The intense bleeping woke Jon from his slumber. He was temporarily confused when the darkness remained after opening his eyes. It took him a few seconds to remember he and Karyn were in a closed energy system which consisted of a huge dark cavern.
He could hear Karyn shifting as she too seemed to have been awoken by the bleeping. "Is that the DTH?" she asked in a sleepy voice.
"Yes," Jon said as he illuminated the screen causing the bleeping to become greatly reduced in volume. He stared at for a few seconds while pushing a few buttons. "This is new."
"What?" Karyn asked as she got up into a sitting position.
He showed her the screen. The dimensional map that normally appeared was missing replaced with the flashing words 'UPDATING - NEW INTERDIMENSIONAL NETWORK DETECTED'.
"What does that mean?" she asked as they both looked at the screen.
"I'll have a better idea when it finishes -"
Karyn shushed him. "I can hear something else." She turned her head slowly trying to located the sound. She picked up her backpack. Opening it she pulled out the old style flip phone they used to contact other versions of themselves across the dimensions. It was vibrating continuously. It stopped as she flipped it open. "This is giving a notification too. There's a new communication network available."
"Isn't it connected to the DTH Network?" Jon asked remembering what the phone had shown on it's screen previously.
"Yeah but it lists the M dash DG Network now too."
"M dash DG?" Jon asked having no clue what it stood for
Karyn tried some lateral thinking. "Maybe it is a subtract dash. M minus DG?" She thought about it for a few more seconds. "The 'D' in DTH stands for dimensional right? So perhaps D means dimensional in DG?"
"Possibly," Jon said, "although it could mean anything." The message disappeared from the screen of the DTH. "This has finished," he told her.
Karyn flipped the phone closed and leaned over to look at the display on the DTH.
The normal display showing the branches of the dimensions appeared. It was mostly made of black lines with a few red ones interspersed. "There is a new page," Jon said as he pressed a button. The image was replaced with a dozens of red lines radiating from a single point. A few of them used multiple joined lines but most were composed of a single line. "A device must have made those they didn't occur naturally."
"I might not be as smart as you but I know what the red lines mean Jon," she said with a slight tinge of annoyance in her voice, "None of them are branching though."
"True but if it is new there might not have been time for them to split off or the device simply isn't capable of it."
"It is interesting though," she said as she smiled at him, "another mystery to add to the list."
"There is something even more interesting. This dimensional network is independent of our multiverse."
"I thought the multiverse was all universes, even the ones we haven't discovered."
Jon tilted his head from side to side. "Technically...," he said slowly.
"You want to break that down for me genius?" she asked him.
"Normally the DTH can only go as far back as the day I showed you the stone. Everything is branched from there. Even the red line universes are bound by it. It is the earliest point in time we can go."
"Okay, and?" she asked. Her expression was still one of confusion.
"This new network is completed unconnected to it. It is conceivable in the multiverse it inhabits, the wishing stone may not actually exist."
Karyn nodded slowly. "I think I get it now. I see a problem though, if there is no stone, how could you create a device capable of crossing dimensions?"
"It is not impossible, if the laws of physics permitted it, someone could have invented such a device naturally."
Karyn once again glanced at all the new red lines. "We haven't addressed the elephant in the room." She glanced around herself. "I mean the cave. Can we hop there with the DTH?"
Jon selected one of the dimensions from the new network. The display listed it's coordinates and other data about it. "I can't see why not -" He looked at the display again. "That can't be right," he said sounding shocked. He selected another line. "Holy Cow!" he shouted in an excited voice.
"Don't keep it a secret." she said again annoyed by Jon keeping things to himself.
"Sorry, going by this data, the amount of power the new device is using must be staggering. The DTH power demands are huge and it only uses the tiniest fraction of that kind of energy."
"Why do they need so much power?" she asked.
"Who knows, maybe transporting planets or making stable wormholes. It could do a lot of damage if misused. I just hope whatever the device is, is safe and being used responsibly."
"I suppose it is a lot of responsibility being able to travel to other dimensions. You wouldn't want to give that kind of power to a couple of random teenagers." Karyn turned to face Jon and smirked.
Jon knew exactly what she was implying. "We're a special case though," he said as he grinned himself.
