The Interstellar Human Tragedy of The Mayfly Men is a colossal, orderly nation, renowned for its ubiquitous missile silos, ritual sacrifices, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 7.211 billion Mayflys are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The enormous, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Vachnadze. The average income tax rate is 67.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but stagnant Mayfly economy, worth 124 trillion scraps a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is fairly diversified, is led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Uranium Mining, Book Publishing, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 17,231 scraps, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

There is no other place with more lab coats per square mile than former houses of worship, a light facial coating of soot is seen as the mark of an honest and hardworking man, t-shirts displaying a photo of Leader performing the Full-Monty are selling out, and pharmacists increasingly claim they are morally obligated to take long lunches. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Mayfly Men's national animal is the anthrax colony.

The Mayfly Men is ranked 144,336^th in the world and 34^th in The Local Cluster for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 67.85 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.