TL;DR - Write a story based on a random opening sentence. Due in a week. 1000 words max. Post a link in the comments if you want.
This 2012 challenge from Terrible Minds was based on an opening sentence. A slightly random and silly one. This site will do a nice job for you, setting you up with a strange mix of words to challenge your creativity. It’s fun.
The original sentence was “The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber.”
My story is below, 644 words
The Android and the Wondering Chamber
The noticed android walks past a wondering chamber.
He doesn’t want to be noticed. His goal is for the systems to see him as just another general-purpose android on its way to a mundane task. As opposed to one that’s been enhanced to be a trained assassin. Enhanced not only physically, with increased strength and offensive weapons, but also mentally, with the ability to go beyond simple logic choices, to make judgment calls, and even follow a hunch.
All these changes have to be hidden very carefully on this mission, in order to get past the security systems in this military base. He has no problem ensuring that he looks and acts like all the other androids. A bigger challenge is ensuring that the internal changes in his operating system don’t show up as anomalies in any of his external data streams. Anomalies due to some side effects of his enhancements—they have also added emotions, and an awareness of himself as something more than an android.
The chamber sends him a status request, asking for his ID and current task. Just a routine check, but he can still feel a targeting beam on his back, just in case he fails the test. He already has a verification data burst ready, but needs to add in today’s security code. As part of his mission preparation, he’d already downloaded an extensive database of base schematics and door codes, all stolen of course, but he doesn’t have the current day’s ID code. He notices a small maintenance robot by the wall and quickly sends a spoofed query to it, asking it to resend its last security response. Already, the chamber is growing impatient, sending him another query and activating the nearest gun platform. He grabs the code from the robot’s reply, adds it to the message packet, and fires it off. Milliseconds later, the security system sends a simple acknowledgement, and he’s no longer a focus for it.
He routes another message through the helpful maintenance robot, requesting a routine check of the personnel tracking system. His target is on the same level, heading his way, as it does every day at this time. This is a perimeter corridor, seldom used, with a row of windows overlooking the surrounding rainforest. He quickly glances sideways as he passes one, taking a snapshot of the image outside, appreciating the bright sun, the blue sky, the vibrant colours of the jungle. He remembers the rich, pungent smells as he approached the base, the sun warming his back, the soil crunching underfoot, the transparent blue wings on a passing butterfly.
He interrupts his musings for a quick status check. His target, resplendent in a general’s braid, is just entering the other end of the corridor. A few paces closer is a clerk, juggling a tray of coffees and snacks as she approaches. Once she passes, he’ll make his attack. He’ll generate an EMP pulse to blind the sensors, hit the target with a microshot of toxin—delayed and undetectable—and carry on to the exit and back outside.
He’s just returned to his daydreaming when a sudden cry brings him back to reality. The clerk has stumbled, spilling hot coffee on herself. Still wide open inside, he feels a flood of emotions sweep over him. Guilt, that he didn’t see her fumble in time to help her, empathy that she is hurt, panic, that he’s feeling emotions. He cuts his data broadcast, but it’s too late; it’s already sent out a corrupted signal. The base’s security systems go to full alert, sending an override that locks his legs and arms. He knows he can’t afford to let them access his internal data, with all its codes and mission contacts, so his only option is to reluctantly initiate a complete internal reformat.
His last memory is of a butterfly's delicate wings.