The Franklin Monolith

I saw it standing vertically in the middle of the Lehigh River. With a camera slung around my shoulder, I decided to divert from my walk down the trail to inspect the steel object. The boat launch below the bridge seemed to provide a better view. Not to mention, it provided me the opportunity to get closer to the anomaly that stuck out from the bottom of the river. As I made my way down to the boat launch, stepping over tree roots and embedded rocks, my deceased professor haunted my thoughts. I kept thinking, “He would’ve loved to see this.” 

A devoted astrophysicist, Dr. Franklin served as an adjunct professor at the University of South Jersey. He aimed to inspire and lead my classmates and I to think critically and creatively just as he did; allowing imagination to manifest itself fully and lead us to new discoveries. His personal thinking led him to conjure a belief in the existence of parallel universes. That in turn played a role in his presumed death seven days ago when he conducted a revolutionary experiment with four fellow researchers. They believed that some black holes acted as portals that led to other worlds in the multiverse. Following critical thinking and much research, they replicated a “portal” black hole, and a machine designed to send their bodies through it, atom-by-atom. All five were pronounced dead two hours after emergency services responded to an explosion at Dr. Franklin’s lab in the university’s basement level. Based on what I’ve heard, the machine used to cultivate the portal commenced a self-destruct sequence that caused an explosion resulting in the black hole’s destruction. As expected, no bodies were found. A memorial service to honor all five men took place two days before I embarked on a personal trip to the Lehigh Gorge to clear my mind. 

Many convinced themselves that the spirits of the five men ascended into Heaven. I disagree, and I don’t mean to say they were condemned to Hell. While driving from my home in South Jersey to the hotel in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, I thought deeply about what may have happened to the five spirits. Perhaps they crossed the homemade portal and never returned. Whatever the case, I was not convinced that they died and went straight to the afterlife. 

When I reached the boat launch, I spent five minutes snapping photos of the monolith. My eyes were enchanted by its glistening apparition while it stood under the golden sun. A few other passersby stopped to take a look at it. From across the river, people who took a short walk through the old railroad tunnel emerged and studied it from the cliff that stood above the river. They took out their phones and snapped pictures of it to share with the world. Bikers who rode across the bridge stopped in their paths to get a glimpse of it. Sensing more people come down to the boat launch to see it from where I stood, I snapped my last shots and left. I continued my walk up the trail and kept thinking about the monolith. In a matter of minutes, my mind drifted to the possible correlation it had with the parallel universe Franklin and his men tried to enter. Many speculate monoliths to be steel structures forged and placed randomly by extraterrestrial life. I did not rule out that possibility, but I didn’t think that was the case. It seemed too simple. Too vague of an explanation for something so bizarre. Especially since five astrophysicists died a few days before the monolith appeared in the river. 

Originally meant as a means to clear my mind, I found myself in a trance of overthinking while walking. Thankfully, the railroad that runs parallel to the trail rolled by just as I took a seat at a nearby bench. It provided a temporary yet necessary distraction as it passed. I waved to the engineer as he propelled a vintage steam locomotive down the line with a train of tourists in tow. As the last car, a bright red caboose passed, I fell back into deep thought. The train never stopped, so I assumed its passengers had little time to take out their phones or cameras and snap a shot of the monolith. On second thought, I wasn’t sure if any of them saw it. The train crossed a bridge that stood on the left side of the pedestrian bridge where I crossed and spotted it. Perhaps this neighboring bridge obstructed their view. Either way, those who stopped along the trail to see it got their photographic evidence. Inevitably, the monolith would end up on the internet and draw a lot of attention. 

The next day, I awakened in my hotel room to find that my prediction came true. Additionally, it seemed as though local authorities responded quickly to the monolith sighting, and made plans to remove it. I sprung from bed and made haste to return to the trail to get one last look at it before it was removed. But by the time I got to the bridge, I saw that an effort to remove it was already underway. A crew of crane operators prepared an attempt to hoist the steel object from the bottom of the lake and pull it out. Some of the men had gone underwater to dig the monolith out from where it was placed. Whoever, or whatever placed it there made sure to secure it deeply in the mud and rocks at the bottom of the river. 

It didn’t take long for the crew to remove the monolith from where it stood and harness it to  the crane’s cables. Within minutes, the machine’s operator began lifting the object from the water. The effort seemed to go as planned despite some apparent hesitation from the machine. It seemed as though the monolith was a bit heavier than anyone expected. When the crane started to swivel the object around to place it on the dry grounds of the boat launch, the cables began straining harder than before. I filmed using my camera and watched in horror as the cables eventually snapped. The operator fled from the cab as the monolith pulled the machine into the river by its long, steel arm. A few early-morning passersby rushed to where I stood on the bridge to see what happened. The monolith now laid diagonally out of the water, still tangled in some of the crane’s broken cables. Beside it, the machine spewed smoke from its engine while it sat on its side in the river. Its crew held their heads and cursed as they studied the aftermath of their failed attempt in disbelief. 

Once again, my professor haunted my thoughts. I reconsidered the correlation of his disappearance and the appearance of the monolith. I also reminded myself of the common speculation that monoliths were crafted and randomly placed by extraterrestrial life. Again, I considered the proposition too vague. Not to mention, too limiting. More than ninety percent of the population hears the word “extraterrestrial,” and automatically thinks it refers to life on other planets within our universe. I think such life can be found anywhere in the multiverse. That is to say, both in this universe and many others. Perhaps Dr. Franklin made it to the other side of his homemade black hole. There’s a chance he and his men encountered extraterrestrial life in whatever universe they arrived in. 

One other thing that comes to mind is the fact that their spirits had no body to enter into when they reached their destination. I’m not superstitious, nor do I rule out the possibility that their spirits possessed inanimate objects. But these things put together led me to conjure this proposition: Dr. Franklin’s spirit wound up inside the inanimate body of a monolith. One that life in the parallel universe was preparing to send to Earth. I never considered why exactly aliens would send monoliths to Earth, and I won’t waste time speculating on that idea now. The important thing to note is how the effort to remove the Franklin Monolith from his place failed. When he was alive, many inevitably denied his speculation and beliefs about the multiverse and its respective individual universes. They told him he had no realistic proof of such things. Having established his place in the middle of the Lehigh River, he must have used this opportunity to communicate to them the final word. 

“There is a multiverse. I’ve seen for myself a parallel world within it. This is what happened to me when I was there.” 

For all I know, this could all be getting to my head. But I can’t ignore the possible correlation between the experiment’s failure and the failure to remove the monolith that appeared in the middle of the river. Either I allowed imagination to drive me to madness and irrational thinking, or it helped me make sense of something that really happened. Something that many others will never believe.