15. Undiscovered Cavern

(7 weeks later)

Garrick was in his lab continuing to create and engineer the Dimension Hopper. He currently uses the new schematic as he had combined both his alternate version and the Witch's version. 

At the table, the Dimension Hopper slightly resembles a scissor as sweat drips around his face. A robot companion arrives with a sandwich on a plate placed on its head as Garrick grabs it and eats the sandwich, taking a short break. Once he finished the meal, the robot beeps twice before leaving. 

"Okay, I'm almost done! Finally!" He shouted as he was proud of his work, well technically, his alternate version's work but it was still his work nonetheless. After finishing touches, the gadget whirrs and it was glowing a green hue. 

He was at shock first before analyzing the external design. And he dropped his tool, and yelled so loud, that the wandering guy looked at the garage of someone who just yelled the word yes.

He jumped in excitement and almost bumped into his metal cabinet of other perfectly assembled and organized gadgets and tech. "Finally, after weeks of constant pain, I finally did it!" He sighed in relief and wanted to test it out. So he grabbed the Dimension Hopper and pressed the small blue button. 

His first test was cutting a hole in the fabric of space-time, literally. He cuts through the 'fabric' and it collapsed into a see-through wormhole that intersected this house and the other side which was the Great Wall of China. The device did not destroy itself or malfunctioned.

It instead sliced and warped space-time at the exact point in space as he had predicted it so. The device used the user's intent and thoughts and calculated the exact point in the space-time continuum to where it would be torn and warped. 

Satisfied with his newest creation, he went to take a long bath that lasted for 15 minutes before he left the room already dressed in clothing. "Time to see what's up." He said as he went over the TV to see if any news updates have popped up. 

The house felt a sudden tremble in the ground which was detected by the digital seismographs and relayed the data to Garrick. "Seismic activity shouldn't be possible here in this neighborhood as I designed a system for that." He thought and checked the epicenter. 

It was located in a basketball court underground. He went to investigate as he grabbed a few equipment with him and left the house leaving behind his pet as this one was a more serious mission from his perspective. 

Arriving at the basketball court, it was empty and no one is using it. He placed a device that was capable of drilling through the earth but instead of using a conical drill, it has two high-tech lasers. 

The device began drilling through the earth as it cleanly burned through the rock. It moved in a spiral motion spiraling outwards slowly as it continued to drill deeper. 1 minute has passed as the laser driller reached a depth of 200 meters. The Focus of the seismic activity previously was at the depth of 1 km below the earth. 

After several minutes, the drill has reached the focal point of the previous seismic activity. The lasers sliced the drilled earth into dust leaving a hole deep down into the Earth's crust. 

Garrick sends an exploration drone down the hole and it took the drone 5 minutes to quickly descend through and reaching the bottom. Video camera shows the area to be a cavern, approximately, 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. He began to create a map of the caverns with a series of break paths and intersections. 

30 minutes went by and the map of the caverns was expanding, with the overall distance between each other around 5 km long. 

3 hours made Garrick pretty concerned as the whole cavern underneath literally encompasses the whole North American continent with series of twisted turns, intersections, narrow paths, lots of stalagmites and stalactites, large basins of groundwater and some dead ends. The whole cavern essentially encircled around itself. 

Apparently, this whole cavern system was unnoticed for some reason as modern sonar devices would've detected this cavern system completely, but it was not, suggesting a camouflage-like influence. 

However, communication with the drone was lost and the video feed was cut off. This prompted him to go on an exploration, as he jumped in the hole and waited to reach the bottom while he pressed a button on both his shoes. 

Upon the reaching the bottom, the impact force was absorbed by the shoes and dispersed it all around the cavern, causing the whole area to shake minimally in order to prevent him becoming dead upon arrival. He walked around the caverns and remarked on the details of the walls. 

"Looks like someone drilled here but who?" He inspected the walls before continuing on. Looking at the map, there was a central area that was a large cavernous area than the rest of these paths. 

Wasting no time, he grabbed a portable "All-terrain" scooter and maneuvered his way around the vast cave system.