A Monolith, a Mystery, and a Monumental Nuisance

It appears that another one of the infernal metal slabs has planted itself right in the middle of Nevada, like a misplaced tombstone for common sense. The latest offender, a 12-foot contraption, sprang up overnight at Seven Magic Mountains, confounding respectable folk and alarming the Nevada Museum of Art, who had no more say than a preacher at a poker game.

The museum, understandably perturbed, has declared they neither commissioned nor condone this unsolicited yard ornament and are presently engaged in the time-honored civic tradition of figuring out how to get rid of it. Who put it there? No one knows. Who will take it down? That much is certain—whoever has the misfortune of being put on that particular errand.

Like so many of its kin, the monolith is not merely a mute hunk of metal standing idly by, contemplating the desert. This one has taken it upon itself to bear a QR code—a cryptic stamp of the digital age—rumored to lead the unwary straight into the treacherous, snake-infested gulch of cryptocurrency.

What Arthur C. Clarke, he of celestial musings, would have said about this is unknown, but one might suspect he’d have lamented the fall from cosmic grandeur to commercial hucksterism. Monoliths once heralded the dawn of intelligence, but now they hawk dubious investments.

It is not the first time such an object has seen fit to loiter in the Las Vegas Valley. Another appeared last June near Gass Peak, doubtless confusing the local coyotes and frustrating the Bureau of Land Management. Whether these structures are the work of alien intelligence, rogue artists, or a marketing department with more enthusiasm than ethics, the result remains the same—an ever-growing pile of paperwork and exasperated sighs from those charged with their removal.

And so, the desert plays host once more to the strange and the inexplicable, as it has for ages. But whether installed by cosmic forces or some rascal with a welding torch, the monolith, like all things in Nevada, is bound to meet the same fate–dismantled, hauled away, and promptly forgotten until the next one appears.