The Community of Vertumna is a huge, socially progressive nation, renowned for its avant-garde cinema, irreverence towards religion, and absence of drug laws. The compassionate, democratic population of 643 million Vertumnans are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 84.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The all-consuming Vertumnan economy, worth 61.4 trillion credits a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing, Basket Weaving, and Retail. Average income is 95,542 credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

One can wake up in Vertumna and have breakfast in Bigtopia, politicians and casino owners who so much as wander into the same room are arrested on the spot, cotton candy made from genuine cotton cellulose doesn't quite satisfy, and politicians are often found scavenging bins at night to supplement their income. Crime is totally unknown. Vertumna's national animal is the Meerkat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Vertumna is ranked 8,624^th in the world and 199^th in The Communist Bloc for Most Eco-Friendly Governments, scoring 6,146.12 on the Dolphin Recycling Awareness Index.