“Chef’s Vegetable Garden, done with sous vide and a selection from the chef’s personal garden.”

“Oooh, gimme!”

It was lunchtime in San Franciscolt's finest gastropub, and the barstools and the fancy upholstery on the booth sofas were empty. A lone Unicorn ate at the bar. Or rather, she had been served at the bar, but first she had to take a picture.

“This is...perfect.” One eye closed and tongue sticking part of the way out, the lime-green mare snapped a picture of the crystal glass and its carefully arranged balance of carrots, beets, rhubarb, onion, peas, and flower petals, all drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and with some sort of rehydrated gelatin delicately placed in the middle that spread across the beautiful assortment in a sort of honey-ooze effect when she touched her fork to it.

It was actually the sexiest thing she had ever seen.

“I love it I love it I love it!” she squealed, and then silenced herself with a mouthful. Her eyelids fluttered and her body slumped in her seat. Shivering with delight, she took another bite, and another, teasing the flavors apart with her tongue, dancing with the delicate interplay of ideas and sensations in every new mouthful until it was suddenly, horribly gone.

Gamma Glisten leaned over the counter, gasping. “Olive, dear, that was delish. What’s next? I can’t wait!”

Olive Gourd was one of the most successful and inventive nouveau chefs in Equestria. His menu changed every day, and he published a new cookbook every year. He supposed he should have counted himself lucky that the chief executive economist of the Daughter bank of San Franciscolt was a regular customer.

“Bread and apple pudding in a sweet sauce,” he called out from the kitchen. He loaded up the plate and gave it to the waiter.

Gamma clapped her hoofs at the sight of the immaculately arranged desert. If she minded that she was the only pony in a successful restaurant during what should have been the busiest hour of the day, she gave no sign.

It wasn’t Gamma’s mannerisms that kept the restaurant empty. It was the bugs. There were bugs clutching the banister and lurking in the rafters. They gathered on the roof and on the texting wires that hung across the street, messages whirring down the lines. (Anyplace hip in San Franciscolt had a paybox where you could send a text message to anywhere in the city.)

They only looked like bugs from a distance. Up close they resembled miniature ponies with delicate butterfly wings. They were called Breezies, and Gamma had brought them with her to San Franciscolt.

They waited on carts and carriages. They alighted on rooftops and street poles. They swarmed in the air and warred with the bees, having already scared off much of the local bird population.

They watched along rain gutters and observed from windowsills. They listened on railings and the backs of chairs. When it rained, they found perches on the stretchers under open umbrellas, smiling and drying their wings and wringing out their manes.

You could only get away from them by going inside, and that was if you had windows closed. Otherwise, the Breezies heard and saw everything that happened in San Franciscolt.

Gamma Glisten was the one they reported to.

The windows of Olive Gourd’s restaurant were open. This was very unusual in San Franciscolt ever since Gamma had arrived, but ponies opened their windows when Gamma visited. Otherwise she would know you wanted your windows closed while she was there, and then she would wonder why, and then her Breezies would find out and tell her. And then Gamma would take “the most logical next step,” which always ended up being painful for those being stepped on.

If it had just been that Gamma was in the restaurant, it would have been packed full of customers at this hour. But the windows were open. It was dark and deserted, except for Gamma’s spot at the bar.

Just then, a pony in a hood walked in. He walked past the bar and to a dimly lit booth in the back. The waiter came by with a menu, but the pony waved him away.

Gamma looked over, but she wasn’t done with her meal, and she wasn’t going to rush this beautiful lunch.

“I want another cocktail,” she said. “Something sour, after that sweet dessert.”

The waiter brought her something pale green and fizzy, along with a small plate of finely sliced mint hay, compliments of Olive. Only after finishing both, and leaving a tip, did Gamma slouch over to the hooded pony in the back of the restaurant.

“Everypony knows I’m here,” she murmured. “The windows are open. So you’re not exactly being subtle, whoever you are.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but you’re only alone when you’re in a place like this. Not my fault.”

