The Monolith

It was just a small rock at first, that some hapless hiker stumbled over in the Sahara desert. Until he dug deeper and didn’t stop.

It was of the darkest obsidian, black, smooth, and impossibly polished. Unearthed to be about 7 feet at first, but more digging showed that it didn’t stop. It was 125 feet when that hiker died, 5 years later.

Yet it didn’t stop.

At 200 feet, it had already become the 8th wonder of the world within 6 years of its discovery. Still, this dark rock didn’t stop.

Made of a combination of magnetite and volcanic glass, a combination hitherto unheard of. Even the smartest of scientists were baffled. Still, it didn’t stop.

Although it started at the cap as a pyramid-like structure, it eventually straightened down to a uniform block of about 10 feet in width, straight down, for over 300 feet now. Still, it didn’t stop. Even physicists could not understand or explain how it was able to stay completely straight at such a length. Geologists could not explain how it was so sturdy and smooth at the same time, with a diamond hardness. Still, it didn’t stop.

They called it the Monolith.

And standing here in the deepest man-made quarry yet, before the world’s tallest column, I had no words, but I understood why.

This close to it, its top seemed almost endless. Its mirror surface reflected the thousands of stars that peppered the Saharan night sky.

Its purpose was still unknown, and the only believable thing, as absurd as it sounded, was that this was somehow a naturally occurring column of the composite, that was somehow unnaturally straight.

It was 1000 feet high, not because it stopped, but we just sort of got…tired. There was no point. I took a breath and approached the Monolith, my reflection dark as a shadow, and wondered if anyone had ever just…touched it. So I did.

Immediately it seemed as though I dropped from the Earth, I saw with my ears and heard with my eyes, I heard darkness, I saw silence. But not empty silence, I could feel that much.

I was not alone, there was someone there. On the other end.

“Hello…,” I broke the immaculate silence.

A gasp, eerie and endless in echo. “It can’t be…”

The voice was otherworldly, alien. But perfectly understandable.

“After all this time, it still works…”