"Outside of existence, in an infinite pocket of nothingness lies ... something ... it endlessly expands upon itself, ever busy, doing ... something ... ceaseless and tireless, incomprehensible and inhuman ... up until now no one even knew it existed. Even confronted with it's existence, it's origins, function and purpose is entirely alien to us and a complete and total mystery. Perhaps it has no purpose and is just pure unadulterated orderly chaos, or perhaps it does have a purpose, but if so it's one no mere mortal could ever fathom! I fear it will not only outlive us ... but will one day be all that remains ... and in that final darkness it shall continue, calculating ... I dare not imagine it will ever be done..." - Final Transmission of crew 841-112C
The Xicohtlxul is an extremely large finite recursively extensible self-assembling artificial "archverse" of unknown origin, design, and purpose. It exists at an infinitely precise infinitesimal infinite-dimensional coordinate in a literal infinitely large subfinite void situated somewhere within The Outside. It exists in a special ∛∞ sized perfect existence-0 vacuum known simply as The Lugubrigothic Speck. It's exact location is a carefully guarded secret, but it is general knowledge that it resides somewhere between Our Omniverse and The Outershell, in a forbidden region of The Outside, known as The Deadzone, somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 ξ.
Xicohtlxul is a dynamic verse which is engaged in some sort of automated archverse creating process, replicating what are called hypermodules, to create higher level hypermodules, in a complex pre-determined recursive process. It is ever growing and yet always remains exactly the same size relative to the Lugubrigothic speck.
Although it is finite in size ... this isn't saying much. It is VASTLY larger than any hyperverse, or even such abberations as rintaverses. As an engineered artificial "verse", hyperverses represent only the basal component of this monstrosity. Perverting the laws of The Outside, it's a verse that doesn't create lower level verses, but constantly creates larger verses, by copying and modifying itself to create a higher EUSI-verse each time. This process is chaotic and unpredictable, leading to a fractal like flourishing that has been going on for some untold amount of time. It's size is difficult to estimate for various reasons, but researchers have been able to gather that it must contain at least 3^3{3^^^3&#}3 modules. At very least, due to the fact that it's size is a function of it's own code, we know it's size must necessarily be a computable number. Unfortunately researchers do not understand it's operation well enough to actually determine it's size this way. The entirety of the facility has never been observed but it is believed to form an irregular fractal complex in 27 dimensions.
Discovery[]
Xicohtlxul was discovered approximately 9x10^81 OYC's ago purely by "freak" accident. Some early barrel engineers were trying to make travel from The Outershell research facilities to the Omniverse easier. By some unknown computer error the precise coordinates of Xicohtlxul were entered into the Barreldrive and the hapless travellers instantly found themselves teleported within the heart of the complex. The chances of finding Xicohtlxul by accident are literally infinitely improbable. For this reason, it was almost immediately suspected that it was no accident at all, but that Xicohtlxul wanted to be found. Though how or why was never spoken, and even this suspicion was often said only in whispers and was considered superstitious. Later findings however suggest this might not have been as crazy an idea as it first seemed.
Those who entered the verse never left, but they left cryptic transmissions which relayed the coordinates and some information about the place.
There were no residents found within the artificial environs. Still there was clearly intentionality in every single molecule of the place as noted by several reliable metrics. The place apparently contains a thin breathable atmosphere, and it apparently admits a low and sonorous din and strange clicking noises can be heard echoing throughout it's virtually infinite corridors. The environment is extremely cold, being only about 100 degrees Celsius above Absolute Zero. The heat that does exist seems to be the result of a constant operation of flows of particles throughout its vast matrix. It was also noted that the temperature was unbelievably stable, and it was believed the facility was very carefully monitering the temperature and making micro-adjustments as needed.
Later investigation revealed that the facility very carefully controls the instantiation of verses in it's vicinity, preventing their spontaneous occurrence, and also acts to counter-act the nothingness of the surrounding void.
