Well folks, we just might have evidence of ALIENS after-all!
The original monolith appeared before a tribe of apes a few million years ago on the plains of Africa.
Some of the apes touched it and... it somehow made them smarter... smart enough to invent a club as a weapon... and start them on the long slow climb to technology.
Then in the modern year of 2001 scientists discovered a source of energy from a location on the moon... so they went and dug down into the Lunar soil to find out what it was.. and discovered another buried monolith.When the astronauts touched this one it sent a powerful signal out to the edge of our solar system! Scientists discovered the signal was sent to Jupiter and we naturally had to build a spaceship to go out and see what was out there.
After they got there (and managed to kill their insane ship-board mainframe computer during the voyage) they found... ANOTHER MONOLITH!
This monolith sent the last remaining astronaut to a mysterious place where there was:ANOTHER MONOLITH: