To say Toshiko was a little bit bored was like saying the Australians held the British in mild contempt. There was just absolutely nothing happening. The others weren't about, which was absolutely typical – they never were when she found something interesting or managed to solve some problem. It was almost like they had a sixth sense, able to avoid her when she had something in any way technical to say. Owen occasionally listened to her ramblings, but then he tended to complain afterwards. Really not fair. She listened to everything he ever talked about to her and at least pretended she was interested in what he was talking about...

Sighing, she dropped her chin into her hand, elbow resting on the desktop she was sat at, staring at the computer screens as translations swam past on the vivid blue, her eyes skimming the material from behind her glasses. Another device fallen through the Rift, another device that no one had a clue about. Fortunately this one seemed to have come with an instruction manual. Unfortunately it was in a language even Jack hadn't recognised. Using her own specially designed programme, which broke the language down into the basic building blocks known universally as maths, and then doing a lot of other complicated calculations that even Tosh herself sometimes didn't understand, before building it back up into the closest Earth language it could use. Today was Spanish, which was a little irritating as Tosh didn't speak Spanish – she kept meaning to keep her promise to Tommy from last year and learn it, but she never found the time – and meant that she had to use another programme to translate that.

Which was what she was now reading, and the contents surprised her. It wasn't, unfortunately, an instruction manual (perhaps they'd been a little too eager by jumping to that conclusion), but it was a book of poetry. Or, it seemed like poetry to Tosh – any race that spoke in such a flowery lexis must be beautiful and unique. She was reading something about an animal called a Vorlax – not even the translation programme could change everything into something recognisable – and whatever it was, it sounded amazing. Golds and reds and oranges... Like a sunset.

She sighed, smiling at the screen. ”All this wonder and no one to share it with,” she muttered to herself.