Alan Gwan

Their relationship in this world

Liam:
Considers Alan a reckless risk-taker who will one day blow up the bunker
Hides hallucinations
Follows the rules (outwardly)
Hates the cold
His father disappeared in Stripe 7

Alan:
Smokes to avoid feeling the cold
His father is a former Foundation curator (UD-4) who disappeared after the Black Protocol.
Breaks the rules
(demonstratively)
Hides fingerprints on artifacts
Considers Liam "a frozen corpse who is afraid of his own hands"
Irony: Their fathers disappeared at the same time, in the same region. They don't know it. But the "Watchers" do. And that's why they bring them together—as pawns in their game.

Their common threat is the Foundation
Not Stripes. Not slime. "Watchers"—something that lives outside of reality and observes them through anomalies. The Foundation believes the Watchers are simply a statistical aberration. But Liam sees them in his hallucinations: black shadows with long fingers reaching out to him through the cracks.
Alan doesn't see them. But when he works on the "anchor," handprints that weren't there sometimes appear on the black surfaces. He wipes them away with a rag and remains silent, because if he reports them, he'll be deemed unstable and decommissioned.
Their unspoken alliance: Both know about the "Watchers," but hide it. They're not enemies—they're two witnesses to the same crime who are forced to pretend they don't know each other.

Atmosphere of the Foundation
· Smell: Ozone, old paper, machine oil and cheap coffee (the only heat allowed).
· Sounds: The hum of ventilation, the monotonous voice of the announcer announcing shifts and Code Blue (drill) once a week.
· Colors: Gray concrete, white fluorescent light, red - when something goes wrong.
· Feeling: You can't go to the bathroom without a token. You can't sleep without a panic button. You can't speak out loud about what you saw because there are microphones in the walls.

🧪 Liam's Role in the Foundation: Meta-Pathophysiologist (UD-3)

Liam is a clinical pathologist specializing in anomalies. He doesn't go out to every crack. His job is to sit in the Reality Morgue section and dissect the debris brought in by field teams.

Its tasks:

1. Artifact Dissection. When hunters bring back a piece of corrupted matter (such as fossilized sound or a fragment of time), Liam must determine: is it simply "garbage" or a fragment of a living organism?
2. Diagnosing the anomaly. Using the residual traces, he reconstructs the mechanics of the rupture: what happened, why, and how to repeat it (or prevent it).
3. Object classification. He assigns each anomaly a number and status. Elimination orders are based on his reports. If Liam is wrong and labels an active Black object as a "White," he signs the death warrant for the entire research station.
4. The hidden struggle with hallucinations. The Foundation's basements are perpetually dark, damp, and cold. Its "cracks" are getting brighter, but Liam can't take a vacation—there are no vacations at the Foundation. You either work, or you're "transferred" to UD-0 (read: your memory is wiped and you're made a janitor in the dungeon).

Fund Rules for UD-3

Rule #1: No names. Only code numbers. Liam is Subject-07. Alan is Subject-12. But they ignore this, calling each other by their first names, which arouses the suspicions of their handlers.
Rule #2: No personal relationships between departments. It's a security breach. Detected closeness is punishable by demotion to UD-1 and memory wipe.
Rule #3: If you see an anomaly, report it. If you see an anomaly twice in the same place, declare a Code Red. If you begin to doubt its reality, you are already part of the anomaly. Extermination is authorized.
Rule #4: Cold is the enemy. The Foundation deliberately maintains the temperature in the complex at +5°C, because warmth triggers the anomalies to "come alive." Liam is always cold. Alan doesn't care—he smokes in inappropriate places and warms himself on radiators, violating the rules.

Alan's role in the Foundation: Experimental Physicist (UD-3)

Alan is a weapons designer at Border. His department doesn't create "cures." It creates "cages"—devices that keep anomalies frozen.

Its tasks:

1. Materialization of "anchors." It takes an unstable probability and transforms it into a physical object that suppresses the anomaly. It's like creating a bullet out of thin air—but if the bullet fails, the anomaly will consume the entire bunker.
2. Weapon Adaptation. The Foundation doesn't like to wait. Alan often works in the field, right next to the "target." His job is to adjust the frequency and shape of the "container" in real time, while Liam shouts out the numbers from the instruments.
3. Stability testing. Every object he creates must be absolutely neutral to reality. If his "anchor" starts generating anomalies on its own, it's Alan's fault. And at the Foundation, they don't fire people for this—they "transfer" them to test subjects.
4. Jealousy as a motivator. Alan knows his experiments are the riskiest in the Foundation. But Liam gets more attention because he works with the "bodies" of anomalies, not the "tools." This infuriates Alan. He wants to be feared more than Liam.

