Tunde (book)

## Tunde

**Olatunde “Tunde” Edo** is a main character in *The Power (book)*. He is 21 years old at the beginning of the story and lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

## Character Story

#### Ten Years to Go

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

In Lagos, Olatunde “Tunde” Edo is doing laps in the pool in hopes that Enuma, a 17-year-old girl, will notice him. Enuma is visiting from Ibadan, and they’re with a group of friends who are sharing a summer house together. Tunde has been trying to pursue her without much success, so he made an excuse to end up alone at the house with her today.

When she gets up to get a Coke, he asks her for it and playfully wrestles with her when she refuses. When he grabs at her waist, she puts her hand to his and he feels a mild but unpleasant stinging sensation in his hand and forearm, causing him to release her. She then giggles, kisses him softly and runs off into the pool. He has no idea what happened or if it was something she did, but he leaves her alone after that.

A few months later, Tunde is shopping with his friend Isaac when he sees an altercation between a teenaged girl and an older man. The girl tells the man to get away but he refuses, and Tunde senses something is about to happen. He starts recording the two of them. As the man continues to bother the girl, she reaches for his arm with her hand and zap him with electricity. The man falls over, choking, and she runs away. Tunde watches the man thrash on the ground, and he realizes that Enuma could’ve killed him that day if she’d wanted to.

Tunde ends up posting his video online, kicking off people’s awareness of what comes to be known as the Day of the Girls (when girls all around the world started realizing they had these powers).

#### Nine Years to Go

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

After Tunde puts his video online, he gets a call from CNN offering to buy the video. He asks for $5,000 and they immediately agree. After that, he goes around looking for more footage, and CNN buys it off of him. He soon tells his mother that he’s going to take some time off of school.

Needing more and better footage, Tunde travels to Riyadh, where two 12-year-old girls had been killed after being found practicing their powers together. An uncle had gathered his friends to punish them, and they were killed. The night of Tunde’s arrival was the first “great riot” as hundreds of women fought back. Carrying his camera, he found a group of women headed to the riot and told them that he was harmless and there representing CNN. One of the women, Noor, instructs him to strip to show that he doesn’t have any weapons, and then they permit him to travel with them.

As they walk, Noor talks about how women aren’t permitted to drive in their country. She then touches a car and uses her powers to rev up the engine as she encourages Tunde to film it as it explodes. When Noor passes by an old woman, she touches her hand to the old woman’s and shows her how to awaken her powers. Tunde is able to see how the power can be passed and awoken from the young women to the older women.

That night, Noor leads Tunde into an apartment and sleeps with him. The riots continue. 12 days later, Tunde is on his way out of Riyadh, the government has fallen and the King is dead.

#### Eight Years to Go

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

Tunde goes to Moldova because it is the sex-trafficking capital of the world, and he files reports as he interviews people in these border towns that have seen intense fighting. The women trust him because he shows them the reporting he has done already, and he lets the women tell their stories. He starts working a book.

Five days before the government falls, Tunde interviews the Moldovan president, Viktor Moskalev. However, Moskalev is non-chalant about the fighting, saying that he’ll bomb the whole country if he needs to in order to “quash these rebels”. Afterwards, Moskalev’s wife, Tatiana Moskalev, seem to want to talk to Tunde. She shows him that she has the power, too. She also tells him that Awadi-Atif, the exiled King of Saudi Arabia, has been supplying Viktor with arms and money.

#### Six Years to Go

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

With a tip from Tatiana, Tunde travels to Northern Moldova where he’s able to track down a compound where Awadi-Atif is training some men with electrostatic weapons on behalf of the Moldovan Defence Forces.

Next, Tunde goes to Delhi. In Delhi, there have been riots and the women refer to the power as coming from “Kali”. When the women started using electrified jets of water to attack the military forces, they cut off the water supply. But then a rainstorm came, and the women wiped out their forces. Now, the women walk in the streets in areas where they previously were unable to go alone.

By now, Tunde is known among foreign journalists, and he has started his own YouTube channel where he broadcasts his footage.

#### Five Years to Go

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

Tunde, now 27, arrives in Tucson, Arizona due to a tip that something was happening there today. Tunde isn’t entirely sure why he’s here, and he thinks that perhaps after what happened in Delhi he’s been “running away from the story, not towards it.” Today, he finds a group of men who are protesting at a mall in the name of “Justice for Men”. It’s a viewpoint that has grown in popularity online, with someone going by “UrbanDox” who has been championing the men’s rights movement.