“Miss? Who are you?”

He pulled back his hood. Gamma groaned at the young, vaguely familiar face.

“I’m Acoustic Shear, miss—”

“It’s ma’am, not miss.”

“Sorry, mi—ma’am, I’m in your engineering group.”

“Why are you wearing a hood like that?”

His cheeks turned red. “I, I want to be one of your spies, ma’am.”

“Then dress normally!”

“But, but….” His face looked horribly conflicted. “But it’s not cool, ma’am!”

Patience, Gamma told herself. “What do you want? I was enjoying my lunch break.”

“It’s about your mission, miss—”

“Ma’am.” He was probably three or four years older than her.

“Sorry, ma’am. It’s about your mission. I believe in it. I want to help make Equestria great again!”

Gamma hid a smile. “That’s the goal. So what did you want to tell me?”

He leaned forward. “We just got the plan from Accounting last week. I’ve been looking over it, mi—ma’am. It won’t work!”

“How do you know?”

“I’m an engineer, m—”

“Stop. You know what? You don’t have to call me anything.”

He swallowed and rocked nervously in his booth, looking confused.

“Why are you telling me this here? Why isn’t my Head of Engineering telling me?”

“He doesn’t know, m—um, um. He doesn’t know. Only us on the bottom know, because we’re trying to figure out how to make it work.”

“So your whole team knows?”

“No pony is saying it. But we all know, I think.”

Gamma leaned back, chewing on the tip of her hoof. “Darn,” she finally said. “I didn’t think it would be obvious.”

“Ma’am? Sorry.”

She sighed and wiped her eyes. Maybe it was the three cocktails sloshing inside her, but she felt tired and incautious. No reason she couldn’t explain just a little to this overeager engineer, especially if it kept him from pulling another stunt like this one.

“Of course the plan won’t work. Caliponia is enormous. We can’t move the whole thing. Not at a reasonable cost, anyway. I checked.”

“Then—then what is the plan?”

“The plan? To move a giant island? There is no plan. That’s not—” She shook her head in frustration. “That’s not how this works.”

“It, it could work, I have some suggestions—”

“No. It couldn’t work. It’s not even about cost. Right now the problem is just the dead water between Caliponia and the mainland. It’s expensive just to ferry ponies across that turgid sludge, let alone push a whole island through it. It’s like trying to shove a boulder through a tar pit. But if we do push hard enough? Then some new barrier will arise. Here—let me just show you.”

She concentrated. Thin green rays beamed out of her horn and onto the table, showing a map of the world. Globes were rarely seen in Equestria, but there was one in the Canterlot library, and another in Princess Celestia’s office, along with scale models of the Sun and Moon. Between the princess’s observations and old records from long ago, they had a pretty good idea of what the Earth looked like.

“Equestria is here,” she said, pointing to a continent that looked like a bird, its beak pointing into the ocean and its wing stretched back behind it, while it perched on a lumpy ice cream cone. “The wall between us and Mexicolt is here.” She drew a line through the bird’s upper thigh. “Up here is the Crystal Empire, where Princess Cadance rules. And here is Caliponia,” she wiggled a piece on the end that looked like a feather had fallen off the bird’s back in flight.

“This world’s lands are separated by barriers that are virtually impassable,” she continued. “They say that if a Pegasus tries to fly over the great wall between us and Mexicolt, she will run out of sky before she runs out of wall. If you try to cross the ocean here to go to these little islands, or down this way, or across to this huge landmass, there are typhoons and giant sea monsters and unnatural whirlpools and winds. If you try to cross the ocean this way, there are virulent, fast-acting diseases and tremendous storms.

“There are barriers between nations. The Crystal Empire is the only known case in history when the barriers were successfully brought down, crossed, and prevented from arising one more. It took an Alicorn to do it, and her reward was to contend with the darkness waiting there. Technically I guess Princess Celestia and Princess Luna did it too for Equestria, but at least we were already living here, kind of. Fighting the windigos was the easiest challenge we’ll ever face. Meanwhile, every attempted voyage across the ocean has turned around and come back defeated or not come back at all. Practically every historical explorer of note has tried to get past the Wall of Mexicolt and every single one of them has failed.

