"Can you tell me what time it is?"

She's seventeen, and cute as hell. I turn away from where I've been staring at my own reflection in the shop window and humming dance music to myself. "Boom, boom, boom, like a hammer through the heart..."
My watch's four minutes fast. A little mental arithmetic - It's 7:15 A.M. God, I haven't done math in ages.
"It's, uh... seven-ten."
"Thanks." She walks away. I can't remember what I had been staring at.

"Excuse me, young man, can you please tell me the time?"

She's an older woman, a bit robust around the waist. Give her a blond wig and a helmet and she'd probably sing a great aria. She's wearing something hideous in odd shades of red, from neon to clotted blood. Mahler's Opus Something is gently floating through the reception area, no doubt to drown out the moans of suffering patients in the back rooms.
"It's twelve o'clock." I lie. It's probably closer to 12:04. So what? It's a nice round number. When you're sitting in a reception area, waiting to get your teeth yanked, how much of a difference does four minutes make?
I've never been able to figure out why receptionists are obsessed with watching the soap operas on the overhead monitors. They must see trouble enough around here.

"Hey, what time is it?"

He's straddling a ridiculous bike seat that would give anyone of lesser genital fortitude the mother of all wedgies. Of course, maybe he already has one from the ridiculous Spandex bike shorts and doesn't care. I am humming something jazzy that I just made up but will probably never get around to record.
My watch is calmly displaying the password for my GeoCities account for the world to see. Not that anyone would care to rip off my already-ripped-off image files and nonexistent content. I look at the sun, remember the last time I checked, and eyeball it.
"Sure, it's something like two-thirty-five."
He looks at me a little oddly, but the light changes and he's off to finish the rest of his personal marathon. Anyone who's willing to wear something like that for the sake of their sport is either insanely dedicated or just insane.

"Pardon me, but I wonder if I could trouble you for the time?"

He's a rather dapper gentleman, looks a little like the actor from "Babe." He's wearing a slightly disheveled brown suit, carrying a monogrammed leather briefcase with the initials "SLM," and a slightly weather-beaten umbrella. I have no idea what he's doing at the Metro. There's something crackling over the PA system inside, and my personal cassette player (still to cheap or too broke to buy a Discman) is booming out some random reggae mix I picked up off the radio. "I'm conscending to out'a space, to find anoth'a race..."
The watch is not only in military time, but seems to be displaying the correct hour for Osaka, Japan. I press a few buttons and do some mental calculations.
"It's four-thirty-three, sir." For some reason, I get the feeling he needs his time table to be as exact as possible.
"Thank you, lad." As he walks away, I turn to see if my bus has arrived, and notice a large clock face on one of the prominent towers. I suppose I should have expected as much. This is the Metro Center, after all.

"Excuse me, what's the time?"