Jo yawned as she comuted to work, her sealed, glass-dome hovercar moving her from her small platform house, to the larger platform, where the city really was. The windows and solar panels glittered in the sun, and would have been a severe distraction if her ride didn't have an automatic driving system. Soon enough, her ride whizzed to her work, the morning traffic not heavy enough to cause her any issues. Taking a deep breath, she gathered her things and prepared herself for her exit. The car lowered itself, and right before it opened its top, she held her breath, hopping out and making her way indoors as fast as she could.
 
  She clocked in almost as soon as the doors shut behind her, letting herself breathe again as she moved to the back, picking up her apron that a robotic hook had just dispensed for her. She grabbed it mechanically and slid it on, going through a door marked "employees only" to the delivery room. For a while, she checked in the new items and called for them to be put up in the store with the small holographic screen that projected in front of her from the logo on her apron, until she came across a strange, old looking book. After flipping through the pages- finding them blank- she called for it to be stocked, and as soon as it was, she called in an order for it to be delivered to the cashiers table for purchase. By the time the strange book had made its way there, she had finished her work, and had already headed to the table.

"Identity And Payment Please" the robot behind the counter buzzed as Jo approached, its cold scanners staring blankly out.

"Jo Baxter. Take it out of my paycheck." She replied, only as loud as she needed to and almost as mechanically as the robot, locking eyes with the robot as it scanned her. It made a small beep, and handed the book to her. 


"Payment Received. Have A Nice Day: JO BAXTER." It buzzed again as she took the book and walked behind the counter, turning a dial on the robots' back from "static" to "roaming", and taking her place behind the counter, waiting for people to come in.

The day went by slowly, and eventually, Jo borrowed a pen from the jar by the register, and wrote her name on the first page of the book in pretty, girly handwriting that just screamed "I have too much time on my hands". Turning the page, she doodled a bit, though calling her poor drawings a doodle would be exaggerating, and wrote down some things that popped into her head. 
"_Why do robotic clerks have two modes? Couldn't they be programmed to a day and night cycle?_" was one she wrote, in normal handwriting, to get a feel for the dimensions of the book. The next thing she wrote was a small list, mostly of things like "_Dehydrated Juice_" and "_Instant Soup_", though some book titles like "_The Tea-Seller And The Popper_" and "_A History of Mythology_" ended up in the list.