• Letter to No one and the Entire World. (Or, as a non-Wonderlander might say, Prologue)

    Wonderland. As the name would suggest it is a land full of wonders. Some fantastic, some terrifying, all of them wonderfully insane.

    You may think that you've never been to Wonderland before, but you have, we all have. We visit Wonderland after we go to sleep, and before we awaken. The ligher parts of Wonderland are our dreams. The darker parts are our nightmares.

    In some ways Wonderland is more logical than the normal world. In Wonderland, there is not a doubt in your mind of who you are or what your greatest desires are, but at the same time, you're more doubtful than you have ever been before.

    Wonderland can only project mirrors of your desires, and fears, figuring out the rest of the puzzle is up to you.

    Wonderland is tricky though, and the rules of Wonderland are different than in the regular world.

    For example, in Wonderland, up is sideways and down is diagnle. This is just common knowledge, but common knowledge is the hardest knowledge to find, seeing as everything is different, and every different thing has its own common roots, so common knowledge in one place is completely foreign in another, and it is very seldom that you find common knowledge that is common in all the common roots of the different places.

    As you can tell, to figure out Wonderland, you have to be mad.

    Mad, like a hatter.

    Or, as a non-Wonderlander such as yourself might say, mad like a person that works with hats and mercury poison all day long.

    But mad as a hatter just has a nicer ring to it, now doesn't it?

    Being mad isn't so bad, it helps you understand Wonderland, you'll see.

    Being mad isn't hard either, all you have to do is look at the world as a mad person would, or an infant. The two really aren't that far apart.

    For instance, half always means that something has been split right down the middle. It doesn't matter if the two halves are symmetrical or not. There is much too much of the world out there to be worrying about symmetry.

    Also, if you were to turn a cup of water upside down, the water, of course, would stay in the cup, because the whole purpose of the cup is to keep the water in it. The only way to get it out is to drink it. There is also much too much of the world out there to be worrying about gravity.

    The trick is to think logically and illogically all at the same time. It's a little hard at first, but eventually you grow used to it.

    I have visited Wonderland many times now, and I have grown so accustomed to it, I doubt that I will ever leave.

    Wonderland is my home now, and yet I know I don't belong here. It is built completely wrongly and rightly for me, but in particular, it is built writely for me, so as I may write about it as I am doing now. (If you could understand that last sentence, you are beginning to think like a hatter.)

    Hoping to see you in Wonderland soon,

    Alice



    A Meeting With a Mad Man (Or, as a Sane person would say, Chapter One)

    You are probably anxious to begin our story, but before we do, we must first do a bit of time traveling.

    I apologize if you were hoping we'd be traveling into the future, but that would be quite dangerous, seeing as the future hasn't happened yet, and therefore does not exist. It is risky business, traveling into non-existance, because if you do so, you must be willing to risk that you will not come back.

    I wouldn't want to be so rude as to do this to the dear reader, so we instead will be traveling to the past.

    Please don't be upset, after all the past is much safer than the future, since it does exist, and the future isn't even relevant to our story.

    Nevertheless, we will be traveling back to eight years ago, when Alice was only five.



    ******



    "Mommy! Mommy! Look at what I drew!" exclaimed little Alice.

    Alice had taken a light pink crayon and drawn what might have ressembled a pig-like creature at some point with wings.

    "What is this?" her mother asked.

    "It's a pig with wings!" said little Alice.

    "That's nice," her mother replied.

    "Do you think we can go see one at the zoo someday?" she asked.

    "No, honey, they don't have flying pigs at the zoo."

    "Where do they have them?" asked Alice, looking around as if she excpected to find a pig with the silverwear.

    "They're not real, nobody can see them."

    "But I can see them," she protested. "That's how I drew it."

    Her mother sighed. "I think it's time for me to tell you the difference between fantasy and reality. This pig is only real in your imagination, which is in your head. you won't be able to see it in real life, it's just nonesense."

    Now, seeing as her mother had just told her everything she drew was nothing but nonesense, and talked to her the way one might address a small child, (even though Alice was a small child, she thought of five as a 'big girl age' and hate being thought of as small.) Alice was reasonably upset, which is why she acted so rudely when she replied.

    "Fine!" Alice shouted. "If you don't like it, I'll just show daddy instead!"

    She stomped away in a huff from the kitchen, and ran down the hall to her father's study, knocking down the pictures that hung on the wall.

    She stepped into the study where her father was sitting at his desk, reading.

    "Daddy, do you want to see the picture I drew?" she asked.

    "Sure," he replied, setting his book down. "Where is it?"

    Alice handed him the picture and he chuckled and asked, "What is this?"

    "It's a flying pig."

    "That's nice," he said.

    She took the paper and smiled to herself contently. She had won.

    She had taken a few steps forward and was just about to take her first step onto the white carpet of the hallway when she heard her father mutter to himself, "The utter nonesense small children come up with.

    Alice ripped up her picture and ran to her room. Once there, she slammed the door shut and began to cry.

