YUKI NAGATO<br/><br/>Asahina placed a cup of tea next to me.  I picked it up without a glance.  The drinking of tea is an important part of Japanese culture.  It would be impolite not to drink tea, and possibly lead to crowds armed with torches and pitchforks.  My predecessor interface system was always warning of torches and pitchforks, being nailed to trees, being strung up from a tree.  Humans have a remarkable capability to do violent things with trees.<br/><br/>The flavor was as usual, and I began sipping at a slow and gradual rate to deplete the cup in precisely 15 minutes, to discourage an attempt at a refill.  Such activity would distract the others from ignoring my presence.  As I began to sip the tea, I noticed that the glass was nearly half empty, after Asahina ran off in the middle of filling it.  Hastily I recalculated, only to realize I had consumed a significant quantity of tea shortly after receiving it.  I began to rapidly calculate vectors for the inevitable oncoming social interaction, drawing me from my book.<br/><br/>Ituski had definitely applied his telekinesis to push over the teacup, and the floating point energy anomalies were tickling the back of my mind.  To relieve the pressure, I lowered the ambient temperature in the room by .75 degrees, thereby equalizing the amount of energy in the data stream.  If only my own interface irregularities were so easy to correct...