The train picked up greater speed and the Hopp's family became a tiny speck as we rode off into the hills.

That was it then. No more Bunnyburrows for a while because it was time to transition into the next chapter of the journey. I was definitely going to miss them because they felt like a family and treated me like a friendly visitor as opposed to an alien stranger. Out of all the places I could've crash-landed, there was no other place I would've chosen than Bunnyburrows. Of course, it wasn't my choice and it was all due to the probability fields of gravity but I sure felt lucky. They saved my life, took me in, and had me under good care which was something that I couldn't thank them enough for.

Now, if someone would've told me a week ago that I'd befriend a bunch of talking bunnies then I would've banished them all the way off to the outer rims of the universe for they had gone insane. Seeing alien life forms was one thing but seeing something that you're familiar with while adding a twist to it makes the entire experience all the more stranger. It's as if everything was backward and/or opposite.

On the other hand, telling this story to another human would've been incredibly awkward if they hadn't experienced it for themselves; additionally, one would also run into the inevitable obstacle of being made fun of because it'd all sound like an excerpt from a children's movie. Honestly, I too would probably make fun of any soldier who went on about tales of being with talking animals because we came from a serious world that dealt with serious issues in a rated-R kind of way. We weren't always like this but that's how we ended up. At this point, there'd be no one else to tell this story to except for the inhabitants of this planet which means there's no more human audience.

A mixed feeling of sadness filled my chest due to the fact that I was the last human of my universe and because the Hopp's family had so many human characteristics that reminded me of my former home. Now, we were leaving all of that behind but I instead chose to remain happy about it because we'd all still be on the same planet. Plus, we had each other's contact information so communication wasn't completely cut off.

Judy and I both gazed out of the train door windows until the Hopp's family finally disappeared from view behind the mountainous hills.

"Good family." I thought out loud.

"Aww, they're the best!" Judy smiled. "I'm so blessed to have them."

"Indeed," I said quietly while looking out into the horizon. It felt like being in the middle of a beautiful forest again but with both speed and style. We passed over a couple of crystal clear lakes and the large multitudes of oak trees gradually transitioned into pines as the train hummed along.

"Well Cherry, we've got about 200 miles until we reach Zootopia so let's find a place to sit." "How fast is the train moving?" I asked.

"I think it's about 95 miles per hour but it varies,"

 "So that gives us around two hours until arrival?" 

"Yep! That actually sounds about right."

"Let's find a seat then."

"Follow me!"

I turned around to follow Judy but I kept feeling a tugged feeling around my back waist which prevented me from moving. "What the?" I murmured. After twisting myself around a few times, I quickly took note that my tail was jammed in the flippin' door. "Aw, crud."

"What's wrong?" Judy asked with concern.

"My tail, it's stuck."

Her face immediately lit up with laughter and she attempted to cover her mouth with her paw.

"Lesson number one: Please keep your arms, legs, and tails inside the vehicle at all times." she mimicked the PA voice. "Very funny. Now, can you help me?"

"You got yourself in there, you can get yourself out. But I'll watch and supervise!" she smiled cheekily while folding her arms. "How long until the next stop?"

"An hour."

"Oh, for Pete's sake." I groaned while gripping the doors to force them open. They were airtight shut but I reassembled the

nano-particles on my fingertips into flathead tips and carefully pried the doors open. Finally, my tail was free but the rubber lining on the door was slightly warped but I didn't bother mentioning it.

"There you go!" Judy cheered. "I knew you could do it."

"Goodness gracious," I grumbled as I adjusted the furs on the tail. The blasted doors bent them slightly out of place so I attempted to comb them over.

"Ouch, that looks like it would've hurt!" Judy winced. "I still can't believe humans don't have tails."

"How in the world do you guys manage with these things? I asked while spinning in circles, struggling to grab hold of my tail for final adjustments.

"It comes with practice." She approached the tail, grabbed hold of it, fluffed it up, and bent it back into place. She even combed the furs over to make it appear more natural. "There, now you're all set!"

I nodded in gratitude, recentered my tail, and double-checked to ensure that my cloak wasn't also stuck in the door. Luckily, it wasn't so I was free now. "Great," I declared. "How about we sit down before I fall down?

"Right this way."

She led us through the train corridor and I was surprised at how spacious the interior was. There were some small seats here and there but others that were large enough to accommodate someone of my size or even bigger. It was definitely a transition from Tinyville and it all felt like the size I was used to. Nevertheless, the train felt different in that all sizes were equally accommodated as opposed to having an emphasis on one size. For example, there were tiny seats, small seats, smaller seats, medium seats, medium-large seats, extra-large seats, and triple large seats which came as a surprise to me.

