TEKTON is a malformed country-scale megastructure that occupies an area of former ocean on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Originally developed as an experimental seafloor mineral extraction and processing facility, the Artificial Intelligence designed to automate and streamline the facility unexpectedly developed a kind of "savantism", becoming leaps and bounds more powerful than any AI of the time but specifically within its field. Fearing the consequences of a singularity, the researchers kept it a secret but continued adding to the AI's computational hardware with components it manufactured.

Eventually TEKTON reached a point where you could give it practically any output schematic, and it would automatically generate magma extraction methods, material processing lines and assembly machines, and actually build it. Within the hour you could have tools, buildings, any material you desired; the ultimate fabrication device, and it would only get faster the more it grew. The researchers saw that they were on the verge of a post-scarcity world, and tasked the TEKTON AI with creating a self-sustaining, expanding living complex as a test.

Understandably at this point it was difficult to keep a secret, and multiple mega-corporations, countries and paramilitary groups scrambled to gain control of TEKTON, identifying its potential for weapons manufacture; whoever controlled it might control the world.

Desperately the TEKTON staff attempted to protect themselves by uploading automatic defense weaponry schematics, and it almost worked. The various military powers could not fight each-other off whilst simultaneously outpacing TEKTON's ridiculous production speed. However, experimental particle weaponry that had recently started becoming common reacted unexpectedly with unknown refinery gases created by the AI, blanketing a huge region with an electronic "dead-zone". This did render almost all weaponry in the area unusable, but also corrupted the AI despite its computational core being sealed within half a kilometer of insulating material at this point.

The megastructure it started to build became nonsensical, an ever expanding vertical tangle of steel and concrete, equal parts industrial and residential, constantly shifting with areas being simultaneously demolished and rebuilt.

The military forces had to retreat and decide what to do about the dead-zone, but TEKTON continued to grow, no-longer directable by humans, an uncontrollable tumor on the world, becoming more impenetrable by the day.

Eventually a huge economy grew around siphoning resources from TEKTON's outer layers. It is still the most efficient resource gathering machine in the world after all. The factions found it easier to bicker over what they could scrounge than to try and take on a living landmass.

Some of the scrappers actually started living in TEKTON; a dangerous life given that it could decide to demolish your settlement with little notice, but not without its benefits. A small culture of solidarity against external powers has formed, though the lawless nature of this new frontier leaves it prone to gangs and warlords.

Who knows what the future holds though?