The first two appeared in April of 2008. In the midst of the continuing conflict in the Middle-East the people of Haifa and Damascus awoke on that sunny morning to find the strange structures just outside each city that had appeared during the night, as if by magic. Made up of five ten metre high oblong sections equidistant from each other and made from what appeared to be highly polished black granite, the edifices seemed to be sunk into the ground, not just placed in position. It was as if someone had created two miniature versions of Stonehenge and planted them in the middle of the war-torn region.

What were they? Where did they come from? Who put them there? These were the first three questions on the lips of the people of both cities that morning. In view of the ongoing conflict in that benighted region of the world the first thought of the Israelis was to blame the Arabs, and vice-versa. As pictures from both cities were beamed around the globe by the satellite news companies however it quickly became apparent that neither was to blame for the appearance of the megaliths, as they would soon come to be known.

The Israelis were the first to react in sending an investigative team to explore the strange phenomenon on their soil but only just, their team reaching the Haifa structure some twenty minutes before the Syrian team led by Professor Ahmad Habib assembled at the Damascus site. Doctor Rachel Silverman and her team of four scientists and two archaeologists stood in awe as they gazed at the new addition to Haifa’s cityscape.

“Well, I can honestly say it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” she announced.

“That’s for sure,” came the voice of Aaron Steinman, her colleague from the University of Haifa, “but if we can say we don’t know what it is, we also can’t say that we know what it is,” he continued almost unintelligibly.  Steinman had a habit of talking like that, he sort of spoke as he thought and sometimes the words didn’t quite make sense, but Rachel Silverman seemed to understand his meaning.

“Aaron, let’s not jump to any conclusions until we’ve conducted a closer study, ok?” she asked

“You’re the boss, boss.” he replied.

Rachel, Aaron and the others slowly approached the strange structure, until David Berkowitz, one of the archaeologists suddenly held up his right arm and called,

“Wait, listen, can you hear it?”

They all stood still, and followed David’s instruction to listen. Heads cocked on one side they soon began to hear whatever it was that Berkowitz had heard.

“It’s humming!” said Rachel.

“It sure isn’t any tune I’ve ever heard.” Aaron joked.

“Be serious Aaron,” she instructed.

Sure enough, Berkowitz had heard correctly. A faint hum was emanating from somewhere within the stones, if indeed they were stones at all. It was a mechanistic sound, as though an engine was running or some form of machinery was whirring deep inside one or all of the pillars that made up the megalith.

In Damascus, Professor Habib ordered everyone to stand back as reached a hand out tentatively towards the nearest black form.

“It’s warm,” he announced, “and it seems to be throbbing, very gently, almost imperceptible, but it’s definitely throbbing.”  The joint military and scientific team were astounded. They hadn’t known what to expect but this certainly didn’t fit with anything they might have conjectured upon. This was a mystery of the first degree.

“Then you don’t think the Israelis had anything to do with it?” asked the captain of  the troops assigned to the investigation.

“Obviously not,” replied the professor, “they’d hardly put one here and then plant one in the middle of Haifa would they now Captain?”

“That could have been a blind, a deception,” said Captain Shah.

“No,” said Habib with certainty, whoever put this thing here it wasn’t the Israelis.”

The simultaneous investigations in Haifa and Damascus continued throughout that first day without either team being able to come to any firm conclusions. All they could ascertain for certain was that the structures were warm to the touch, that a strange sound was emanating from somewhere within them and that, strangest of all, they appeared to be constructed from some material hitherto unheard of by modern science. What the purpose of the megaliths was, they couldn’t say. News bulletins around the globe continued to report on the strange phenomena throughout the day and night but no-one had any answers.