Origins and Age[]
It's origins, purpose and function are completely unknown. The age of the facility is impossible to gauge as it constantly renews itself, discarding decaying particles with new ones from the void. Although it is not an absolute certainty, it is theoretically possible that the facility is effectively immortal and will continue operation for as long as it remains undisturbed. That said, given it's finite size and it's growth, attempts have been made to work backwards to find when it would have been created. This process is complicated however by several factors. Firstly it does not grow at any steady rate, instead growing chaotically in size as new forms of recursion get introduced with time. Secondly there are mysterious lull periods in which it apparently stops growing for unspecified long durations, before starting up again to expand. No one actually knows why or what exactly its doing, but it is theorized that it expands it's capacity as the need arises.
In any case, it is believed to loooong predate the omniverse ... so much so that our normal scales of omniversal time are quite useless for comparison. It's age is likely proportional to its very size, approximately. It may have in fact seen the comings and goings of as many omniverses as it's got modules. It's very precise infinite-dimensional coordinates would have kept it safely hidden from view unless it had wanted to be found in all that time.
Speculated Purpose and Final Fate[]
The research indicates that Xicohtlxul is likely an ancient "hypercomputer" built by some kind of pre-omniversal entities, possibly not even organic or even physical. Apparently tasked with some enormous calculation it has been left to maintain and develop itself unabated by time and creation. It has been determined to be running several smaller programs as well. Why a civilization would build such a thing, when clearly, given its design and nature, they could not have been ignorant of the scale of the endeavor, and would surely have known that its operation would outlast any imaginable timeframe of their survival, is unknown. Perhaps it got out of their control and they simply abandoned it to its own devices. Regardless, it is known that the program it's running, whatever it was actually for, is completely irrevocable. Any attempt to terminate it, or attempts to overwrite it's data, will simply be met with it ignoring the requests and correcting any corrupted data and continuing unabated. Given it's ability to self repair and grow extremely rapidly, as well as observed redundancies, it's basically unstoppable. No one knows what happens when and if it ever actually completed its program, but no doubt it has some way of making it's output state accessible upon completion. It is believed it will take so long to complete this calculation that not only will it completely outlive our own omniverse, but it will actually never complete it, somehow eventually succumbing to entropy itself and vanishing before its done. An even scarier possibility is that one day it will complete its program ... and nothing will remain to ever know what it is ...
Operation[]
Preliminary investigations revealed it works on some kind of ternary based system. Cubic units called modules, replicate themselves in patterns of 3x3x3 assemblies, which repeat themselves over and over again, by converting existence-0 states into existence-1 states. Duplication of components replicates everything down to the minutest detail, including all memory banks. Some algorithm is then run, that makes slight modifications, and the process repeats itself onto higher and higher levels.
Point of No Return[]
Once one arrives there it is basically impossible to leave as it is barrel resistant. Although there are apparently shuttle routes out of the facility, it is so large that even with the speed accelerating exponentially, one never actually leaves the facility. All known individuals who have entered The Xicohtlxul are believed to have either died of hypothermia or commited suicide from being unable to escape the exceptionally large and maddening facility. It was eventually discovered that it was possible to send and receive transmissions from Xicohtlxul through some kind of command prompt, furthering the hypothesis it was intended as some kind of computer system. Requests of blueprints and even recordings of the interior were granted without complaint by what is suspected to be a sentience within the system, which the investigators call "Lord Calculohn", somewhat tongue-in-cheek. As a test of it's capabilities, it was sent commands to compute all the decimal digits of Graham's Number, with a specific Sector, called G* devoted to the task. It has been working on this ever since, now googols of OYC's into its program. So far in all this time it has only managed to complete up to 3^^4. It is currently working towards computing 3^^5, but it is believed the Omniverse will long pass away before it's complete.
Xicohtlxul is running several unknown alien programs in addition to this, possibly not created by the original creators, but requested by other omniversal civilizations before our own. Investigators believe it's main program, the one that has been running since it was first built, and the one most of it's memory banks and processors are irrevocably committed to completing is a certain combinatorial problem involving three colored graphs, hence the unusual ternary configuration. It is believed to be brute forcing a solution to the problem, in order to find an exact answer and then provide a highly tight upperbound on the answer that can be described in a tiny fragment of data. Xicohtlxul is not a fast computer by any means, rather it is simply patient ... and vast ... thus solving both time and space limitations for normal computers. None the less signals between hyperversal modules within Xicohtlxul are believed to be able to alter the speed of light allowing it to grow exponentially in order to save time. This however ends up making little difference and computations still take a virtual eternity to complete.
Conjectured Size[]
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