What would test anxiety be without the nightmares? I had one the night before last. I dreamed that I showed up for the test portion of the interview. It was taking place in a training room with a group of other people. The first part of the test was a code that we were each supposed to break. However, there weren’t any clues. I spent five minutes looking around to make sure I had all the right pieces of paper. Everybody else began to turn their sheets in just as the glimmer of a pattern was beginning to dawn on me.

“Time!” the proctor called. Oh well, I thought, so much for that. “The second part of your test is taking place down the hall. Please come this way.”....

The next room had wooden tables and chairs set up, and all of the applicants were directed to a group of tables, each of which had similar baskets and bottles grouped together on them. I looked down and noticed that there was a chair across from mine, and that there was a white substance which looked like putty on a square black lacquer tray. Curiously, I opened the lid of one of the bottles, which was an ornate, corked blue porcelain piece. I handled it very carefully: it looked expensive. Ink, I guessed.

I wonder what we’re supposed to do with this stuff? Maybe make stuff out of the clay and try to have somebody guess what it is? I picked up the clay. It was kind of addicting to play with, like a smushy stress ball.

“Your next test is, of course, heatless cooking.” The proctor informed us. What happened to reading comprehension, I wondered. “From the materials you see before you, you should be able to create a completely edible meal, including the meat or seafood, which you will prepare by mixing the sauces to the correct acidity to render any bacteria harmless.”

I looked down at the putty in my hand, mushed and gray from being handled, and realized it was some kind of a foodstuff. I carefully replaced it on the black lacquer tray. Well, I guess I won’t be able to use much of that. Still, at least I have the basic principals of cooking, so I’ll see if anything else looks or smells familiar. While I opened jar of jar of mystifying looking sauces and sloshed them around curiously, the people around me were already turning out colorful salads.

Is anything around here a vegetable I asked myself, desperately lifting the lid of one of the baskets. It wasn’t. It was an octopus tentacle. Though the basket was only the size of a desk telephone, I pulled more and more octopus tentacles out, until I was confronting an octopus the size of the table. It was alive, and it knocked most of the jars and baskets to the floor, where I commenced to wrestle with it, hoping that the thing would slide into some combination of sauces and herbs to pickle itself to death.

Just as a crowd began to gather, I woke up. Oh well, at least I wasn’t naked.