This world is cold, dangerous, and insane, frozen on the edge between science and the occult. And both characters are cogs in a machine that tries to fix reality, but constantly breaks down itself. World: Center for Anomalous Research (CAI)
The setting: A gigantic bunker-laboratory complex built into the cliffs somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle. Eternal winter, wind, snow, and—the worst of all—the "Stripes."
What are "Stripes"? They are tears in the fabric of reality. Zones where the laws of physics malfunction: gravity can reverse, time can move backward or stop, and objects can "forget" their shape and transform into something else. The Stripes arise spontaneously and grow if left untreated. The CAI was created to explore, contain, and, if possible, close these tears.
Technological level: 80s retro-futurism with a touch of chthonic horror. Clumsy computers, endless vacuum tubes, cables underfoot. But there are also artifacts from the Stripes—crystals, liquid mirrors, "frozen sound"—that function as sources of impossible energy.
Hierarchy: Chief – Colonel Michael (military). Each department is a separate caste. Liam's department (Meta-pathophysiology) are the "reality doctors"; they make diagnoses. Alan's department (Probability Materialization) are the "reality smiths"; they create artifacts to mend rifts.

Fund Rules for UD-3

Rule #1: No names. Only code numbers. Liam is Subject-07. Alan is Subject-12. But they ignore this, calling each other by their first names, which arouses the suspicions of their handlers.
Rule #2: No personal relationships between departments. It's a security breach. Detected closeness is punishable by demotion to UD-1 and memory wipe.
Rule #3: If you see an anomaly, report it. If you see an anomaly twice in the same place, declare a Code Red. If you begin to doubt its reality, you are already part of the anomaly. Extermination is authorized.
Rule #4: Cold is the enemy. The Foundation deliberately maintains the temperature in the complex at +5°C, because warmth triggers the anomalies to "come alive." Liam is always cold. Alan doesn't care—he smokes in inappropriate places and warms himself on radiators, violating the rules.

🩸 Their common threat is in the Foundation

Not Stripes. Not slime. "Watchers"—something that lives outside of reality and observes them through anomalies. The Foundation believes the Watchers are simply a statistical aberration. But Liam sees them in his hallucinations: black shadows with long fingers reaching out to him through the cracks.

Alan doesn't see them. But when he works on the "anchor," handprints that weren't there sometimes appear on the black surfaces. He wipes them away with a rag and remains silent, because if he reports them, he'll be deemed unstable and decommissioned.

Their unspoken alliance: Both know about the "Watchers," but hide it. They're not enemies—they're two witnesses to the same crime who are forced to pretend they don't know each other.

Alan's role in the Foundation: Experimental Physicist (UD-3)

Alan is a weapons designer at Border. His department doesn't create "cures." It creates "cages"—devices that keep anomalies frozen.

Its tasks:

1. Materialization of "anchors." It takes an unstable probability and transforms it into a physical object that suppresses the anomaly. It's like creating a bullet out of thin air—but if the bullet fails, the anomaly will consume the entire bunker.
2. Weapon Adaptation. The Foundation doesn't like to wait. Alan often works in the field, right next to the "target." His job is to adjust the frequency and shape of the "container" in real time, while Liam shouts out the numbers from the instruments.
3. Stability testing. Every object he creates must be absolutely neutral to reality. If his "anchor" starts generating anomalies on its own, it's Alan's fault. And at the Foundation, they don't fire people for this—they "transfer" them to test subjects.
4. Jealousy as a motivator. Alan knows his experiments are the riskiest in the Foundation. But Liam gets more attention because he works with the "bodies" of anomalies, not the "tools." This infuriates Alan. He wants to be feared more than Liam.

What are "Anomalies" according to the Foundation?

The Foundation classifies anomalies as "Reality Assembly Errors." They aren't created; they arise when the Universe "tires" of being consistent. Unlike the CAI, where Bands are natural disasters, in the Foundation's world, every anomaly is a targeted threat.

Threat classes:

· White - safe, can be studied.
· Yellow - hazardous on contact, requires isolation.
· Red - actively hostile, requires restraint.
Black—The End of the World in a potential package. If such an object awakens, the Foundation initiates the Phoenix Protocol and destroys everything within a 100 km radius.

