Plenty of time for takings

We were already close to being a woke utopia when the Paya arrived, and we made it the rest of the way afterward. In short, Paya have time to be taken and still hold down a job, because everyone has a lot more free time.

Almost no one works more than twenty hours a week. The standard workweek until recently was three days a week, 7-hour day (like 9-4) with 90 minutes off for lunch. You choose to work either Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (MWF) or Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (TRS).

Jobs aren't necessarily fun, but everyone's guaranteed one, and annual income starts at $60,000.* With rent down to under $300/month, and health care free, everyone's set pretty well even if they flip burgers.

Recently, economic output got high enough that the Council of Economic Advisors allowed states to make the last day of work a half-day -- so on Friday or Saturday, you just go home after lunch. The 2.5-day week will probably be everywhere in ten years; right now it's a transitional phase.

Usually you take a Paya on their off-day, but if someone takes them on a workday, that counts as a sick day, and those are unlimited. To help takers be less disruptive, the bracelet color system shows their schedule at a glance.

• If they work MWF and are not taken, they wear a green bracelet.
• If they work TRS and are not taken, they wear a yellow bracelet.
• There are some other less common schedules, whose colors are less well set. Most people read those through the electronic tag.

Once a Paya is taken, they wear their taker's bracelet, which usually ranges from pink to red to purple.

Almost everyone lives in a luxurious apartment in a building between 8 and 100 stories tall, with stores on the lower levels. The suburbs have been cleared out and re-greened. No one has a car; the tram gets you anywhere.

Architecture now accounts for the need for private places for sex. Small sex rooms with basic beds and supplies are tucked in between apartments and offices throughout the towers: like a restroom, you're never far from one. On ground level, there are little freestanding huts. The trams have small compartments, mostly just good for quickies as they aren't big enough to lie down in. And of course there are the public sex parks, a few per city, usually in reclaimed golf courses.

* Dollars = 2022 dollars. There's been inflation of course, but that doesn't help the story.