This is a story I cooked up during one HR induction session in Infy. Of course, I’ve added some more details now. You may like it. You may hate it. It might make you go gaga about me. You may waste your valuable minutes on it. You have been warned.

I wanted to go on search of the Philosopher’s Stone. Just because I was curious, you know! Some fool told me it was with an alchemist.

I chuckled. Lots of al’s in Chemistry. Alchemist, alloy, allotrope, aldehyde. I went to Arabia in search of the alchemist. I found out that what I was looking for was not an alchemist; I was looking for an answer. I found out that the alchemist was not a person; it was a thing, some sort of cup. You may thing this is exactly opposite to the explanation of “Holy Grail” in “The Da Vinci Code”. I further found out that the answer was waiting in the Great wall of China.

I stole a Harley Davidson from Sheikh Yasim Khalid Al Mubarak Mahdani and rode towards China. It was a 20 mile long, single track plush ride with all you ever wanted on a ride; a long trenchcoat, a cool pair of sunglasses, (like the one Neo wears in The Matrix) Nitrous Boosters, booze and Guns…Lots of Guns. And some things which I didn’t want; I’ll mention them later.

Anyway, I was riding. I could not resist doing a “Superman” on the edge of Himalayan peaks (If you don’t know what “Superman” is, go watch X-games Dirt rides) and I fell on my ass. My “slick” slick tires are not worth crap on wet slippery surfaces of the Himalayas. I had thought “I’m dealing with a 1200cc rocket engined bike. I will just ride over it.” So I fell. Luckily it didn’t even hurt me because I had a nutter behind me who was downright pain in the ass; much bigger than the current pain in the ass.

I guzzled a bottle of beer. I figured if I was boozing it up, I might as well do it proper, so I drank further. I also had a block of Frag, the pungent cheese from Liverpool, so I gobbled up that too.

I rode for 3 more hours. I reached Great Wall. There I saw David Copperfield The Magician walking through the 20 foot thick wall there. Man…The booze was doing its job. Nobody can walk through a stone wall.

I felt dizzy. It was blurring. Then it was black.

I woke up at a Shaolin monastery. A monk was sitting near me. He said, “Yo dude! Came in search of philosopher’s stone in China? Does not exist. A fly doesn’t buzz past China without the Shaolin monks knowing it. Now scoot back to your place. You’ll find your friggin’ answer there.

I returned broken-hearted. I passed through a bamboo forest when I felt a sense of deja vu. A black cat just crossed the road. And a similar one crossed exactly like the first one. At the same time, I felt my head grow heavy. I thought, “Funny!”

I went on. I rounded a corner and there was a babe taking a rest on the side of the groomed singletrack previously mentioned. I pulled over and offered her a drink, she of course accepted. It turned out she was a pro hacker, and happened to know the whereabouts of the alchemist.

Then we went to the 5 mile long downhill segment which is a 75 degree slope. When we reached the valley, she suddenly jumped from the back of my bike. She went high up in the air. Everything was slowing down. She was going up slowly. She did a couple of somersaults at 100ft height and came back down. She landed smoothly as a cat, one leg stretched to her side.

She said, “This…Something is wrong with this…”
I said, “What the…”
Then it suddenly happened.
A giant panda jumped in front of me. It appeared that he came straight from my head. He jumped, held his skin near his adam’s apple with his right hand and shook his head twice; as if he was adjusting his tie. Wait a minute. He looked exactly like an agent. Black body looking like a black 3-piece suit. White face. And black eyes looking like a pair of cool sunglasses.

He said, “So you want the stone and the cup Mr. Anderson? What are you gonna do now? Hear the sound of inevitability???”

I replied, “I’m not Anderson, you Bunder son”. He just nodded curtly as if he was bowing before a fight.

In one smooth motion, I took my Dual Desert Eagles and started firing at him. But he kept on dodging them all. At last, I ran out of clips. I took a MP5 and started firing. He dodged them also. Then I took a Gatling gun. The rate of fire is too high for him to dodge, I thought. But he, well, dodged them as well. I threw my guns away and cried, “Trinity…Help…”, because I didn’t know the name of the dame and this was turning out to be exactly like Matrix.

The panda, as if reading my mind, started…

Why worry about the name of the dame,
When you still don’t know the name of the game,
You are lame coz you can’t take aim,
The guns, you can’t blame, it will be a big shame,
Why go after the dame who came,
When I am there, who’s so tame,
You’ll get it all the same,
And ‘t will be your claim to fame.

Then, without warning, he jumped on me. He clutched me tight however I tried to get rid of him. Even now he’s clutching me from my side. I say, “You’re not a Koala, you’re a Panda, Goddamnit!!”
Oh dear!!!

What happened to the quest of the stone??

Away went broken, the dame
And as she went, she proclaimed,
I will avenge you, O my flame!
The stone she found is now critically acclaimed!!
I lost the stone and the fame and the dame,
And I got an idiot who says he’s tame.