As3008 [better] -

He was small. Wasted. His skin had the translucent sheen of long-term immobility, his joints fixed in gentle flexion, his hair grown long and white and spread across the pillow like frost on glass. But his face—his face was peaceful. The dampener gave him a low, constant delta-wave pattern. They told me he dreamed of water. Always water. Rivers, rain, the sound of a faucet dripping in a kitchen he hadn’t seen since 2029.

It took two weeks, but it came back.

And every morning, before Sofia baked, she whispered into the dough: as3008

He died seven hours later. Peaceful. The delta waves fading into silence like a river reaching the sea. He was small