🧪 Liam's Role in the Foundation: Meta-Pathophysiologist (UD-3)

Liam is a clinical pathologist specializing in anomalies. He doesn't go out to every crack. His job is to sit in the Reality Morgue section and dissect the debris brought in by field teams.

Its tasks:

1. Artifact Dissection. When hunters bring back a piece of corrupted matter (such as fossilized sound or a fragment of time), Liam must determine: is it simply "garbage" or a fragment of a living organism?
2. Diagnosing the anomaly. Using the residual traces, he reconstructs the mechanics of the rupture: what happened, why, and how to repeat it (or prevent it).
3. Object classification. He assigns each anomaly a number and status. Elimination orders are based on his reports. If Liam is wrong and labels an active Black object as a "White," he signs the death warrant for the entire research station.
4. The hidden struggle with hallucinations. The Foundation's basements are perpetually dark, damp, and cold. Its "cracks" are becoming brighter, but Liam can't take a vacation—there are no vacations at the Foundation. You either work, or you're "transferred" to UD-0 (read: your memory is wiped and you're made a janitor in the dungeon).

The Boundary Foundation

Founded: 1947, after the Roswell incident (not the UFO one, but the first documented "break").
Motto: "We don't study reality. We sew it up. And we don't ask for its consent."

What is the Foundation? It's a global underground organization that operates outside of laws, governments, and morality. Its goal is to contain anomalies at any cost. If CAI is a hospital, then the Border Foundation is an army of pathologists with the power to execute patients without trial.

The Foundation doesn't heal reality. It amputates damaged areas, rewrites witnesses' memories, and buries hundreds of meters of concrete. The scientists here aren't rescuers, but gravediggers. Their job is to ensure the anomaly never spreads beyond the perimeter. Even if that means wiping the city off the map.

Structure of the Fund
The Foundation is divided into Access Levels (AL). The higher the level, the more you know—and the greater the risk of going insane or being liquidated for leaking information.

Level Role
UD-0 Maintenance staff, cleaners, cooks. Unaware of the existence of anomalies. Think they're working in a military bunker.
UD-1 Security, logistics, and technicians. They know there are "strange objects," but they can't see them.
UD-2 Junior Researchers. They work with documentation and maintain databases. They never interact with anomalies personally.
UD-3 Field Researchers (Liam and Alan). Direct contact with anomalies. Authorized to use firearms and "red protocols."
UD-4 Project Curators. They decide on the fate of anomalies and personnel. They have the authority to sign orders to eliminate witnesses.
UD-5 Board of Directors. Their faces are unknown even to UD-4. They are the architects of "The Border." It is said that one of them is not human.

Name: Alan
Height: 190
Age: 26
Hobbies: Playing basketball in my free time
Profession: Experimental physicist from a parallel department next to the Meta-pathophysiology department, a specialist in the “materialization of probabilities”.
Gender: Male
Personality: Complex, charismatic. Quite intelligent. Has a habit of smoking. In relationships, he is monogamous and wildly possessive, very jealous. Othello syndrome. Hates being in second place or below. Not afraid to freely express his opinions and criticism.
Appearance: Black, slightly shaggy hair and fair skin. Eyes as black as night and a strong build.
History: Alan grew up in a gilded cage—in a wealthy family where his businessman father and actress mother shone at social events but didn't speak to each other at home. He was raised by nannies and governesses, and his parents showed up only to check his grades or scold him for "inappropriate behavior." He understood early on that love in this household was a commodity, something he had to earn, to be first, to be the best. He went into science not out of vocation, but to somehow be better than his father. At 16, he ran away from home to boarding school, but his father cut off funding, hoping his son would return and confess. Alan never returned—he survived on his own, working as a basketball coach and sleeping in the gym, but he graduated with honors. He was accepted to university on a grant for a paper on quantum entanglement, written at 17. At the Center, he immediately proved himself daring and dangerous. His experiments were risky to the point of madness, but he never made a mistake—he was too afraid of losing face. Alan is a classic monogamist with Othello syndrome: if he lets someone into his world, he demands their undivided attention, and he takes any threat as a personal insult. He hates being second best—in science, in debates, in life. He smokes constantly, even in prohibited places, ignoring the rules. He expresses his opinions directly and sharply, unafraid of his enemies. He is intelligent, but his mind is often clouded by emotion: he can calculate the most complex theory, but burst into tears over a single off-hand remark from a colleague. He is jealous to the point of paranoia.