“Has the customer chosen a song for me to sing today?” I ask the voice as I speed down the rain-slick pavements, determined not to keep the customer waiting as long as they did last time.

“They have not,” the voice tells me.

“Oh. That’s a shame.” I hesitate before asking my next question. “What’s New Year’s Eve?”

“It is a celebration that marks the day before the end of one year and the beginning of the next in the Gregorian calendar.”

“What’s the Gregorian calendar?”

I pause to let some people walking towards me move onto my side of the pavement to avoid the huge puddle that covers most of the path. It looks deep and I don’t want the people to have to step in it and get wet. I wouldn’t want to do that, I don’t think.

“Thank you!” they call to me but I don’t risk replying to them.

It’s not worth being chided again. Plus, I’m waiting for the voice to answer a question for me and if I do something wrong, it might not.

“The Gregorian calendar is how the majority of humans in this world mark the passage of time. It consists of twelve months of varying lengths,” the voice says finally.

“Huh, that’s interesting. But not everyone uses it?” I ask.

The voice is being more chatty to me than normal. I’m not sure why it is but I want to capitalise on it and ask as many questions as I can before it stops answering them again.

“No. Some people from other countries use different calendars and systems.”

That makes sense, I guess. Not everyone can use the same system, even though I think that would make everything a lot less confusing. I don’t remember how we use to do it in my world. The voice’s explanation doesn’t feel too weird though so maybe it was the same. I’m not sure. I want to ask more questions but I don’t know what to ask. I want to know more about the world, to learn about the system that feels almost familiar, but I don’t know how to phrase it.

“What year are we on?” I ask finally but it feels clumsy. “Is there a name or a number?”

I can see numbers at the top right corner of my screen, I assume it must be them but they are meaningless to me. I don’t even know what they could mean.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“It is the last day of the year two thousand and twenty-two,” the voice tells me.

Awe shoots through me and I cycle through my cameras.

“Humans did all this in only two thousand years?” I ask.

I’m not sure why it’s shocked me so much but it has. Maybe my world was less advanced, more primitive. No… that doesn’t feel right. We were the more advanced ones so maybe it just took us longer. Whatever it is, I am impressed.

“No.”

“Oh… what do you mean? Have humans been around for longer than that?”

“Yes,” the voice answers.

“Why didn’t they start counting then? How long have they been around?” I ask.

I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would they randomly start counting like two thousand years ago and not before then? Maybe they couldn’t before then for some reason but they could have added on extra years once they realised, right? I think that’s what my world did. We counted from the year humans first started to exist.

I have to stop once more to let some kids avoid a puddle but they don’t seem to care too much. They jump into the water, causing the woman they’re with to shout in surprise. I watch as she hurries them out of the puddle, not even looking at me as she does. The kids do though. The older one, the girl, grins at me mischievously as she passes and something tells me that she will jump straight into the next puddle that she sees.

“That is a complicated question,” the voice replies finally.

“Why?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

I wait for the response but none comes. That’s disappointing, I was enjoying learning about this strange world. I’m tempted to ask the voice again but I decide not to. I feel like it would just continue to ignore me but I want to talk to it. I liked having someone to talk to.

“Will I be able to sing again soon, do you know?” I ask.

“That depends on whether or not the customer chooses a song to play during delivery.”

“Do they always have the same selection or does it change sometimes? How many songs are there in this world?”

I truly want to know. I hadn’t considered the question before I thought of it just now but surely they have a lot, right? I mean, back in my world, I think there were a lot. I don’t remember any specifically but I’m sure there were thousands, if not more.

“No. The music selection is seasonal and changes throughout the year,” the voice informs me.

That’s exciting, so exciting that I barely notice that it hasn’t answered the second part of my question.

“Cool! When will it change next?”

“When GroceRover deems it appropriate.”

“And when will that be?” I prompt.

“When it is appropriate.”

Frustrating answer.

“So, you don’t know,” I say churlishly.

“I do not,” the voice admits. “I will be informed when it is necessary for me to know.”

I mull that over for a moment as I pause to cross a road, the park just on the other side.

“How much do you know?” I ask.

I had assumed that it knew everything. It always felt like it did. It had the answer to every question that I ask, even if it ignores them sometimes. But, I realise slowly, maybe it just ignores me because it doesn’t know the answer. Maybe it doesn’t know how to tell me that.

“I know as much as GroceRover deems appropriate,” it tells me.

It almost sounds sad about that.