The first thing I felt was cold.
It wasn't the gentle, creeping cold of a winter morning, the kind that makes you burrow deeper into your blankets.
This was a violent, invasive cold. It was a physical presence, a predator with icy teeth that gnawed at my skin, my muscles, my bones. It was the kind of cold that didn't just want to make you shiver; it wanted to shatter you.
My eyes snapped open.
The world was white.
A blinding, featureless, and utterly silent white. I was lying on my back, staring up at a sky the color of milk.
Snow, fine as dust, drifted down, stinging my face. There was no house. No pond. No Italian fountain or judgmental goose. Just an endless expanse of snow-covered ground that stretched to a horizon that was indistinguishable from the sky.
I sat up, a wave of dizziness washing over me. My clothes were stiff, frozen solid. The water from the pond had turned my jeans and shirt into a suit of icy armor.
Every movement was a crackle of frozen fabric.
The pain in my head from where I'd connected with the fountain was gone. In fact, all the aches and pains of a 47-year-old body that had been abused by decades of physical labor were gone.
I felt… light. Too light.
I looked down at my hands. They were red with cold, but they weren't my hands.
The calluses were there, the faint tracery of old scars from slipped saws and stubborn nails, but the skin was smoother, the knuckles less swollen. These were the hands of a younger man.
My hands, but from twenty-five years ago.
Panic, cold and sharp as the air I was breathing, began to prickle at the edges of my consciousness. I scrambled to my feet, my frozen jeans protesting with a loud crack.
I ran a hand over my face. No wrinkles around the eyes. The familiar sag of middle-aged jowls was gone. I felt my hair. It was thicker. I was… young. I looked like I was twenty, maybe twenty-one. The body I was in felt like a rental, a cheap suit that vaguely resembled my own.
"Okay, Leo," I muttered, my own voice sounding strange, higher-pitched. "You're dreaming. You hit your head, you're in a coma, and this is some bullshit, symbolic dream about fresh starts. Any minute now, a nurse is going to wake you up and tell you that you've been declared legally brain-dead."
I waited.
Nothing happened. The only sound was the faint, whispery sigh of the wind across the snow. The cold was getting worse, a deep, penetrating ache that was starting to feel less like a sensation and more like a terminal diagnosis.
That's when I heard the sound.
Zzzzzip-thwack.
It was the sound of a tape measure, the kind with a powerful spring, retracting at high speed and the metal tab smacking against the casing. It was a sound I'd heard a million times. It was a sound that had no business being here, in the middle of nowhere.
And then the blueprint appeared.
It shimmered into existence about five feet in front of me, a floating, translucent rectangle of brilliant blue light.
It was covered in a complex lattice of white lines, grids, and annotations, exactly like a professional architectural drawing. It hummed softly, a low, electric thrum that seemed to vibrate in my teeth.
I stared at it, my brain refusing to process what I was seeing. This had to be it. The final, grand delusion of a dying mind. I was probably still face down in the pond, my life ebbing away while my brain cooked up this final, bizarre hallucination.
Text began to scroll across the blueprint, written in a clean, sans-serif font.
[System Booting… FABRICATED ONTOLOGICAL UNIVERSAL NEXUS FOR DOMICILE ASSEMBLY AND TERRITORIAL INTEGRATION OPTIMIZATION NETWORK online. Welcome to the FOUNDATION.]
I blinked. "Foundation?" I whispered, my voice hoarse.
The blueprint pulsed, and a new message appeared, this one accompanied by a cheerful, synthesized trumpet fanfare that was so out of place it was physically painful.
[Congratulations, Leo Mercer! You have been selected for our PREMIUM REINCARNATION PACKAGE!]
I stared at the words, my mind a complete blank. Premium Reincarnation Package? It sounded like something you'd get scammed into buying from a late-night infomercial.
"What… the… hell?"
[We understand you may have questions regarding the recent expiration of your previous tenancy agreement. Please be assured that our dedicated team of post-mortem relocation specialists has processed your file. Your death has been officially recorded as 'Accidental Termination via Avian Collision and Subsequent Gravitational Complications.']
Avian Collision.
They were talking about the goose.
The goddamn goose.
They had bureaucratized my absurd, pathetic death. A laugh, a raw, cracked sound, escaped my lips. It was either laugh or scream, and I didn't have the energy for screaming.
"Where am I?" I asked the floating blue rectangle. "Is this heaven? Hell? Some kind of cosmic waiting room with really shitty interior design?"
[You have been relocated to a prime development opportunity! This world, designated Sector 7G, is an unclaimed territory ripe for foundational anchoring. Consider it a blank slate, a fixer-upper on a planetary scale!]
Sector 7G.
The name sounded familiar.
Wasn't that Homer Simpson's work sector at the nuclear plant? The cosmic entity in charge of my afterlife was apparently a fan of The Simpsons. That, somehow, made perfect sense.
"Foundational anchoring? What are you talking about?" I demanded, the cold making my teeth chatter. "I don't want a development opportunity. I want my house. I want my porch. I want to go back and put away my goddamn toolbox."
[An excellent ask! Your primary objective, as per the terms of the Premium Reincarnation Package, is just that! Your mission, should you choose to accept it (and you have), is to establish a permanent, stable foundation for your residential property, heretofore designated "The Last Foundation."]
My house. They were talking about my house. A flicker of something that might have been hope ignited in my chest, a tiny flame in the overwhelming cold. "You can take me back? I can summon my house?"
[Affirmative! The Last Foundation is available for deployment. However, certain building codes and zoning regulations apply. The structure can only be deployed once, as a permanent reality anchor. It cannot be moved or unsummoned once placed.]
I didn't care. "Do it! Put it here! Right now!" I yelled, gesturing wildly at the empty snow around me.