Ok,i'm taking a chance on the monolith being useful in 9e as opposed to the BUST* it was in 8e.
Not wanting to give
gw the 100 or so $ they'll no doubt want for the new one I tracked down and ordered a used one from a store i trust. It's assembled and black primed only apparently.
It's on it's way.
I was wondering about some way to do the death ray option on it and was thinking of a type of shroud that would go over the existing gauss arc barrels to make them look different. (The other plan is to simply tell the oter player that it's an original monolith that was assembled when there was no option for deathrays but it is armed with them and relying on the other player to be reasonable.
Option 3 is to use them as gauss arcs given the vastly improved range and power of the gauss arcs now

and use the equally improved particle whip for nutcracking.
So if any of you modeling wizards have any ideas on some type of barrel cover to make the gauss arcs on the original monolith count as death rays I'd interested in your wisdom.
*Big Ugly Slow Target.