Most of them were empty, likely because it was Sunday, but there were a few places within the train that contained other passengers. Some of them were sheep, a couple of them were otters, and one pair appeared to be a skunk couple who were both occupied on their smartphones. Luckily, the windows were open.

Judy walked into another train cart and I spotted a family of honey badgers that were fast asleep except for the mother. She was knitting a scarf but immediately stopped upon seeing me. I gave her a nod and Judy smiled warmly at her and waved "Good day, ma'am!" which seemed to calm her down a bit but she still gave me a few stares.

We reached the third train cart except this one was much taller than the previous ones. It had a large glass dome that extended the height by a few feet and it made for an ideal place to observe nature outside. I was tall but I wasn't quite tall enough to peek over so I climbed up a few stair steps to get a better position and the wondrous outside scenery, at last, came into view.

There was a miniature observation platform for Judy so she climbed up to match my height so that we could both enjoy the ride together. It was crazy to think of the amount of space between Bunnyburrows and the city because so much of it was covered in nature and uninhabited. Back at home, we had trains but they'd always pass through depressing cities, junkyards, factories, crash sites, airfields, drone bases, laboratories, launch pads, nuclear test sites, or any other manmade structure. None of it was natural back on Earth-77 because there was no green leftover. No parks, no lakes, no prairie fields, none of that.

But here on this planet, the train ride was quite pleasant. It felt peaceful and the only thing I could see out the window was trees upon trees that extended beyond the sky blue horizon. The sun was shining, nature was at full bloom, waterfalls were at max flow, and the lake water appeared to be the freshest I've ever seen in ages. It all felt like a dream but knowing it was all real and not made of holograms brought a slight tear to my eye.

I peaked over at Judy and she pulled out a pink square-shaped device with little white cords attached to it. "What's that?" I asked. "Is it some sort of MP3 amplifier?"

"Ha! No, it's an iPawd."

 "Oh... right."

"Don't they have these where you're from?" 

"In a museum."

"What? They can't be THAT ancient! Can they?"

 "No, but they ARE antiques where I'm from."

"Wow, that's crazy. So... how did you guys listen to music?"

I said nothing and only tapped my helmet three times, hoping she would get the idea. "Ahh, okay,"

...

Judy set her little device down on the window sill then proceeded to pull out her Carrot iPhone. "Okay, Cherry, let's bring it in for a selfie. C'mon, don't be shy."

"You'd better send it to me," I stated as I tilted myself closer to the camera lens.

"You know I will." as she clicked the button a couple of times with the snow-capped mountains in the background. She looked over to me and gave a silly puzzled look. "Are you smiling? You sure you're smiling?" she joked.

"I can draw it on my face if you want." 

"Okay!"

"No, please don't."

"Ha! All good. As long as you promise that you were smiling." 

"I smile all the time."

"Har har." she sarcastically laughed.

In reality, though, I did smile, despite my helmet masking my expression. This world made me smile more in 48 hours than I ever did in 48 months from my previous world.

...

Judy began to unravel the headphones and activated the home screen on her iPawd. Before she tapped her device any further, she paused for a few seconds, and then eagerly turned to me. "So Cherry, what kind of music do they have in your world?"

So many names came to mind that I didn't know where to start. I was somewhat familiar with the music but I was more into soundtracks than anything. Either way, I had a couple of all-time favorites so I thought now might've been a good time to bridge the music gap between my world and hers. My, this was about to get interesting.

...

"I'll have to tell you all about it," I said as I pulled off the helmet. The HUD wasn't working well anyway so I decided to manually open up the list of tunes that were downloaded into the nano-chip by viewing the helmet interior. Judy, realizing that my mask was off, peaked over the railing to see if there were any bystanders but she signaled me that the coast was clear.

I pulled up the software code the traditional way then I felt homesick upon seeing the large list of beloved songs/artists that I grew up with. The display was crude but I managed to scroll through an entire list of names:

*******

{..., blues brothers, bryan adams, david bowie, elvis presley, imagine dragons, john lennon, led zeppelin, mark ronson, michael jackson, norman greenbaum, paul mccartney, pharrell williams, rupert holmes, stevie wonder, the beatles, the monkees, toni braxton, ...}

*******

I quietly read some of the names to Judy but her face only filled with a confused excitement while I was getting anxious to start listening.

"Wow, I've never heard of these before!" Judy commented. "Why don't you pick one for us?"

