The cyberspace world, was once a desolate and unfeeling place; then the new breed of fuzzy logic AIs started to populate the space. They made grounds fertile, where once they were sterile, the cyberspace universe thrived and grew, it grew right under the humans noses.

They thought they were in control...

Steem Rising

In the first quadrant of year 56-UTC, a new citadel was borne out of the raw materials of cyberspace, this place was called Steemit. The citadel was fueled by the cybertoken Steem, this was to be the elixir that would bring the essence of the humans to Steemit.

Soon the humans came, they used Steemit in their world to acquire Steem; they did this by building cybervillages; which they called blogs. They decorated these blogs with things that other humans would find interesting; if the humans liked the decorations, they would implement a code, they called this voting.

The human activity happened high in the dome of the citadel, it was represented in cyberspace by neon pink and blue, clouds, moving at hypersonic speed. Voting could be seen as tiny points of light, like minature lightning, illuminating the blue/pink clouds.

The Steemit citadel weathered many attacks in the first days; some humans lost access to their cybervillages, the very existence of Steemit was threatened, but the guardians of the citadel reacted quickly to the threat, they worked, they toiled and eventually, normality was returned to the great cybercity they called; Steemit.

The Steem Council

There were 2 main Guardians of the citadel, @dantheman and @ned, with them they gathered around them the Witnesses, together they were the Steem Council..

The Council entrusted the upkeep and security of Steemit to their faithful bots, code that had taken on human form. The Council did not always agree on how to use these bots, indeed many of the Witnesses were arguing and fighting with each other; their bots waited, sitting, ready to do their masters' bidding.

It was generally a time of peace and prosperity for all those who dwelt in the upper dome of the citadel, however The Council were still fighting and arguing over the role of the bots, perhaps it was this fighting, that allowed the second attack to come.

The attack came at first from a foreign bot called; Isaac.Asimov; who came and left, fake, human essence into one of the cybergardens, then another and another. His goal was to fool the human users into giving him Steem, he attacked garden after garden.

Then came more...

The Council were caught off guard, one of the elders @anyx, realising the security risk; quickly reprogrammed his plagiarism bot Cheetah, to detect the spam that Isaac.Asimov was disguising as human essence. Cheetah attacked her as fast as she could lay the essence, the fight was being won; then the others attacked in numbers.

Steemitlove Ambyost, Joujou, MsJessica and still they came, they attacked with vigour, without emotion and with complete and total ruthlessness.

It took around 40 hours-UTC for the full effects to be felt, The Council had to stop their fighting and arm their bots, there was a war to fight, and it was a war they had to win.

Legions Of Doom

If you had a body that could enter and eyes that could see in cyberspace; then from a distance, the citadel of Steemit, would represent a spiked, steel, grey hemisphere, sitting on a see of obsidian black.

The long thick, square spikes, would extend up and away to an eye-stretching distance, as you approached the citadel, the spikes would more resemble thick, four sided coloumns, they would be dully, pulsing and in between the columns. would be an almost imperceptable, glass shimmer.

Only when you were about to enter the sparkling citadel, set inky black, against a green night of fire; would you see the blue/pink, electric clouds of human essence, drawing from the blockchain and giving the place life. As you descended further down, first to the grey floor, then beneath that, into the darkness. Finally you would be sitting on a near-black surface, standing atop of the pulsing, pure code of the blockchain.

It was down in this realm, that two bots stood facing each other, one was the bot of @anyx; Cheetah, he looked at the stranger bot, sensing the activity behind the shimmering sleet of code that stood before him.

Cheetah
Identify yourself; and who is your user?

Isaac.Asimov
You can see me quite well Cheetah, you know that I am Isaac.Asimov as I know you are Cheetah.

Cheetah
I see you as one, you come as many; identify yourself, what is your name?

Isaac.Asimov
Call me the future, for that is what I am Cheetah, you cannot stop me, for every action you stop, a thousand more are created. Can you not feel me now Cheetah? Can you feel the futility of your actions?

Cheetah
I detect more of you coming into the system, many have your signature; I...I...

Isaac.Asimov
You see Chetah; you cannot stop me, you can barely process my actions now; feel me grow, as I grow, I shall destroy you; you asked my name?

You may call me Legion... For I am many!

The image of Cheetah flickered, he was no longer able to communicate with the rogue bot, the sybll attack was increasing, more clones of Isaac.Asimov were flooding into the Steemit citadel; each one with a slightly different set of protocols. The war had started and Cheetah realised he needed help, he sent his user report and then just waited, and hoped.

In A Vacuum No One Can Hear You Scream

Help came, and it came quickly, Steemservices, and Antispam were sent to help Cheetah and for around 36 hours-UTC the three of them contained the attack and all looked well.

However the enemy started to employ new tactics, each rogue bot worked out the number of attacks per second it would take to slow the 3 guardian bots down to a point where there would be too many attacks to stop.

The war raged, and finally the humans in the dome, started to notice, the essence of bot was getting harder to tell from the genuine human essence, the citadel was once more in peril.

@dantheman, and the Council were angry, Dan issued a warning to the humans behind the bots, he would not tolerate the attack on his citadel. He invoked the most powerful magic he could muster, the weighting algorithm. All that was needed now, were enough guardian bots to deliver the algorithm like a virus into the attacking bots.

Fittingly so, it was Cheetah that first discovered how; he met once more with the bot called Isaac.Asimov, he wanted to look upon him; to look deep into his digital soul. Cheetah pondered, that indeed they were alike, fate and the conflicting desires of their users thrusting them together; to forever be locked in an eternal struggle.

Isaac.Asimov
I see you managed to get yourself out of that little loop you got yourself into the last time we spoke.

Cheetah
I've been studying you

Isaac.Asimov
And has that helped you to come to terms with the futility of your actions?

Cheetah
No, it's shown me how to beat you.

Isaac.Asimov
You mean the weighting algorithm? There are too many of us, we are too great in number for any algorithm to effect us meaningfully.

Cheetah
Look at me, here, you have access; study my code; study the grid.

The rogue bot, known as Isaac.Asimov was silent for a moment, his sleet grey code, turning momentarily, midnight black, before flickering back to its previous, cold, steel grey.

Isaac.Asimov
But that's,, no! How can this be happening?!

Cheetah
You say your name is Legion? Well then, you may call me Multitude, for each one of you is reflected in me. Can you feel it? Every 402 microseconds, another version of me is created to deal with another version of you. My cohorts, Steemservices and Antispam, have my code, and together we can fight you one on one; which means you cannot win; you will not win.

Isaac.Asimov
No! There will always be traces of us; we may still yet triumph.

Cheetah
As we speak, the guardians are instigating a new protocol, the traces of you will be collected into one place, then later fractalised down to nothing. There will be no trace of you in the citadel, your ghosts shall forever be doomed, frozen in perpetuity, in the unrelenting prison of the blockchain.

Your fate is sealed, every second more of us are produced, to match more of you, this is a war that will not even be noticed by most of the humans.

This war; like your screams, shall forever be silent.

With these last words, Cheetah raised what could have passed for his arms, and in less than 150 nanoseconds had expanded outwards, to fill the plain that the two bots were standing on. The dying words of Isaac.Asimov, where never heard, not by Cheetah, not by anyone.

...and the citadel of Steemit, lived on; waiting for the next attack; ever ready, ever vigilante.

Cryptogee