The Power

Two events—the rape of Tunde and the emergence of Glitter—move the narrative toward catastrophe. After all, the chapter titles suggest a countdown, although to what is still unclear. As women deal with their new power in ways that suggest they learned much from men, the chapter titles are like the ticks of a Doomsday Clock.

Meanwhile, the rape of Tunde is a deeply unsettling turning point. As the narrative’s only male character, Tunde has defined himself as an objective witness to the growing power of women. His reports and videos have made him among the few trusted men in the emerging women’s power movement. He reports on the movement from locales long defined by patriarchal oppression. His reports about the skein and its power capture a sense of a new revolution and the emerging promise of oppressed women at last given their opportunity to shape the world. Unlike UrbanDox whose Internet postings call for a showdown against women and whose inflammatory rhetoric fuels international unease, Tunde maintains a journalist’s objectivity. His rape therefore abruptly ends the innocence of the women’s movement. Rape is rape. The account is vivid:

She lunges for him. He tries to kick her in the face with his shoe but she grabs the exposed ankle and gets him again…It feels like a meat cleaver wielded in a solid and practiced stroke all down his thigh and calf, separating the flesh from the bone (152).

For the first time, Neil Adam Armon, the narrative authority, shows evidence of what will emerge as his story’s driving theme: power corrupts. After the woman uses the skein to artificially enhance Tunde’s erection and make possible his rape, she coos to the helpless and terrified Tunde in tones of post-coital affection that are as ironic as they are unsettling.

Finally, the emergence of the drug Glitter underscores the growing alarm over the skein. After three years, the skein has been instrumental as women assert physical dominance in situations where before they were subject to men’s physical strength. Before Glitter, the skein was an instrument of equality, a caution to men that women are to be understood on new terms and respected as biological equals. The widespread embrace of Glitter shows that power is addictive—that power seeks more power. Glitter allows the skein’s jolt to become stronger, last longer, and not merely stun but to kill.

When Roxy, stoked on Glitter, clamps down on a man who challenges her ascent within her father’s organization, she is amazed by its amplification of the skein. She feels flames in her hand and in her very bones. With Glitter the narrative moves past its tipping point. Women now seek dominance, not equality. The section ends on an unsettling note. Pondering a takeover of her father’s entire operation, Roxy thinks to herself, “Take the whole thing; it belongs to you” (179)/ The “it” refers as much to the criminal operations as the world at large.

At the center of the following chapter are three sets of opposing characters whose conflicting visions of women’s empowerment sets up a clear either/or dilemma: follow this path or head to inevitable apocalypse. Now at five years, the narrative is at the midpoint in the countdown to civilization’s extinction. Neil Adam Armon juxtaposes first Margot and Roxy, then Tatiana and Mother Eve, and ultimately Tunde and UrbanDox to show that, 5000 years earlier, humanity itself had arrived at a moment of decision. Nothing less than the world itself, or at least civilization as men created it, hangs in the balance.

Margot embodies the grab for power that defines women in the political realm of the new era. Intrigued by the force of the skein, Margot boldly shocks her opponent on live television. The sudden action defines her as decisive and forceful and in turn elevates her to the governorship. Like Margot, Roxy moves up within a traditionally male-dominated power structure. But unlike Margot, Roxy uses restraint in handling the women who attacked her brother and later in handling her father’s culpability in her mother’s death. In administering justice, she displays remarkable cool and a willingness to balance justice with mercy. While Margot believes in laying low those who challenge her, Roxy sees a way to live with those who challenge her.

Divisions between intemperance versus restraint, and punishment versus mercy, also define the relationship between Tatiana Moskalev and Mother Eve and the relationship between Tunde and UrbanDox. Mother Eve journeys to Bessapara to provide the women there with the inspirational message of her spirituality, a new age Christianity defined by caring, communication, and cooperation. The message is lost on Tatiana who, in her deepening paranoia, is certain that the army gathering on the border must be met with the full force of her army’s collective skeins. Tunde, hurt in one of the bombings by radical male activist groups, is taken to visit the elusive and mysterious blogger UrbanDox. Tunde must agree to be blindfolded and driven to UrbanDox only to find an extraordinarily ordinary man whose rhetoric is nevertheless fiery and uncompromising.

Tunde, the victim of rape, understands the need for the two sexes to find common ground and to share power with respect and compassion for each other. UrbanDox will have none of it. In a paranoid screed that recalls Margot and Tatiana, UrbanDox says, “They want to kill us all” (200). He believes women will slaughter men, saving only a remnant to use as slaves and breeders. Tunde questions whether there is any actual evidence of this. UrbanDox dismisses such details. Smiling, he reminds Tunde that men will win because they have nuclear weapons, foreshadowing the doomsday event through which the book is framed.

This section thus sets up the extremes between the sexes, defines gender itself as a war, and then offers a solution—compromise, cooperation, and communication—that the author, writing five-thousand years later, knows will be rejected.