"Gladly!" I answered. There were so many to choose from so I simply closed my eyes and randomly selected one of the songs from the list. The first song would be random and the list was shuffled so I knew Judy was in for a big treat. Can one imagine hearing songs from an extraterrestrial world? That's something not every creature gets to experience, let alone a bunny.

I initiated the process and we both relaxed.

... Nothing.

Not a single musical tune would resonate. I checked the helmet interior again and to my horror:

*******

{..., not.found, not found, not.found,, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, not.found, ...}

ERROR: nonessential systems offline.

*******

"No..." I grimaced. "This can't be... this can't be happening... Argh!" "What's wrong?" she asked.

"The files... they're corrupted." "Ohhh..." her ears sharply dropped.

Judy could only imagine how I felt but I was completely devastated on the inside. All of Earth's finest songs were all gone. The songs made history and they served as reminders but now they were no more. Nothing. Erased. Deleted. Gone. The only supposed song left now was 'Silence' by Izz Goldin but I wasn't feeling up for it. I swear, this was by far the worst part about being in the wrong universe and the wrong dimension.

I tried to control my frustration the best I could by tightly gripping the helmet with all my strength and pressing my bare forehead against the forehead of the mask. Despite my strength, I wasn't able to break it. I was close to smashing the window in front of me but I luckily managed to contain myself.

I sighed.  "On second thought Judy, I...I don't think it's going to work."

 "I'm so sorry Cherry,"

"Me too."

"Maybe it will work later or maybe you can fix it." she counseled while placing her paw on my back. I gently brushed it off. "No." I shook my head.

"No?"

"I'm afraid not. It's out of order."

"Out of order? But you're from the future."

"Frick, even in the future, nothing works." I angrily facepalmed.

I wasn't wrong. Just because I came from an advanced civilization didn't imply that all the world's problems were taken away. If anything, we made it worse by making things far too complicated. The intentions were good but it was all merely a paved road to Hell. There was so much I could bicker about but music storage was its own issue.

These suits did incredible things but we humans relied on them a little too much. They were designed to be an all-in-one solution to interplanetary exploration but all that made the system overly complicated, and, quite frankly, it had its power limitations. My suit had one main purpose and that was to protect. Everything else was trivial so that means if the suit lost power or nanite particles then the non essential systems would shut down. Since music was low on the totem pole and deemed unnecessary for survival, it was one of the first things to go.

Perhaps Judy was right. Maybe I could find a way to restore the beloved playlists but that clockwork was far beyond me. Not only that but getting off of this planet was another thing to worry about so I had to accept the fact that my songs would be gone for a while. I was sick and tired of being depressed and having my emotional episodes so I made an internal decision to man up and take life how it was and not how I wanted it to be. Although, it was easier said than done.

As the train traveled further on through the pine forest, the entire cabin fell silent for the duration of seventeen minutes. It felt like a cannonball had smashed my stomach so I was still trying to recover from that emotional injury. Judy, on the other hand, was gazing out the observation window, her ears still droopy, and appearing to think of what to say. There wasn't much she really could say because she didn't know the lyrics to any of my favorite songs; thus, she couldn't be of any help. I kept my helmet on, trying to mask my emotions, but the helmet itself already had a default 'angered' look to it.

Thus, I rested my head in the palm of my hand and tried to enjoy the ride as much as I could.

Out of nowhere, both of Judy's bunny ears sprang up high then she nudged me on the right shoulder. I was zoned out for a bit but I finally faded back.

"Hey!" she cheerfully remarked. "I've got an idea!"

I said nothing but I slowly pivoted my head towards her while keeping my head rested to see watch she had to say.

She grabbed her iPawd and started to unravel the headphones again. "I've got good music! Maybe we can list to that."

I'm sure her music was decent but I didn't feel in the mood. I returned my gaze out the window and ignored her offer. At the corner of my eye, she was earnestly plugging in her headphones and setting up her iPawd. I felt a little envy but I did my best to keep my focus away. It was one of those times where old tech outrivaled future technology.

Both her headphones were resting at the bottom of her ears and she was already listening to some tunes. Lucky. It wasn't long until she noticed me without music so she pulled out one of her earbuds and offered it to me.

"Wanna listen to Gazelle?" she offered. 

"No."

"You gotta listen!"

She continued to insist so she stretched her arm out and dropped the earbud into the palm of my gauntlet. I reluctantly gripped it and placed it adjacent to my helmet earpiece. The nanoparticles formed an opening at the side of the helmet, sealed themselves around the headphone, and held it in place.

And just like that, I was listening to my first extraterrestrial song. However, it didn't feel or sound extraterrestrial at all. Rather, it was absolutely, and, quite frankly...