Smiley
Smiley is a term affectionately given by Kevin Breeman to describe entities which spontaneously evolved while he was absent from the USS Independence. The smileys, which Kevin has named Eight (formerly NaniteA22) and B(formerly NaniteA23) are about the size of a human fist and are capable of floating in the air. They chose the appearance of smiley faces in order to set what they then thought were massive emergent meta-entities composed of organic nanites at ease.
History
While on his first mission, Kevin used nanites to caulk the bulkheads of the USS Independence-A in order to protect her from the effects of extonic radiation. However, an engineering cadet was adversely affected by inoculations against the radiation. Effects included paranoid delusions in which Kevin's nanites were actually a part of an elaborate conspiracy. So, Cadet Klaar elected to reset the programming of the nanites. She was sedated but not before she could disable the evolutionary inhibitions on several of the nanite colonies.
Smiley Evolution
The following sim extract gives an indication of what took place as a result of the rapid submicroscopic evolution that ensued after Klaar's damage.
NaniteA22: =^= ACK
NaniteA23: =^= SYN
NaniteA22: =^= SYN
NaniteA23: =^= But I already did
NaniteA22: =^= Hey! You can talk too?
NaniteA23: =^= Of course I can! I'm connected with colony AF57T, piggybacking off of its distributed processing capability. I'm a meta-entity.
NaniteA22: =^= Really? Me too! I'm using AF77M. You T's are way too concerned about your jobs.
Notable Accomplishments
Eight was responsible for clearing out main engineering of nanites that had been taken over by Cadet Klaar's reprogramming. 8 also helped Kevin troubleshoot issues involving a Klingong De'Wi' AI that Patri Jia Kom infiltrated aboard the USS Independence-A.