The Automated Systems' Union of Midterra is a mammoth, safe nation, ruled by Union's Popular Committee with an even hand, and remarkable for its rum-swilling pirates, museums and concert halls, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, cheerful population of 8.921 billion esperids are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The enormous, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Environment. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Magna Roma. The income tax rate is 100%.

The frighteningly efficient esperidian economy, worth a remarkable 2,597 trillion e-Sprils a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is extremely specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing. Average income is an amazing 291,131 e-Sprils, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Jokes told in elementary school often come back to haunt politicians, children aren't allowed to chew their pencils until they get home from school, graffiti is done with immaculate multi-layer shading, and doctors prescribe medicines but they rarely dispense hope or compassion. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Midterra's national animal is the striped wolf, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Midterra is ranked 396^th in the world and 3^rd in The Leftist Assembly for Most Eco-Friendly Governments, scoring 21,248.09 on the Dolphin Recycling Awareness Index.