By: Emily Chu
Joanne and her friends went on a trip, on a ferry. The ferry was heading towards the Land of Imagination. The sea they traveled on was called the Sea of Thoughts. It held all thoughts, alive or dead. At the very bottom was a thought-producing machine, otherwise known as a book. That was where all the thoughts were made. The thoughts turn into air bubbles that rise up and float into people’s heads. Joanne and her friends arrived at the Land of Imagination. They came here for a special lesson.
You see, Joanne had been receiving letters lately. The first one appeared on a Friday afternoon. Joanne was walking home from school, feeling very annoyed. She didn’t remember why she was annoyed. Nothing happened in school made her annoyed. Nothing in her life had ever made her feel nothing but happy.
Joanne walked along the rough pavement and reached the mailbox. Normally there’s nothing in it except for big white envelopes for her mom, but today, there was a small green one. She reached inside and took it out. There was no stamp, no “From,” only a “To Joanne” written on it. Joanne opened the envelope and found a small piece of paper. Written on it were the words “Who are you?” There was nothing else.
That’s a pretty stupid question. I’m Joanne, of course, and who would ask “who are you”? Everybody knows everyone in this town. She threw the letter on the table and went to play badminton with her friends, like every other afternoon.
———-
The man sat in front of his typewriter. It was one of the old kinds, set in a wooden box with keys that stuck up. It was like the enigma machine during World War II. But our character wouldn’t know about World War II until a few centuries later. The date was September 4, 1484.
With every letter he clicked, the typewriter would miraculously print out the words. The first few lines of the page were: “Joanne and her friends went on a trip, on a ferry.” Nothing particularly special about it.
———-
When Joanne read the letter again, a day later, she thought about it more deeply. Well, I’m Joanne. She walked around her room, trying to think of a more sophisticated answer. It would certainly be very weird if I was called, say, Josephine. She tried to pretend she was Josephine, and imagined introducing herself as Josephine. There’s certainly more to just a name. If everyone is just represented by their names, then every Joanne in the world would equal each other, and so would every Josephine. I guess I’m a human, but what defines a human?
She searched up the definition of “human”, but it just didn’t make sense. Where do humans come from? She learned in history class that humans came from homo sapiens, and homo sapiens descended from animals. But where do animals come from? Where does Earth come from? What about the universe? Nothing can come from nothing. No living thing can come from a non-living thing, even if it had existed before. Doesn’t this mean that everything that exists has existed forever? These questions made Joanne very frustrated. I have lived on this Earth for 11 years, and yet I don’t know where it came from, or who I am.
She flipped the tiny piece of paper over. Written on the back was an address: 48 Tree Swallow Dr.
Maybe I should visit this person, Joanne thought. But maybe it’s an organization that kidnaps children. I’m going to look it up first. So, she went to look it up in the very old address book, and found the address. Beneath it was a comment, written by hand, that looked like the one in the envelope. It read: A Philosophical Adventure. The only thing different about the handwriting was that it looked like the person was trying to fit the last few letters onto the page at the end of the line.
Joanne came to the conclusion that she did indeed want to go on a philosophical adventure. That’s how she and her friends ended up in the Land of Imagination.