You wait 4.543 billion years for a mysterious monolith to show up on Earth, then two show up at once.
As you're probably aware, a mystery monolith (yes we're calling it a monolith, we know monoliths are stone but let's face it, everyone is calling it a monolith and it's much more fun than saying "big rectangle of metal") showed up in Utah last week, only to disappear sometime on Friday night.
A new monolith (look, we're not going to be the only publication calling it the mystery rectangle) has now shown up on a hillside in Romania.
In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the next monolith shows up on the Moon and then in the orbit of Jupiter, but we'll take Romania I guess, monolith-starved species can't be choosers.
Of course, there's a simple explanation for both the disappearance and reappearance of the monolith.
No, not that. The new monolith (you over it yet, pedants?) has likely been erected by a copycat, given that the old monolith in Utah was found to have been there since around 2015. It's unlikely that two of them happened to be discovered within a week of each other if they were both were erected at the same time.
While the world has been distracted by New Monolith, details have emerged about the disappearance of Old Monolith, and who removed it. One Instagrammer who showed up to the site claims that they were the first to arrive on the scene after the removal. As well as tracks in the sand leading away from where the monolith once stood, they found a message in the sand.
If you're hoping for some mysterious message from aliens you may be disappointed. It simply read "Bye b*tch" and had what appeared to be a fresh pee stain right next to it. Which could be from aliens if they'd studied our cultures for long enough to know our preferred goodbyes.
More clues came from another Instagrammer, and by clues we mean they actually witnessed the removal of the statue, though nowhere do they mention who did the mystery wee so there's still that if you need some sense of enigma to remain in place.
Ross Bernards said that he had just finished taking photographs of the monolith when four men arrived at 8:40 pm.
"They gave a couple of pushes on the monolith and one of them said, 'You better have got your pictures,'" Bernards wrote on Instagram. "He then gave it a big push, and it went over."
The men set to work dismantling the monolith, before pushing it away in a wheelbarrow, telling Bernards "This is why you don't leave trash in the desert" and leaving with "Leave no trace."
Bernards included an image of the men removing the statue as well as photos of the site by way of proof of his story.
"If you’re asking why we didn’t stop them, well, they were right to take it out," Bernards posted, mentioning how crowded the usually untouched landscape was by the following morning.
"Cars parking everywhere in the delicate desert landscape. Nobody following a path or each other. We could literally see people trying to approach it from every direction to try and reach it, permanently altering the untouched landscape. Mother Nature is an artist, it’s best to leave the art in the wild to her."
So there you go, mystery solved. It was people just trying to clean up the desert. If you'd like to know who placed it there, that has likely already been solved too. Now can we skip to the part where we plot all the new monoliths that have popped up on a map and it spells out Buy Pepsi, please.