This dream focuses on the laboratory preparation of a strange “hybrid phenomenon”:

I need to pick up an order on a university campus and I’m in a big hurry. I’m looking for short-cuts, trying to use my guile to get the job done quickly. I attempt to convince a cop to let me park my car in a restricted area convenient to my errand, but he’s indifferent to my effort to charm him.

After finding proper parking, I locate the right university building and arrive at a laboratory where my order is being filled. Technicians are preparing a peculiar-looking creature submerged in a large tank of water. The being seems oddly out of focus to me. It is composed of a jumble of varying shapes and colors and has an unformed, ragged appearance. While some of its features are box-like and geometric, as if produced by human design, others seem sloppily organic, like the slimy swirling tentacles of an octopus.

I ask one of the technicians how long it will take before the work is finished. He says it will be at least two hours, and I’m taken aback. Does that mean I’m going to be wasting the whole evening on this? Feeling put out, I try to get him to accommodate me by speeding things up, but to no avail. I ask him what I’m going to do here for the next two hours and he suggests I leave and come back. Grudgingly, I resign myself to the hassle.

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After recording the dream, I associated the hybrid creature being prepared in the laboratory tank with alchemy’s subtle body. Can such work be done in a hurry? Can it be achieved by cutting corners, taking shortcuts? In fact, it could plausibly be said that this whole electronic book deals with fashioning the subtle body—a process that surely can’t be rushed!