The Power

Eve has grown quite popular in the new state of Bessapara. Bernie has been doing business with Moldova for years: cars, cigarettes, alcohol, guns. Given these two factors, Roxy asks her father to send her there. She creates a new drug to sell called Glitter and gives it to women to try out in London. Glitter is designed to enhance their power, and it gets the women who try it very excited.

A man named Steve is picking up boxes full of hourglasses—which are really filled with drugs. But when he arrives at the gate, a woman stops him and asks to see his paperwork. He tries to make jokes, but instead she grabs his wrist and gives him a shock that makes him feel like his hand is on fire. She tells him that Roxy Monke is taking over the business. He nods. She lets him go and tells him not to sell this new batch until they instruct him to. Steve leaves with the boxes, noting that the “sand” looks slightly different—it’s all tinged with purple.

Roxy counts her money—she likes “watching her decisions turn into maths turn into power.” She’s gaining influence with Tatiana Moskalev, and she’s inspired fear into a factory so that they turn a blind eye on what they’re creating. When she returned home, she told Bernie about her idea for the drug, and it was the biggest idea he’d heard in a long time.

Additionally, because of the new churches, they’ve got 70 loyal women working on their production line who think they’re doing the work of the Almighty by  bringing power to her children. The Monkes are the sole suppliers of Glitter. Roxy emails Eve the weekly profit totals, and sends her a supply of Glitter for herself. She writes, “You look after us and we’ll look after you.”

Neil includes an image depicting a mass grave of male skeletons in a recent excavation of the “Post-London Village Conglomeration.” The hands had been removed pre-mortem and the skulls had been incised with scars post-mortem.