Then, there’s an explosion as a bomb goes off. The mall is on fire and the front of the building is gone. Tunde tries to save a pregnant woman who is trapped under some debris. The pain of it causes the woman to send spasms of energy out of her palms. As Tunde attempts to remove the debris, the woman discharges a jolt into a wire that sparks and causes a fire around her. Tunde has to leave her behind, grab his camera and run.

Tunde’s sister Temi, urges him to come home so he can meet a nice girl and settle down. Tunde thinks about how he travelled with a journalist named Nina for a while, but they eventually parted ways.

Then, today, Tunde gets an e-mail from UrbanDox asking to meet.

The logistics of the meeting are complicated involving showing up at a location and a blindfolded car ride. Finally, Tunde finds himself in a storage locker sitting across from a man in his mid-fifties. He’s a pale man with white hair and blue eyes. Tunde knows that he had a string of failed businesses before getting a law degree through night school and finally becoming a blogger, posting angry rhetoric that increasing amounts of men are paying attention to. Lately, UrbanDox has been posting about a gender war he believes is forthcoming.

Tunde listens to UrbanDox spout off about his conspiracy theories about how women want to kill all men, leaving only a few to carry on the human race. He encourages Tunde to join them, but Tunde is thinking about how he can sell this footage and make money off of it. UrbanDox then hints that perhaps he has some access to nuclear weapons that got misplaced when the Soviet Union fell and that he’s possibly planning some type of attack.

#### One Year

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

In Bessapara at a party at the President’s mansion, Tunde interviews Senator Cleary about the situation in Moldova. Margot explains that she supports President Moskalev because she was the democratically elected leader of her country. However, Tunde suggests that Margot’s interest is in ensuring that the exiled House of Saud (Awadi-Atif) doesn’t regain power in Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening the U.S. access to their oil.

Afterwards, he turns off the video for the interview, but he leaves the audio running. Margot then suggests to him that if he hears anything about what UrbanDox has planned, that he could make a lot of money by coming to her with that information. As Margot walks away, she thinks about how Tunde is so successful as a reporter because of how attractive he is.

On her way out of the party, Margot bumps into Tunde who seems rushed and a little panicked.

Tunde photographs the 17-year-old boy, Peter, who has shards of glass in his mouth from Tatiana ordering him to lick up the brandy from the floor. The boy says it was his own fault for interrupting Tatiana. Before Tunde can walk away, Peter begs Tunde to stay. He says that Tatiana is planning on forcing all press to leave the country.

Tunde then files his story about what happened with Peter, but no one’s interested. The next morning, he decides to post it online instead, but he finds that he doesn’t have access to YouTube there, and his VPN and cellphone data aren’t operational. He finally decides to burn his footage on a DVD and mail it to Nina (the journalist he’d traveled with for a while) by asking the American ambassador to send it.

That afternoon, Tunde is asked by his hotel to hand over his passport. Meanwhile, most journalistic staff are on their way out of the country. Tunde stays, saying he’s writing a book about the new country. He watches as the police stop investigating murders of men. Tunde continues interviewing people, but he doesn’t post the interviews, knowing it would only result in him getting kicked out of the country. Instead, he does tourist-y type pieces, taking photos and whatnot.

When Tunde has been there for six weeks, Tatiana holds a press conference announcing that men now must have a female guardian and that their official documents and passport must name who their guardian is. Men will require their guardian’s permission if they wish to travel. Anyone without a guardian will be assigned to work detail by the police. The rule also applies to workers such as foreign journalists. Furthermore, men cannot take money or possessions out of the country, cannot drive cars, cannot own businesses, cannot vote, and are not permitted to gather in groups of more than three without a woman present.

There are still a handful of other journalists still in Bessapara, including a few that are male, along with Tunde. They debate whether or not to leave. When Tunde goes back to his hotel room, he goes to the front desk, offers some cash and hints that he’d like his passport back. He then asks for a Scotch to be brought up to him.

As Tunde packs up his things, the man from the front desk brings him a Scotch and his passport. Early in the morning, Tunde leaves the hotel.

#### Can’t Be More Than Seven Months Left

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

The weeks after Bessapara’s new rules, things began to change, but slowly since there was no one to enforce the new laws. Then, Tunde starts hearing tales of awful things happening. Tunde notices he’s being asked for his papers more and more frequently. Tunde gets wind of particularly awful thing happening in the mountains. Apparently the warlords there blinded girls who got their powers when everything started, and now apparently they’re getting their comeuppance. Tunde decides to head out there to report on it.