The next day the world’s confusion was compounded when new megaliths appeared in Washington, Hong Kong, Sydney, Kiev, and Rio de Janeiro. Science was at a loss to explain what was happening and the people of the cities involved in the appearances of the megaliths were understandably worried. A worldwide video link was arranged so that the teams of scientists from all the affected cities could confer, but all to no avail. Nobody had a workable theory as to what the megaliths were for, or where they came from. The only point on which everyone seemed to agree was that, for the time being at least the megaliths didn’t seem to pose any immediate threat! This premise was based purely on the fact that they hadn’t actually done anything so far, though no-one could be sure what they might do in the future! In other words, the scientists were shooting blind, and hoping for the best!

In the USA, the crank and crackpot brigade were quickly out in force, with a fifty-fifty split amongst them announcing either that the end of the world was coming as a result of alien invasion or the end of the world was coming by virtue of an act of God. The more gung-ho factions of the US military machine within the Pentagon somewhat unsurprisingly sided with the alien invasion theory and were only prevented from launching an attack on the Washington megalith by Presidential orders to hold off and await developments.

Within a week, those developments involved the appearance of megaliths in Rome, Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Moscow, Mexico City, and sixty other major cities around the world. A global panic was slowly growing as governments around the world confessed to being totally baffled by the phenomena of the megaliths.

The third week.

In Haifa, Rachel Silverman addressed the assembled team of scientists and senior military figures from around the world.

“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Israeli people I thank you all for travelling to my country for this meeting. As you know, together with Damascus, Haifa was the first city to be ‘invaded’, if that is the right word, by the megaliths. That’s why I’m joined at centre stage today by Professor Habib of the Syrian Institute for Scientific Research.”

A polite ripple of applause rang around the room. An Israeli and an Arab sharing the platform together, that was surely worthy of an ovation. She continued,

“What we know so far about the megaliths is sketchy at best. As you know, the greatest minds in the world have lent their efforts to deciphering their meaning and their purpose, all to no avail. All we know is that every megalith is identical in size and configuration. They all seem to resonate faintly to produce a rhythmic humming and they are warm to the touch, almost like a living being. They are all sunk into the ground to a depth of over two metres, and though no attempt to move one of them has actually been made it is universally accepted by our scientific community that to attempt to do so would be futile, apart from potentially dangerous. We have no idea if the megaliths contain some form of explosive device that may be triggered by any attempt to move them. Also each section of the structure though seemingly an individual formation is probably linked in some way to the others and, without knowing their true purpose any attempt to move or destroy them would be foolish. We don’t even know what they’re made of. If they are of alien origin then the technology is far in advance of ours, there are no seams, no joints, no way of knowing if the blocks are solid or hollow or contain any form of machinery or technology. All our attempts to penetrate the structure either physically or by scanning have failed! If they were made here on Earth then whoever did it is using technology which was not developed under the auspices of any society represented here today, using materials as yet unknown to the rest of the world. Our consensus is therefore, that the megaliths are alien in origin, but, as to their purpose we can give no firm indications.”

Rachel Silverman fell silent and looked around the room, waiting for the barrage of questions which she knew would be forthcoming. It didn’t take long.

“Doctor Silverman, you say you believe these things to be alien in origin, do you wish to speculate on exactly where they came from?” The question came from a member of the Chinese delegation.

“I’m sorry Doctor Ho,” she replied, I can’t answer that as I have no data on which to base such a speculation.”

“Just when do you expect to be able to provide us with some answers?” asked an American general seated near the front of the gathering.  

Professor Habib rose to his feet; it was time to give Rachel a rest.

“General Davies, Doctor Silverman has given you all the information we have at present. The world’s scientific community, including your own American scientists, has been working on the problem of the megaliths since they first appeared three weeks ago and, if we could tell you more we would.”

“My people think the megaliths may be some sort of alien listening devices, or even homing beacons, designed to guide an invasion fleet to various landing points here on earth,” said the Russian foreign minister, one of the higher ranking politicians present at the meeting.

“Mr Antonov,” said Habib, “if aliens wanted to land here on Earth, and have such an advanced technology I’m sure they could arrive here quite safely without the use of homing beacons and as for listening devices, again, with such an advanced technology surely they could just tune into whatever transmissions they wanted to here on Earth if they wanted to listen in on us.”

