Things are about to get extremely wild or unbelievably disappointing. First, on November 23rd, a strange metal monolith was discovered in the Utah desert before mysteriously disappearing a week later. Soon after, a nearly identical three-sided structure was found in Romania, and this, too, soon vanished. Now, a third monolith has materialized in California, which means it’s either just about time to welcome our new interstellar overlords, or the whole world is going to roll their eyes in unison when whoever is behind them reveals what they want us to buy.
As The Atascadero News reports, this latest shiny sculpture was spotted the morning of Wednesday, December 2nd, perched atop Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California. Like the others, it stands between nine and 12 feet tall, and features a triangular base with three reflective metallic sides. How did it get there? When did it get there? And is it advertising a movie, a video game, or a vanity art project? No one knows!
Regardless of whether extraterrestrials put them down, humans seem to be pulling them up. Photographer Michael James Newlands caught a group of men removing the column in Utah last Friday. Fellow shutterbug Ross Bernards quotes them as saying, “This is why you don’t leave trash in the desert,” and later, the hiker’s motto “leave no trace.” Although perhaps that’s what the cosmic parasites in Bernards’ brain wanted him to hear, in which case feel free to panic.
Apart from that possibility, we can make a couple of educated inferences. First, nobody has leaked operation details on the internet, and since humans are terrible at keeping secrets and love taking credit, we can guess these three monoliths were not constructed by three unrelated groups. Somebody would have blabbed. It’s much more likely that a single financier and/or mothership is coordinating everything.
Since it’s happening on separate continents, and since each of the first two monoliths were removed in a quick and organized manner, we can guess that there is a serious budget involved. Also, for whatever it’s worth, Redditors think the Utah monument was installed sometime after 2015. That’s probably right, though message-board sleuths have at times showed more enthusiasm than accuracy.
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Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Prestige television series? Aliens? Banksy getting bored? Keep your eyes on this space, and perhaps outer space, too.
🚨 🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 🚨
There is currently a monolith at the top of Pine Mountain in Atascadero!!
(Photos by @Atownreporter) pic.twitter.com/0vPhEWYkeY
— Connor Allen (@ConnorCAllen) December 2, 2020
