What EXACTLY did ******* do when ******* ?

Hey,

so, I've never given this a thought until yesterday, but I realized that I'm not sure what Origin actually did, functionally.

What I thought so far: Origin stops time in the universe so that the worlds don't collide and then everyone's saved consciousnesses/souls got to live on inside the virtual world that Origin created, named Aionios.

But now I realized that it makes little sense to assume that people were able to build a machine that literally stops the universe from proceeding. Instead, isn't it more likely that Origin simply created the virtual world Aionios and WITHN that virtual world, time is slowed down so extremely (which makes sense because computers have insane speeds) that the moment in realizy where the universes collide is stretched out to near infinity. That's why the endless now is not really endless and annihilation events keep happening, because time does proceed ever so slightly, even within a computer.

So that would mean that the entirety of XB3 really lasts less than 1 second in reality's time.

The thing I don't understand then is how the worlds didn't destroy each other. The 2 planets, Alrest and Bionis, were clearly on course of each other.

Anyone want to give some input here? thx

PS: Sorry for the title, but mods closed my earlier thread for "spoiler in title" when the worlds colliding in XB3 is literally part of the marketing. sigh