[ WP ] You pray to God , wishing that you will get a boyfriend/girlfriend before you die . He gives you immortality .

They told him that even ejaculation was an act of violence, that the frenzied stampede of his sperm could perforate a uterus with hundreds of millions of micropunctures, tearing a woman apart. They looked at a boy, and told him he was a biological weapon. 
 
 He believed them. 
 
 Once upon a time his parents prayed for a child, and instead received a miracle. How many prayers has he said, on his knees at night? The last son of a doomed race. A cuckoo space-dropped into the human nest. He prayed for another organism that could somehow interface with him. He prayed not to die alone. 
 
 Now CK looks out at the world from behind prescription lenses, stumbles and stammers and hikes up his pants and adjusts his glasses. All this in lieu of having a conversation with a woman. The nexus of his desire has been reduced to a shimmering fin, a twist of red hair, a burning resentment, a mocking barb, a pair of right angles. 
 
 L is for love. L is for lust. L is for libido. L is for loser. L is for longing. L is for loneliness. L is for languishing. L is for lips. L is for lashing out. L is for laceration. 
 
 CK looks down upon the inhabitants of his city and thinks, he will outlive them all. 
 
 He comes upon extant members of his species: reflections of him, inverted. He meets a girl, and she turns out to be his cousin. There are old-world taboos about that, the restrictions running deep. He meets a version of himself, a photonegative, the colors inverted. For a moment he sees himself as other people must see him, the curves embossed on Mon-L's broad chest. A beat pounds in CK's heart. He feels as if he is discovering himself. 
 
 The inversion proves true. What served as protection for CK turns out for Mon-L to be poison. There is a cruel irony to that, a prophylactic turned toxic, viral. The individual molecules lodge in Mon-L's body, implacably radioactive. L is for lead poisoning. 
 
 There is only one hope left! The Friend Zone Projector, lock and key to another dimension! Mon-L will be preserved, the poison suspended in his veins. He will never age, never grow, never die. He will be immortal. 
 
 This was a prison once, a punishment. The Friend Zone is populated by spurned madmen and inarticulate geniuses and slavish flunkies, all the enemies of an advanced society. Now it is an ark. It is a time capsule. It is a photo album of ghosts. It is a last and futile hope. Its prisoners can never be unleashed. 
 
 CK lifts the Friend Zone Projector upon his shoulders, sorrowfully takes aim. Mon-L is framed in negative, the world going two-dimensional around him. He is a postcard, a flat screen TV, the last image of him floating through the cosmos, like radio waves sent through space. The Friend Zone survived the end of one world. It will survive another. CK imagines the world of tomorrow, where a panacea is found, and Mon-L will once again be able to breathe air, walk free. 
 
 The 30th century will tick by, bringing with it a new era of understanding. Boys and girls, lads and lasses, from all across the galaxy, each with their own impossible and intrinsic power, welcoming Mon-L to their fold. CK blinks and sees the future, a prismatic and fragile bubble. They have visited him as if in dreams, taken him up to revel with them and wiped his mind clean. There is a future awaiting him. CK looks to the stars and breathes. He has all the time in the world.
