On Lampadas, Manford Torondo spends a rare quiet evening at his modest cottage with Anari Idaho. The surrounding Butlerian community lives according to his ideals: handmade homes, farms, simple labor, and rejection of dependence on technology. Manford takes satisfaction in this proof that humans can thrive without machines, though he knows the Imperium still resists his movement.

After dismissing his followers so he can rest and meditate, Manford remains with Anari, who tends the fire and prepares his bath. Although Manford allows others to help him in public, he privately demonstrates strength and independence, moving through the cottage on his arms and using parallel bars. Anari gently disapproves but continues caring for him with devotion.

While Anari bathes him, Manford remembers the trauma that shaped his life: the bombing that killed Rayna Butler and cost Manford his legs. He recalls joining Rayna’s antitechnology movement as a young runaway, idolizing her, and receiving her encouragement to become a leader. During a rally on Boujet, Manford discovered a bomb too late; Rayna died in his arms after blessing him and charging him to continue her work.

Manford reflects that Rayna’s death intensified the Butlerian cause. In the aftermath, mobs destroyed Boujet’s cities and factories, reducing the planet to ruin. Manford survived his wounds, interpreted Rayna’s final blessing as a sacred mandate, and continues to carry a bloodstained scrap of her clothing as a holy relic.

After Anari dresses him and leaves him to read, Manford studies printed journals and laboratory notebooks written by Erasmus, the infamous thinking machine. The robot’s words horrify him, especially the idea that machines can wait until humans forget and recreate them. Shaken and unable to sleep, Manford resolves that such a future must never be allowed, though he keeps the full terror of those writings from his followers.