Control, Contain, and Pray

When the Foundation encounters the Imperium of Man, forty thousand years in the future, is reason the last bastion, or the most fragile armor?

Deep in the Qinling Mountains, the Foundation's newly completed China Branch site is hit by a massive reality shift on the eve of its opening.

Brand-new equipment, a complete staff, four unopened anomalous items, and eighty-seven researchers and soldiers who have never encountered a real anomaly.

They are cast into an unfamiliar universe: rust-colored wastelands, twin moons in the sky, and a completely alien star chart.

On the seventeenth day, a mysterious army calling itself “Imperial Commissars” appears, shouting “In the Emperor's name!” as it battles hordes of rotting monsters.

The Foundation faces its most difficult choice:

Hide and survive alone in this hellscape?

Make contact and cooperate with these theocratic fanatics?

Or... open those still-sealed anomalous items and learn to use “anomalies” against “anomalies” in this mad universe?

Control, Contain, Protect. When reality itself has become anomalous, how can the Foundation safeguard humanity's last spark of reason?