I remember- as a very young man- that my father told me about Callaghan, whom he had met. Reading the file again tonight, I recall the way my father discussed his manifold weaknesses, his rather closed mind- but also his open and generous spirit, his kindness to those less fortunate (or perhaps those he deemed less fortunate!), and his sudden change of heart shortly before the Snarling Coup, when he disavowed a great part of his travelogue after finding something in the archives at Tabriz. Specifically, he claimed that SCP-3986 had been far more significant than he had previously thought- that it was indeed the grave of Genghis Khan, and that he would return there posthaste for a final discovery.

He wrote down what he found, but it was lost- some time, we think, during the Snarling Coup. And it was perhaps this which led us, for the longest time, to believe SCP-3986 affected by the anafabula. The seventh piece lost, a place apparently expunged from the world- it was not hard to conjure up a theory where Callaghan was a fantasist who had invented the observatory, following on from the many fictions of previous centuries- because, in keeping with the ideas about the conflation of myth and history in the 60s and 70s, we were disdainful of the observatory's existence. And so the observatory became a piece of myth, observed in various other works, and deleted from existence.

But this wasn't how the anafabula worked, and we should have recognised that. Indeed, I began to be troubled by how many of the authors already described the observatory as hidden or lost. I was the one- in the face of considerable opposition- who insisted on giving the observatory its own file, its own number, creating the project. But our searches turned up nothing, and for a time I thought that I had led the Foundation on a wild goose chase, some errant quest for my own personal fantasy.

But then I found it. For me, it appeared in southern Russia, on a steppe that had once been Tatar but had become settled, Christian, modern. The grass- which some earlier observer would have seen as the hellish ground of northern savages, or the romantic freedom of the nomads, or some other such thing- was now mere grass, an explicable and unromantic thing, discussed in terms of economics or history or geography. It was explained; it was made modern.

And within that rose the steps of cobalt and a mountain of black stone. And I rose, giddy with excitement, my recording devices ready to snap all, hear all. Like any dutiful Foundation researcher- even one old and frail and withering, as I was- I wanted to bring it all back to my superiors, to advance the cause of knowledge.

So, I reached the top- and stopped. There was the observatory, one which resembled the technological marvels at the cutting edge of American science. There were its inhabitants, friendly, reticent, frightfully learned. And there was a sheet of- well, I know of no way to describe it other than "strange", as truthful and as flawed a description as all my predecessors.

I learnt nothing there. I asked desperately for that one burning question- "What did it all mean?"- but the inhabitants just looked at me oddly, quizzically. I was irrelevant to them. They were on the ceiling of the world, and had bigger concerns- their scholarship, the mapping of the heavens, the truth of the cosmos.

But like the good researcher that I was, I needed to know. How did this place exist? Why was it here? What had caused the conqueror of the world and his companions to set him here, to build-or occupy- this observatory? Why would anyone live here? Where did they get their food?

And so I went to the glass, and looked into the Khan's eyes, staring up at the sky, and I laughed. Because it doesn't matter. This place had a meaning, or meanings. In the darkness of the world, in the mysteries of its age, there is some purpose, but it is lost. It doesn't matter. Half a dozen utopias are described in the pages of the file, by men with different concerns to us. They sought to create, use, contextualise; they sought to bind this place, this miracle, into a single unity, a single meaning. They wanted to define it and give it meaning. We, in our modern way, want to do the same.

Well. To hell with all that, and since I'm dying, to hell with all of you, too. I don't know who made it or why. All I know is that it's beautiful, and has inspired men of great talent and of none to spill ink across the page. This is the observatory of Genghis Khan, and that's all it needs to be; a sublime mystery which you will never understand, you bunch of calcified researchers. For the rest of the day- and the two days beyond that I stayed there-, I sat, read, drank qumis and imbibed opium, laughed and read and stared at the sky, at the twinkling of that which is beyond our comprehension. I talked with Afshar and Ibn Ubayd and Li and all the rest. And when I descended, I was happy; not because I knew, but because I knew not.

I am going now. My time will come soon. I wish you all the happiness in the world, dear reader.