By the eighth week, when Tunde doesn’t have a properly signed document from his guardian permitting him to be out shopping, Tunde is turned away. In week ten, Tunde passes by a dead man tied to a post with a sign indicating that the man is a “slut”. Tunde photographs it. Later, he starts to suspect he’s being followed. Soon, he sees a woman who seems like she means him harm.

Tunde runs away from the woman and into the village, asking for help. He makes his way into an apartment building where he finds an empty room with an outlet. He plugs in his phone and uses it to send out emails to people he knows, asking them to contact the embassy to help get him out of Bessapara. However, one of the first responses he indicates that the person thinks it’s a joke.

He then sees that Nina has published a story about Bessapara. On further inspection, it becomes clear that she has taken the materials he sent her for safekeeping and published it all under her own name and that she plans to publish an entire book using on his materials. Tunde also sees that an obituary for him has been published. It’s believed that he died in a car wreck since his suitcase was found in the charred remains of an accident. Tunde recalls that it was a suitcase he’d left behind in the hotel. Tunde pieces together that they must’ve had him declared dead after realizing he’d fled from the hotel.

Before he can do anything further, Tunde hears the sound of people coming after him. Tunde runs away from the apartment building and into the woods. That night, he sees a group of a women and men naked and having sex in the woods as the women hurt the men with their powers and the men enjoy it. One of the men wears a crown and is brought forward and killed. When Tunde awakes, he doesn’t know if he dreamed it or not.

Tunde knows he needs to find a way to prove he’s alive and find a way out of the country. However, he gets ambushed by some women and wakes up in cage. He recognizes that his captor is Roxanne Monke.

Roxanne recognizes Tunde from his videos. Tunde asks for Roxy’s help, but she says she’s on the mend and that she doesn’t have much influence here. The camp is all women and smells like rotting food and rotting flesh. Roxy says that the women here are “mental” — they hunt men, let them be “king” for a few weeks, then they kill them. He pleads for her help, though Roxy says her plan was to lay low around these women and not cause trouble.

Still, Roxy bargains for Tunde’s life with a bag of Glitter that night. The negotiations are easy since they don’t care that much about him anyway. When they get away from the camp, she cuts him loose. She admits that she was betrayed by her people and that she’s still sorting out what to do next.

The third night there, Roxy wakes Tunde up to let him know that the camp is being attacked. As Tunde heads for the nearby forest, Roxy watches as women descend upon the camp, lighting it on fire and rounding up the young men. She hides and watches powerlessly as the women attack and torture one man as he screams until he’s dead. Roxy sees that the violence here is senseless. These women don’t want anything other than to do this “because they can”.

Roxy and Tunde hide in a tree nearby to get some sleep, but they are awaked when a woman dressed in combat gear starts burning the tree as they look for people hiding in trees. Roxy and Tunde haven’t been spotted yet. Tunde tells Roxy to give her a small zap, but then he realizes that Roxy hasn’t used her powers at all and remembers the scar on her collarbone.

Instead, Tunde tosses a film canisters at a nearby oil drum to try to distract the woman into going somewhere else to look. Roxy and Tunde make their escape as the woman is distracted and the others she’s with surround the oil drum. To Roxy and Tunde’s dismay, it turns out there were two young children hiding in the oil drum (which Tunde hadn’t realized). Roxy and Tunde have no choice as to keep running away as they watch the group of women descend upon the crying children.

Roxy and Tunde travel some distance and find a deserted rail station to rest in. They talk about what has happened to them and the betrayals they each experienced. They sleep together and find comfort in one another.

#### Here It Comes

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

In the North, Roxy and Tunde are sleeping in their shelter. When Roxy and Tunde awake, Roxy assures him that she’s going to get him out of the country. She says she needs to go get her skein back first though, but she says a blonde woman wearing a airline hat will come by tonight to drive him across the border in the trunk/boot of a car. As Tunde waits, he considers what to do with his footage and notes just in case he dies tonight. He quickly jots down an address and puts the package containing all the materials in a nearby mailbox as he sees a car pull up.

Tunde sees the blonde woman wearing a hat that reads “JetLife”. She gives him a bottle of water to drink and tells him he can piss in it if he needs to go to the bathroom. Then, he gets in the trunk.

Roxy later says that she saved Tunde and how he likes her underground bunker, which seems to indicate that Tunde did survive and was safely smuggled out of Bessapara.

#### Ending

*This section is a detailed plot of this book chapter and **contains spoilers.** Click to expand.*

In the post-Cataclysm world, comments about Tunde mirror how in former times women’s work has often been stolen or misattributed to men.