Incumbent (ePub)

When bright young graduate Jimi Jones is refused a job at VastTel, the nation's incumbent phone company, he has no idea it's because they actively avoid recruiting anyone with a spark of intelligence. Still, he persists with his goal of working there and eventually lands a job, thanks to an administrative error.

He soon wins the admiration of media heir Damien Woodburner, a board member determined to drive efficiencies across the organisation, starting with its hopeless CEO Twistie Buffet. Realising his cushy job could soon come to an end, Buffet hatches a murder plot to kill Woodburner before the reforms take hold.

Yet it's Buffet who first comes under fire, with a government sanctioned assault, also aimed at ridding him of his office. With the CEO recovering in hospital Jimi Jones is temporarily elevated to the top job and starts investigating what is going on in the company.

He unearths secret documents exposing how, for years, the government has been using VastTel to employ those in the community incapable of finding a job elsewhere. There are hundreds of thousands of workers, all completely incapable of doing anything constructive.

Aware that the whole scheme could backfire on them, the government's sinister Finance Minister initiates a 'Redundancy Program', that will kill everyone in the company. It doesn't quite go according to plan, thanks to the intervention of sexy young journalist Trisha Botherington, out to rescue her lover Jimi Jones from certain death.

With the unemployment rate skyrocketing, the government is left with no choice but to start up a new phone company, paid for by taxpayers, to be used as the new dumping ground for those incapable of doing a proper job.