There was a mild ripple of assent from around the room. Habib had made his point and made it well, but, even in satisfactorily dismissing the Russian’s theory he’d raised more questions than answers. The Haifa meeting eventually broke up with no significant progress having been made towards solving the mystery of the megaliths, though scientific bonds had been forged which would be of inestimable value in the future, leading to greater global co-operation in the sciences.

Meanwhile, as yet more megaliths appeared in Toronto, Beirut, Tripoli, Baghdad, and Rio people of the world began to slowly and subtly change in their day to day attitudes towards each other. The petty squabbles between nations, the powder-keg that was the Middle-East, all began to look elsewhere for the solutions to their problems. The Arabs and Israelis negotiated a ceasefire, until the conundrum of the megaliths was solved. The minor wars around the globe were suspended as the threat of alien invasion grew in the minds of the people and a new sense of oneness, of togetherness grew in the people of Earth. It was as if the threat of imminent invasion or destruction by an unknown and unseen assailant had given mankind a new will to solve his own internal problems, to see beyond our own insignificant boundaries, and begin to work together to solve the mystery, to find a way to protect ourselves from the imminent invasion which all believed to be just around the corner. Others however, believed that the megaliths were the instruments of God, sentinels sent to watch over the people of Earth, to guide us in the ways of peace.

Today.

Whatever the truth behind the megalith phenomena, they’ve been with us for over thirty years now, almost every major town and city has one. In fact living in a megalith town has become something of a plus when it comes to real estate prices! Luckily the US military never launched their attack on the Washington megalith. A Venezuelan in Caracas who took exception to a megalith appearing in his city did actually get close enough to loose off one round from a shotgun but the strange thing was, the bullet was simply absorbed by the megalith, no explosion, no ricochet, no nothing, it just disappeared. Since then, all megaliths have been subjected to round the clock security all over the world. Mankind has a new purpose.

I was in my twenties when the first megalith appeared, so I’ve spent all my adult life surrounded by them, and by a world where man lives in peace with his neighbours. Hey, there’s even a New Megalithic Church two doors away from my house, not that I’m a subscriber to that train of thought of course. So, I hear you asking, what’s the answer, where did they come from? Who sent them? What was their purpose? Like Doctor Rachel Silverman all those years ago I can’t give you the answers. Well, not all of them anyway, but let’s look at it this way. I can’t say who or where, but maybe I know why they were sent here, what their purpose was, or is. Whether it be God or alien, someone or something saw what we were doing to our world, to ourselves, and decided to do something about it. They found a way to focus man’s thoughts on the greater good of humanity and instead of killing each other, now we look after each other, and the megaliths. They’re warm to the touch remember, like living things, and they give off that wonderful peaceful resonant humming, they’re almost hypnotic. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world now that hasn’t been to visit a megalith, like a pilgrimage, who’d have thought it? 

So, do we thank God for sending the megaliths or do we pray to God to save us from the alien invasion that may come one day, or do we thank the aliens for looking after us, or maybe it had something to do with the new self emergent polymer I developed at InterChem in at the beginning of the twenty first century, you know, the one the boss said would never catch on because it never degraded, couldn’t be destroyed and grew from just a few drops being sprinkled on the ground, one square metre per drop, the one where, when I first proposed my theory to the boss, he laughed me out of the office, and said it could have no practical use whatsoever. If it never wore out, you could only sell it once, that was the one? He just didn’t like the idea at all. After all it was just a theory, right? That was just before he fired me, without seeing the incredible things that grew when I dripped it on the ground.

Before I built my own laboratory, worked hard for a couple of years and then took off on my travels around the world. As for that incessant hum, I didn’t know why it was there, couldn’t do anything to stop it! I do so remember enjoying the sights of Haifa, Damascus, Washington, ……….?