Shafted (ePub)

Fate cannot be controlled and is frequently quite unpleasant. Yet, a bad hand that is dealt by fate can be the start to new and better phase in life. It all depends on how it is played.

Fate dealt the protagonist a bad hand when he ended up by chance in one of Mexico's many illegal silver mines. While he recuperates from the near fatal accident he escaped, thanks to his foreman saving his life, he gets embroiled in an impromptu miners' rebellion. He is not a miner, does not consider himself to be one of "them" or wants to have anything to do with their grievances. But the management's treatment of his foreman, accused and punished as the leader of the rebellion, is sufficient for him to become one of "them". He begins to explore the machinations of the management's dark schemes of manipulating the workforce not only into competing groups but also totally selfish individuals. The sense of 'unity is strength' is lost on the mine workers and consequently they are getting shafted.

The protagonist befriends the madam of the local brothel who gives him the job of janitor to supplement his meagre sick pay. Working in that establishment provides him yet more insights into the management's plots and schemes of keeping total control over the mining compound. The day he is declared fit to return to work in the mine, he is accused to have murdered one of the directors and beaten to a pulp by his colleagues. Thanks to the intervention of the medical station's nurse, he escapes serious harm besides the cuts and bruises he suffered. In the waiting room of the medical station, he learns that the collapse of one of the mine's stopes killed forty miners.

Something needs to be done to end the worker's exploitation and assure a safe work environment. But the one person, his foreman who could unite the workforce with a few pithy words has his own problems. He wants to escape the prison-like environment of the mine with his family. It is the protagonist's discovery of a fiendish control system of every movement of every person in the mine and the compound that makes an escape impossible. It causes the foreman to reconsider. The workforce undergoes a sea change once he creates a semblance of unity, and an uprising is on the cards.

Management plays the last ace it has up its sleeve - the corruptibility of the military. A regiment of the motorised cavalry is bribed to come in and cause a bloodbath. A most unlikely person, the madam of the brothel who is an excellent shot, takes out the commanding officer with a couple of bullets that leads to the special forces' withdrawal. That sets the scene for a final showdown. Thanks to the cunning of one of the male prostitutes, the national media could be persuaded to broadcast the uprising on live TV, and the entire nation watches the management getting shafted with ridicule.