“I know Princess Celestia has been to Mexicolt. There’s gold there, I think, but I don’t think she ended up bringing any back. That’s it for international travel. There are barriers between nations, and they do not come down without a fight.

“Now Caliponia is separated from the Equestrian mainland, because of tectonic plates and fault lines and so on. I would like to make Equestria whole once more—to make it great again, as you said. But while Caliponia may have drifted apart from Equestria due to mere physics, there are magical barriers now. A ship probably couldn’t pull the island back to Equestria no matter how large.”

Acoustic Shear looked terribly sad. “Then why the plan?”

“Just a decoy so it looks like I’m on the wrong track. I have very competitive sisters, okay? I will replace it with something more opaque, and you will say nothing about this. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You know I can find anypony anywhere, anytime.”

“I said okay.” He looked hurt, like he was offended at the suggestion that he might betray her.

Then he looked thoughtful. “Um, ma’am? Sorry.”

“What?”

“What is the real plan to rejoin Caliponia to the Equestrian mainland?”

Gamma looked at the map of the Earth glittering in bright green on the table.

“I need to know how they tamed the Crystal Wastes long ago,” she mused. “Princess Cadance won’t say, and it’s not in any book in the library.”

She looked thoughtful, and brushed her golden-brown mane, with a thin silver stripe running through it, out of her eyes. Acoustic Shears, for whom this mane was as much a reason to support Gamma’s plan as the sheer grandiosity of it, swallowed.

“It’s not a matter of power, or she wouldn’t need us,” Gamma went on. Acoustic Shears didn’t know who “she” was supposed to be. “There’s got to be a puzzle to it.” Gamma mumbled something that sounded like “send ships tragic,” which didn’t make much sense to Acoustic Shears.

“Well, enough of that, anyway,” Gamma said. The map disappeared from the table.

“Shouldn’t I tell the others something?”

“Did you tell them you were coming here?” He shook his head. “Then it’s fine, I know how to keep a group of nerds occupied. Now get out of here.”

“But—”

“Get out of here. You wasted half my lunch break.”

When he had gone, Gamma made an odd clicking-rustling noise with her mouth. It was barely audible, but at once three Breezies floated down from where they had been waiting in the rafters.

“Extra eyes on him,” Gamma instructed. “Give him a little...reminder if he seems like he’s going to run his mouth.”

The Breezies waved and fluttered off.

Gamma went back to the bar. Olive Gourd was standing by her stool with a bag.

“These are some housemade cookies, clove and cinnamon and dried fruit.”

Gamma took the bag. “Thanks, Olive, you know I’ll be recommending you to all my friends.”

He watched her go, then made a face at the waiter, who shrugged. Gamma Glisten tipped like she had a printing press in her attic.

Olive climbed up on the table and watched Gamma until she was out of sight. “Close the damn windows,” he said to the waiter. “I hate those damn Breezies.”

One of them stared reproachfully at him.

“What?” he said. “I’m a chef, we’re high strung. It’s practically a compliment.”

---

Like birds at a thunderclap, the Breezies took off from the roofs and wires. They formed a swirling, swarming vortex around Gamma, a storm of wings and wind and a thousand chattering voices. Most of it was protective, a gale around their guardian and master to ward off any attack—a single Breezy could create upwards of one thousand pounds of force with a flap of its wings. A smaller, secondary swarm flew around Gamma within the vortex, whispering rumors in a strange, high-pitched language.

Gamma puffed air out her mouth, and the swarm dispersed to the roofs and rain gutters and lamp poles.

Something that silly engineer had said kept playing in her head. Make Equestria great again. Gamma laughed out loud as she texted at the post for a taxi. Equestria wasn’t half of her ambitions. Maybe Princess Celestia was content to rule over the same country she always had. As for Gamma, she had seen the maps of the world.

She wanted more.

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