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Somewhere amidst the many rows of vacant housing on Chicago’s Southside there was a whirring. It was gentle at first, quiet, but with time it grew until it was deafening loud and there was a sudden flash of white light. Once the light faded the Time Sphere with its passengers, Booster Gold and Skeets, appeared in the middle of what appeared to have once been a living room. Booster kicked open the door to the Sphere and stepped out and his trusty robotic companion followed after him.

“It would appear we have arrived at our destination, sir.”

“Great.”

It was clear from Booster’s voice that something was wrong. Carter had grown up dreaming of sharing the skies with the like of Superman and the Martian Manhunter but now that he was here he didn’t seem at all pleased.

“Is something the matter?”

“I don’t know, I guess I don’t feel too good about the way we left Rip high and dry back there,” Booster said with a heavy sigh. “Maybe we should have stayed and helped him. What if he didn’t get out in time? God knows what those guys could be doing to him.”

Skeets hovered in front of Booster reassuringly.

“I have known Master Hunter for many years, sir, he was my creator after all. In that time I have known him to be as resourceful and cunning as any man that has walked this Earth. If anyone could have escaped in time, it would be him, sir.”

Booster shrugged.

“I guess so.”

“We mustn’t dally,” Skeets said abruptly. “Master Hunter left us strict instructions. There is a ‘Daniel Carter’ we must seek out, a distant relative of yours if the records are to be to believed, he’ll give us shelter for a time.”

Booster pointed towards the Time Sphere sat in the centre of the dusty room. He knew it only had enough energy for the trip there but even he knew that someone stumbling upon technology that wasn’t meant to exist for another four hundreds years could only end badly for them.

“What about this thing? We can’t leave it here like this.”

Skeets ran a quick scan on the Sphere.

“The Time Sphere’s cloaking system was damaged during the journey.”

Out of the corner of his eye Booster spotted a worktable covered in tarp and dragged it free from the table, leaving the things atop it unmoved. He grinned at having achieved it and glanced towards Skeets as he threw the tarp over the top of the Time Sphere, barely covering it.

“Tarp it is then.”

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It had taken them the best part of an hour and a half to find the Carter household. It would have taken them ten minutes, Booster had insisted, if Skeets had let them fly there but the robot shot that idea down as quickly as it left Booster’s mouth. Hunter had suggested they track Daniel Carter down so that they could lie low for a while after they had arrived and blazing across the Chicago sky at night seemed like a surefire way to attract unwanted attention. Now Booster sat in Daniel Carter’s living room with Skeets wrapped in a blanket on his lap whilst Carter argued with his girlfriend Rose Levin as if he weren’t there.

“It’s just for a few days.”

Rose shook her head.

“First you lose your job and now this? You’re inviting strangers into our home to spend the night? I must be imagining this. I must be imagining it. I know the Daniel Carter that I live with, my boyfriend Daniel Carter, would never be stupid enough to let a complete stranger come into our home and promise to give him room and board.”

Daniel Carter grimaced and lift his hands in the air as if to reason with Rose. It was uncanny watching him speak, he was almost a perfect doppelganger for Booster if not for being an inch or two shorter than him.

“I understand you’re angry, Rose, and I understand why too but Michael says we’re related. That means we’re family and that’s meant to count for something. What do you want me to do? Turn him away? Make him sleep rough?”

Rose pointed at Booster and he tried his best to avert his gaze from the pair of them.

“He could be a psychopath for all we know.”

“For what it’s worth,” Booster said with a disarming smile. “I’m not a psychopath. I mean, I know that’s [i]exactly[/i] what a psychopath would say if he wanted you to think he wasn’t one, but I’m really not one.”

“[i]Please[/i], Michael, stop talking,” Daniel said with a sigh. “I know you think you’re helping but you’re really not helping.”

Rose shook her head vociferously and it became clearer that she was beginning to soften to the idea. That didn’t mean she liked the idea any more than she had to begin with. All of a sudden she felt a newfound empathy with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This was madness, Rose knew that much, but she loved her boyfriend enough that she was beginning to consider it.

“Do you know how insane this is?”

“It’s just a few days, I promise.”

“Fine,” Rose muttered as he turned to face Booster. “But if you try anything, if you so much as sneeze in my direction, I swear to God I’m going to taze you to death. Am I understood?”

Booster lifted his hands in the air and smiled.

“Loud and clear, ma’am.”

With that Rose marched out of the room and back to the bedroom she and Daniel shared, slamming the door shut behind her so loudly that both Daniel and Booster shuddered.

“Well, that went about as well as I thought it would,” Daniel said with a shake of his head. “So now I’ve done you a solid, are you going to level with me? You’re a superhero or something, aren’t you? Do you have something to do with that Blue Beetle guy? You must be dressed like that.”

Booster’s eyebrow cocked. Despite having an encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-first century superheroes had no idea who the hell Blue Beetle was, but he also knew that there was no way that Daniel Carter should know what a superhero was. There were no superheroes. At least not yet.

“Wait, what?”

Carter smiled.

“Come on, you must have [i]at least[/i] met Superman.”

Booster grabbed Daniel by the shoulders.

“Superman? Why would you say that name?”

“Everyone knows Superman,” Daniel said with a shrug. “Where the hell have you been for the past five years? The Justice League have saved the world more times than I can count.”

“Look, I know this is going to sound like a pretty crazy request and I know I said I wasn’t a psychopath, and I meant it, but I need you to tell me what year it is.”

“What? It’s 2015.”

Slowly Booster let go of him and one of his hands rose to his mouth as the information began to process. He was five years too late. Rip had promised to send him back to before the formation of the Justice League, before Superman had even appeared, Booster was meant to be the first superhero Earth had ever seen. There must have been some mistake. In the attack Rip must have hit the wrong button somehow and sent them five years ahead of where they were meant to be. Booster’s thoughts went back to the faulty Time Sphere sat in that Southside vacant. He was stranded here.

And worst of all, he was [i]still[/i] a nobody.