Life Without Consequence is a near-future Dark Comedy/Sci-Fi novel.

 

ARC1
   In the year 2076 everything has gotten worse. The world is environmentally in shambles. There’s been several major global conflicts and most of the worlds populations have taken to living in giant high rise community towers they rarely come out of. Living at street level is looked down on regardless of whether you have a roof over your head or not. Most do not.
   Parker Ludere and his mute friend Benj Cave get by distilling moonshine in their basement and selling it to a local street level bar. One night after making a delivery Parker and Benj witness their sketchy neighbor “Mad” Mike kill himself. The police come and we are introduced to Parker’s long time girlfriend Nina. The police want to examine the scene of the incident so Parker spends the night with Nina while Benj is put up in a motel by the police. Parkers illegal distilling business is discovered, he and Nina fight, she kicks him out. It’s suggested that the difference between their two lives has been having a negative effect on their relationship for some time.
   Upon arriving back home the following day Parker and Benj find their house trashed and liquor operation destroyed by police. They also find a metal brief case that was apparently left behind by mad mike. Inside the case is a cell phone that they discover, after using it to destroy their fridge and accidentally kidnap a Korean child, is actually some kind of teleportation device.
   they immediately assume this thing is the answer to their problems but have their hopes dashed when they realize they don’t know how it works, and they can only use it to teleport to places stored on a list saved to the device. Adding to insult, most of the places on the list just teleport them inside of sealed shipping containers, sheds, and storage lockers.
   After a night of trying out different locations they find one that takes them to the inside of a pharmacy in las vegas. Frustrated with the hand they’ve been dealt that night(and in life) Parker and Benj loot the pharmacy, taking everything that isn’t nailed down. Parker has Benj teleport him back to the pharmacy alone to make sure they didn’t miss anything but while he’s there he is accosted by Nina and her partner Doug Logue.
   Nina reaches a breaking point and decides that there can be no future for her and Parker, and that being with him has been holding her back. She decided to take Parker in, let the justice system handle him, and try to move on with her life. Before she can take him into custody, Benj teleports Parker back to their house, leaving the scene looking like she let him escape.
   Assuming that the police will probably be on their way to the house soon Parker calls a local drug dealer named Lenny who comes by to check out the merchandise but is shocked at the quantity and begins to panic, thinking it’s a setup. Benj, under the inebriated assumption Lenny has a gun, uses the phone to teleport Lenny to a location in the phone he hasn’t heard of before. A Place called Tharsis(its on mars). While this is happening Nina tries to explain the impossible thing she just saw Parker do to her partner who doesn’t believe her but agrees to buy her time to go and bring Parker in.
   Back at the house Parker and Benj teleport Lenny back but find that in the time he spent somewhere else he has been quite violently assaulted and seemingly has had some sort of explosive concealed inside his abdomen. Lenny explodes(seriously) covering Parker and Benj and their whole kitchen in pieces of Lenny.
   With his back against a wall Parker theorizes that maybe they could try cleaning the kitchen by teleporting Lenny’s remains back to wherever they sent him and hopefully have all trace of him gone by the time the police arrive.
   While putting this plan into Motion Nina arrives at the house and a stand off takes place between the two of them and her. Nina, who after several days being shown how little she really knows Parker, believes that he and benj have committed a horrific crime.
   During the stand off Benj tries to finish he and Parkers plan but the amount of blood touching everything causes the device to short circuit and teleports the entire house and its contents to Tharsis.
   The scene becomes chaotic, Nina is confused but before she can have anything explained to her something other worldly and inhuman breaks through the window and drags her back out through the hole. Parker rushes to ninas aid but is unable to prevent her death. The device restarts and Benj manages to teleport them away from the scene… To a shipping container in cleveland. Where the phone no longer seems to function.

Arc2
   Tucker Is a failed musician with a dubious moral compass returning home to cleveland in the year 2022 after failing to make it in NYC. His first instinct is to crawl back to his ex girlfriend who in his time away has become a cop and is curiously named Nina. She is in no way happy to see him and her current boyfriend(who is also a cop) even less so. To appease him and make him go away she sets him up with a room at an old high school friends house named Billy, who also has a douche bag room mate named Tank. The following day Tucker leaves the house to try and find a job but is stopped by Nina’s boyfriend Brenden who offers him a ride. Tucker reluctantly accepts but quickly regrets the decision when Brenden becomes unstable and protective about Nina to the point of violence.
   He is driven to the outskirts of the city, assaulted by Brenden who is strangely very, very strong, and left to freeze in the cold. During the altercation Tucker swiped Brenden’s phone and wallet and uses the money inside of it to buy himself breakfast. While looting the wallet he finds a key and an address to a storage locker. Upset about what was done to him Tucker visits the address in hopes of stealing whatever the crooked cop has in his storage unit. The address takes him to a warehouse where he finds Parker and Benj in bad shape inside of a shipping container. After a brief altercation between the three men in which Benj speaks for the first time since he was a child, Tucker cautiously agrees to help them figure things out.
   Upon cleaning up it is noted how similar Parker and Tucker look. Similarities continue when Parker finds that not only is Tuckers ex named Nina, she also looks exactly like his Nina. Still grieving, Parker demands to be taken to Nina. Tucker refuses explaining his situation with her boyfriend. Benj realizes the phone he stole is exactly like theirs and that they can use it to go home. Parker won’t leave without seeing Nina who has been kidnapped by Brenden. There is a confrontation that reveals Brenden to be from Tharsis and quite inhuman. He murders Tank covering himself in Tanks blood in the process. Unable to match him physically Parker distracts Brenden while Benj uses the teleporter on pieces of Tank causing similar results to the Lenny situation. Teleporting away Tanks remains and Brenden back to Tharsis with them. Nina is rescued. Parker and Benj are faced with the quandary of whether they actually want to go back to the year 2076... or go on more adventures because a publisher wants more from this stupid story.