white-striped T-shirts. He spent much of his
time listening to techno music, and always walked or stood around with
a pair of headphones on. He even had with headphones on when he was out
doing things with Steve. Seeming so inwardly drawn and complacently
poppy by his immersion in his music, it was hard to believe that Peter
was also a private detective. He spent much of his time as a
self-employed, freelance magnum machine. With an amateur lab in his
basement, and a computer that had databases of birth records, missing
persons and all sorts of stuff downloaded from the Internet, he had
been able to singlehandedly foil a cashier who was stealing from his
own store and baffled police by solving a murder on Richmond Avenue.

Then there was Ramón Alvarado. He, incidentally, was the first person
Stephan would have to get back to today. With black hair that revealed
his Hispanic ancestry, Ramón was supposedly closely related to some
deposed Cuban druglord who made killings in money, back before Cuba
legalized drugs. Ramón had a major passion for candy, coffee, and all
sweet things, especially the psychedelic candies, like Schatz, and
Swirl 360's. And he liked them in large amounts. He was often hoping
Stephan would get him some, delivered in boxes to his house. Ramón was
snappy and irritable, unpredictable in fact, and could also be fun,
puppy-like and smooth-tongued when he wasn't in one of his snappy
moods. And yet the two remained friends nonetheless. Ramón dressed
like a skater, in his shorts and his baggy shirts.

.

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