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"Is it plugged in?"
"Don't be stupid, of course it's plugged in."
Booster shrugged as he headed out the door. "You remember you and Ted spent all yesterday rewiring the hub?"
Scott Free peered behind the machine, irritably brushing dust off his tights. "...oh."
Booster poked his head back in. "And if you could adjust the frequency up like half a notch and make that stupid buzzing go away, it'd probably make the signal clearer. At least if it's anything like the TV."
Scott ran through the mental equation. It wouldn't hurt anything and the buzz had been giving everyone in earshot headaches. "How did that even occur to you?"
"Uh..." Booster stared at him. "I know you're all New Genesis-y and stuff, but Earth tech is kinda linear. Ask Ted to improve a spinning wheel or a javelin-thrower or something without ever having built one before and he could probably do it."
Scott considered that. "Want to help out?"
"Nah. Bea and I have a tanning date."
***
Ted cackled maniacally (but quietly) and rubbed his hands together. "The trap is set. Now...we wait."
Ted was lurking in the stairwell, with Booster tucked behind him. The cans of blue and yellow paint teetered precariously over the doorway. J'onn observed from the top of the stairs, noting that neither of them had seen him yet. The question was whether to start lecturing them now or after the prank had gone horribly horribly wrong.
Then Max's voice drifted in from the hallway - "Mister President, such a nice surprise!" - and things happened rather fast. Ted froze, Booster gave a strangled yelp and pushed and the two men tumbled over themselves, slamming the door shut and dousing themselves in the paint. Or...almost. Booster's force-field fizzed on just in time to send the paint streaming down the sides to puddle green around their feet.
When Max opened the door, Booster looked at him, looked at the line of staring politicians and looked sheepish. "Sorry, Gu- Green Lantern was messing around."
Max's smile was wider and shinier than usual, which meant that somebody was going to be paying for this.
J'onn even considered letting them get away with it in honor of Booster's quick thinking.
***
Booster liked shiny things, so Gladys bought him a new, impossibly light, touch-screen laptop from Wayne Enterprises' new personal computer line for his birthday. She expected to find him playing flashy computer games for a few weeks before he got bored with it or lost it.
Three weeks after his birthday, Gladys watched Booster's fingers skim over the screen, highlighting text and making complicated notes. The only programs he had open were a document reader and an online dictionary/encyclopedia. Frankly, she was surprised. He'd never shown much interest in reading books or newspapers.
Booster glanced up and flashed her a charming smile. "Hi. I found this great book, want to hear about it?"
"Sure, babe." Gladys settled down on the deck chair next to his and admired his shiny speedo. The man's ass was possibly his best feature.
Her indulgent smile quirked a little around the edges as Booster spent the next half hour telling her in enthusiastic detail about the intertwining plots and characters and historical background of Les Miserables, his fingers dancing across the laptop's screen like he was born with one in his hand.
***
Oracle pulled off her earpiece and Barbara rubbed the sore spot between her eyes. A truly useless day, with the Birds chasing their tails in circles, Officer Richard Grayson stuck in court while Nightwing was supposed to be tracking her latest project in Bludhaven, and Tim submitting to a truly epic bout of teenage angst combined with midterms.
There was a tinny tapping sound from her earpiece and she jammed it back on.
"Hello?"
"Oracle here."
"Okay. Right. This is–"
"Booster Gold," she replied, pulling up his information. "Over Chicago. Are you...are you in the Bug? How do you even have access to it? I thought T- Beetle left it to Dan Garrett's grand-daughter."
"It's mostly the Bug and partly a time machine. I borrowed it."
"With permission?"
"Sort of. Look, sorry, but I haven't got time for this. I've got an idea and I need your help."
Oracle closed her eyes so Barbara could breathe for a second. It was too much, but he needed help.
"What do you need, Booster?"
"I can get him back. He's not supposed to be... That wasn't supposed to happen. That didn't always happen. I can get him back. I just need an anchor. I need you to anchor the Bug so I don't get lost."
"Anchor it...physically?"
"More like...temporally? Here, these are my equations. Tell me if you can do it because otherwise I'm going to have to hack LexCorp or something and that's going to suck. And not in a good way."
Barbara read through the data he transmitted three times and did her best to decipher the parts that looked more like some spell of Zatanna's than actual math.
"I...yes. I think if I keep cycling this string–" she highlighted a passage and pinged it back to him "–through all the computers I link into, it should create a sort of temporal homing-beacon."
"Exactly." He sighed, in what sounded like relief. "I knew you could do it."
"Booster, how did you put this together in the first place?"
"Accessed a very special library and read for about three years."
"Three... Right. Time travel."
"Yeah. So. See you when I see you."
"See you, Booster. And...good luck."
***
Ted was sprawled on warm metal. It was...light. And kind of blue. He hadn't expected heaven to involve warm metal, but you know, he was a tech-geek, so that kind of made sense.
"Ted?" Booster's face popped into his line of vision. He looked a little older and in kind of bad shape, but getting blown up and landing in the hospital would do that to a guy.
"Oh shit, you're dead too?" Ted croaked.
"Ted..." Booster kind of gasped, and then he was flattening Ted to the floor even more, all warm and there and ow.
"Ow."
Booster maneuvered them both up to a sitting position. "Ted, you're okay. I got you. You're not dead. I got you out of there," he said fiercely. "I've got you and you're in the Bug, I had to mess with it, sorry, but I'll fix it back the way it was and now we're going to the right time and you're not dead."
"Okay. I think." Ted thought about that for a minute. "You...turned the Bug into a time machine, didn't you."
"Yeah. Sorry."
"Don't apologize for that! Are you nuts? You just," Ted's mouth opened and shut a couple times as he tried to process what Booster had apparently just done. "I always knew you were smarter than you looked."
Booster let out a strangled, damp-sounding chuckle and hugged him tight. And Booster was staring at him so teary and hungry and happy that Ted decided to kiss him. Booster deserved a reward and Ted was pretty sure he did too.