There's previous questions similar to this, for example here: How to have Android Service communicate with Activity
But in the accepted answer to that question, the answer relies on the fact the activity is creating the service. However my question in that case is what to do if the activity does not create the service?
People will say follow the unaccepted answer in that same question (the one with lots of upvotes), which is for the service to broadcast to the Activity.
BUT my question is, what if the activity wants to know the current value of something in the service at the point the activity is created, rather than wait until the service broadcasts when that value changes?