    You may or may not be thinking to yourself that Alice is a brat, but you must take into consideration that Alice had just been told by both of her parents that her creativity was nothing but nonesense and she had been called a small child. One must admit that if you or I were in the same position, we would probably do something similar.

    So, it was here with her back against the wall that little Alice cried. She still didn't fully understand why she couldn't see a flying pig in the sky of the world when she could see one in the sky of her head.

    That's when Alice felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. Assuming that the hand belonged to her mother or father, Alice was about to shout at it to go away, but when she raised her head from her tear stained hands, she found herself breathless.

    Alice was no longer in her bedroom.

    Where there had once been light blue carpet, there was now bright green grass. Where her window was, there was now a large oak tree. Her bed had become a table with a creamy yellow table cloth, and good kitchen china, sliver and a bright copper tea kettle on top of it. Even though Alice was positive it had been raining when she last looked outside, there was no rain here, there was just bright sun and a friendly blue sky.

    That's when things started to get a lot weirder.

    The hand belonged to a polite looking man dressed entirely in red and white stripes. He had light blue eyes and light brown hair and looked to be somewhere in his twenties. His cheeks had an odd pale color to them, however. Pale pink.

    "Why do you cry, child?" he asked, his voice was kind and soft.

    "I am not a child," Alice said, wiping tears off her face as she sat up.

    "Of course you aren't," responded the man.

    "Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?" she asked.

    Despite the fact that Alice had randomly found herself in a different world where the only sign of life other than plants and herself was an oddly dressed man, Alice was much more curious than she was scared.

    "You're in Wonderland, of course," said the man. "You're here because you wanted to be here, and I am the Mad Hatter."

    "Mad Hatter?!" asked Alice, jumping back a bit.

    "Why of course," said the Hatter. "Everyone in Wonderland is mad."

    "But aren't you sad that you're mad?"

    The Hatter looked at her as if she had just stood up in the middle of a movie theatre and loudly announced, "Cheesecake is good."

    But, of course, since the Hatter was mad, he probably would have stood up in the theatre shortly after that and loudly shouted, "Pie!"

    So it would probably be more appropriate to say that the Hatter looked at her as if she had done something strange, even by mad people standards.

    The Hatter looked at her as if she had done something strange, even by mad people standards.

    He paused for a moment and than he spoke again, "I'm not sad to be mad, I'm glad to be mad, for when you're mad, there's such adventures to be had! Now to be sane, that's a thought worse than rain, more dreadful than pain, and yet I detain. I'm so glad to be mad, instead of sane, what a fad! I've been mad since I was a young lad. You see, I would go to my father's workplace where he worked with hats. I would sit and would watch him, I watched him and sat. But then, mercury was unheard of and its poisoning too. The madness must've spread to me, this is my story that's true. I followed his footsteps, walked right down his path, and that means double the madness, now that's simple math. But that, of course, was many years ago. How many exactly, how am I supposed to know? If there's one thing that madness makes you lack it's the somewhat useful ability to keep track of the years and the months and the days that go by. What is time when you're mad? It just seems to fly. And that, my dear child, is the story of that. And the one thing you can excpect from me is that I will wear a hat."

    He finished the last sentence by pulling a black top hat out of thin air, and placing it on his head.

    Alice found herself giggling at the mad man and the utter nonesense of it all.

    "How about a cup of tea?" he asked, gesturing toward the table.

    Alice nodded and eagerly rushed over to it.

    "Before we drink a single drop, however," announced the Hatter. "We must first introduce the introduction of introductions. Meet the March Hare."

    Seated in one of the chairs was literally a Hare. He wore a loose button down shirt with a bright red tie, but that was all.

    "It's very nice to meet you Mr. Hare," responded Alice.

    She stood rather akwardly then. She wasn't sure if she should shake his paw or pet him.

    "And Mr. Hare," said the Hatter. "Meet...It has just occured to me I don't know your name, dear child."

    "It's Alice," said Alice.

    "Very well than, Mr. Hare, meet Alice."

    "Lovely to meet you dear," said the Hare.

    Alice gaped at him. "You-you can talk!" she exclaimed.

    "Well of course I can talk," said the Hare. "Animals don't have silly limitations in Wonderland, you know."

    "Alright," said the Hatter clapping his hands together. "Why don't we have some tea now?"

    Alice took a seat across from the Hare and next to the Hatter.

    Alice noticed the Hatter's cup was huge. It was almost as big as the tea kettle.

    "How in the world will you ever be able to drink all of that tea?"

    "I don't drink it all at once. I save it."

    "But how?" asked Alice.

    "It is also my hat," replied the Hatter.

    Before Alice could utter another word, the Hatter swiftly removed his top hat and turned the tea cup upside down and placed it on his head.

    Alice excpected hot to completely drench him, but nothing happened.

    "Why doesn't the tea come out and get you wet?" she asked.

    The Hatter looked at her strangely.

    "Because it's in a cup, of course."





    *******



    I apologize, dear reader, for that is all the time traveling we will be doing for now.

    The purpose of the time traveling was to show you how Alcie came upon Wonderland, and now that that purpose has been served, we can finally move on to the present day part of our story.