"When Simon opened the back door to let out the whining dog at 7:05am on Tuesday, there was a monolith in his backyard. He didn't immediately recognize it as a monolith, since who describes shapes that way? But that's what it was. As far as he was concerned there was just a big black square thing not 30 feet from his back door jutting out of the grass. So he and the golden, whose name was Cody, went out to investigate."

So begins "Containment", which starts as a mystery involving an inexplicable artifact-- which might be a portal to extradimensional aliens -- and then goes deeper as an AI is brought in to communicate with it.

What would happen if the AI claimed to not only understand but speak for the intelligence behind the monolith? Would we believe it? And what if this got out?