Three thousand one

3001: Another Space Odyssey by J.B. Pravda

The science officer had never seen anything like it on any other world:
the monolithic phenomenon was essentially inert, apparently solid yet
weightless and emitting a monotonous signal way off the decibel scale;
in the official report a chilling conclusion had been reached-----"The
object in question must be a prop from that Kubrick flick we
intercepted back a few years, the one where the Earth creatures try to
figure out who/what we were when our agent, HAL, gets really pissed
with them and their paranoid little reptilian brains and wastes them.
Postscript: Kubrick now works for us in the PR section."