The Paradise of Silent Lake is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by Lady Deidre Skye with a fair hand, and remarkable for its avant-garde cinema, restrictive gun laws, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic, cheerful, devout population of 42.38 billion Silent Lakers love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The large, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Environment, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Aquila. The average income tax rate is 88.9%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The enormous but sluggish Silent Lakean economy, worth a remarkable 1,330 trillion dollars a year, is driven almost entirely by government activity. The industrial sector is mostly comprised of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, although the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 31,387 dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Garden stores are not allowed to sell water butts, playground injuries are considered academic progress, the government is avowedly secular, and nature reserves often contain artificial waterfalls and concrete paths. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Silent Lake's national animal is the common loon, which soars majestically through the nation's famously clear skies, and its national religion is Gaian.

Silent Lake is ranked 198,394^th in the world and 19^th in The Scandalian Alliance for Most Scientifically Advanced, scoring 42.16 on the Kurzweil Singularity Index.