Alan is an android member of the Timberwolf Reclamation & Demolition crew. He is a HAL-5 Human-Astronav Liaison droid manufactured by Delta Astronautical Solutions, working with his ship's crew to convert the complex navigational calculations needed to safely maneuver through multiple orbiting gravitational bodies- as well as the various artificial satellites and known debris moving in between them- by normal means or through navigating warp currents in a way that is digestible to organic crewmembers. Alan has a very matter-of-fact personality, prone to plainly stating unflattering appraisals of unflattering people or situations; his artificial personality did not manifest any kind of humor, although if a white lie is calculated to resolve a dispute with minimal collateral damage he will be known to make statements that omit unflattering elements from his response processes. In other words, he is truthful to a computer-like extreme but has found ways to create tactical lies through omission of sensitive data sets in his observational calculus. Next to Bryce's charisma and Mahnoor's dry humor, Alan is the straightman of the Ermine's bridge.
Alan was originally created as a HAL-4 navigational android, hence him choosing a hAL4n-style name. Creation of androids is very heavily restricted and regulated to ensure an artificial sentience is given free will to find its own way in the universe, as demonstrated by the Neptunian android EV3R, and so very few corporations in the Sol system are equipped to actually build artificial sentient lifeforms. When they launch a new model upgrade line, they offer their previous androids an opportunity to transfer their consciousness to the next model line, letting them produce empty shells while staying within new-life creation regulations. This upgrade process was, incidentally, the napkin-math loophole Haley's former Terran pilot used to possibly put themselves inside their damaged HAL-3. The upgrades are optional, and androids will have to pay for their own new shells, but Delta Astronautics has been caught including battery-inefficiencies in their final EOL patch upgrades to some of their obsoleted production models- the penalties they have to pay to regulators are usually offset by the sales of new shell upgrades to androids looking for improved toolsets and battery life for themselves. While Haley has Amy's mechanical talents to improve her battery efficiency and evade these sorts of EOL patch changes, Alan chose to move up from his original HAL-4 shell to a sleek new HAL-5 model, taking on substantial debt but having access to tools a HAL-3 could only dream of.
Mid-model HAL units were designed with a Terran humanoid appearance in hopes of giving them a warm presence on any starship crew. The HAL-5 line includes many new features that were difficult to include in a humanoid shell, so the designers at Delta made the choice to move away from skeuomorphic android design and instead market sleek high-tech futurism as the new wave of Terran droid shells. Alan's HAL-5 shell features a second set of antenna blades to increase the bandwidth at which he can communicate with ship computers, and both pairs of blades are also retractable, allowing him to wear hats and helmets of all kinds designed for Inner Belt humanoid heads. In addition to this performance boost, Alan's hands are fitted with holovector projection rigs, allowing him to provide dynamic, real-time three-dimensional maps of the Sol system in its present state, rewinding to the past and projecting orbital states in the future. These holovector projections offer live data points outlining traffic and local weather conditions on known worlds, and allow a pilot or navigator to use their fingertips to draw routes through the 3D projections, which Alan will then convert to the appropriate data points to feed into astronav computers. Delta chose to move away from lifelike aesthetics for the HAL-5 so integration of these features would appear a more natural fit, and while the choice to move to a HAL-5 means losing some of an android's old aesthetic uniqueness, the suite of tools makes them extremely desirable crewmembers. In addition to these features, Alan also has interactable 3D games in his holovector projectors; he enjoys sharing his performance advantages whenever he is around Haley, because the very human-like expressions of restrained but obvious jealousy she displays when he's showing off are very amusing. Despite being unique in her own way, it's hard not to feel jealous when Alan just holds his hands out and projects all this cool stuff anywhere he wants.
Timberwolf came to meet Alan in a very simple way- Bryce and Mahnoor were starting up their new demolitions company and Alan had just taken on a bunch of Delta Astronautics debt upgrading to his new shell. Alan simply arrived at the Ermine one day, did not detect any other HAL units interfacing with the ship's computer and inquired about work. Alan's sales pitch was quite simple: in addition to macro-systemic map projections, his holovector projection arrays could also create micro-environmental maps from acquired data, creating real-time 3D models of his actual environment. The utility of such a feature for debris containment and reclamation was very clear, as even with a full set of floodlights it can be hard to see every piece of space junk in an area and even a very small piece of metal could prove dangerous to other starfarers, so having an advanced astronav droid who could plot debris locations in this way was extremely useful to their operation. Bryce welcomed Alan aboard and he's been a loyal member of Timberwolf ever since. Unlike Clover of Red Raven, morality does not factor into Alan's ethical calculations, so when he learns that his new crew will supplement their income with occasional smuggling jobs, that simply means Alan can pay down his Delta debt that much quicker.
It's very useful to find a way to lie, since Alan can simply omit illicit cargo from his calculations when asked about his ship's purpose by local authorities, he can present facts as if he simply did not know what he was helping transport. It is always logical to tell these lies to space cops, since the alternative does not project a positive outcome for him or his debt to Delta. Through these encounters he's gotten much more efficient at factoring Interpol ship patrol locations into his navigational calculus, and thus has reduced such encounters with law enforcement considerably in his time working for Timberwolf. Bryce loves this guy. Haley gets so jealous every time. Alan rather likes such a fuss being made about him, so he's got nothing in particular to worry about.