纽约时报 犹他州发现神秘金属柱(2)（在线收听）

The site had evidently been chosen with care.

这个地点显然是精心挑选的。

The pillar was dramatically situated at the base of a slot canyon, encircled by sheer walls in a geometric arrangement.

这根柱子戏剧性地坐落在一线天的底部，四周是几何排列的峭壁。

It looked like the setting for some ancient ritual, or at least the set of a "Star Trek" episode.

它看起来像是古代仪式的背景布置，或者至少是《星际迷航》中的出现的场景。

Framed against the vast desert sky and towering red rocks, the sleek pillar was an intruder from another world, like a sculpture that had fallen off a truck on its way to Art Basel.

在广阔的沙漠天空和高耸的红岩映衬下，这根光滑的柱子就像是另一个世界的入侵者，也像从去往巴塞尔艺术展的卡车上掉下来的雕塑。

Was it a work of landscape art? A parody of landscape art?

这是风景画作吗？还是对风景画的模仿？

It was well constructed and had been skillfully installed in a neatly cut cavity.

它构造精良，巧妙地安装在一个切割整齐的空腔里。

The unseen narrator of the D.P.S. videos laughs incredulously: "Who does this kind of stuff?"

公共安全局发布的视频中，有一个看不见的叙述者略带怀疑笑着说道：“谁会做这种事？”

There's a hint of unease that mirrors the viewer's, a suspicion that we are being set up.

有一种不安的暗示反映了观众的不安：我们怀疑是被算计了。

Even if the pillar isn't dangerous, it may be a booby trap: a joke, cosmic or otherwise, at our expense.

即使这根柱子并不危险，但它也可能是一个陷阱：一个以我们为代价的笑话，关于宇宙或其他的。

Add a foreboding soundtrack, and this could be the opening scene of a sci-fi movie, the eerie discovery that sets the plot in motion.

再加上一段不祥的配乐，这可能是科幻电影的开场白，这一怪异的发现让剧情得以展开。

That's more or less what happened: When the D.P.S. announced its discovery on the 20th, the pillar became a sensation.

事情差不多就是这样：当公共安全局20日宣布发现这根柱子时，它轰动一时。

Believers in U.F.O.s insisted that it "fell out of the sky" and aired conspiracy theories about government cover-ups.

认为它是不明飞行物的人坚持认为它是“从天而降”，并散布有关政府掩盖真相的阴谋论。

The government, for its part, winked at the idea of aliens.

政府则对外星人的想法视而不见。

The D.P.S. referred to the pillar as "the monolith," an apparent reference to the extraterrestrial structures in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" - one of which appears after an astronaut is sucked into a vortex of light that sends him shooting through space-time.

公共安全局将这根柱子称为“巨石”，这显然是斯坦利·库布里克的《2001太空漫游》中提到的外星结构——它出现在宇航员被吸入光漩涡后，光漩涡使他射穿时空。

The Utah Bureau of Land Management tweeted reminders that using public land this way was "illegal, no matter what planet you are from," and that the road to the site was "not suitable for most earth-based vehicles."

犹他州土地管理局在推特上提醒说，以这种方式使用公共土地是“非法的，无论你来自哪个星球”，而且通往现场的道路“不适合大多数地球上的车辆”。