"Io, Bacchus!” she shouts, so loudly that the sound echoes off the walls. What happens next comes all at once. There is a tremor in the floor like the beating of drums. The air conditioner rattles, the vent disgorges dozens of emerald snakes. The curtain becomes a tangle of vines. A man steps through them, a young man, with curling blond hair and a smooth face, carrying a strange rod with a pine cone at the end. When he sees you, he smiles — a sweet menacing smile that makes you take a step back. His attention turns to her. He taps her with the end of the wand, and the stiffness and the posed quality leave her. She follows him. Called to, she does not turn around. The vines part. She is gone. “What have you done to her?” you demand. “Set her free. I could do the same for you. If you like.” You stare at the vegetation, embarrassed — by your sudden longing to follow Galatea, by your doubts, by your inability to understand what the god is offering you. “Choose, but choose now,” he says. “Yes or no?” “Yes.” For half a moment it flashes before you what you have to lose — your life, your sanity, your position — and then in the darkness, drums and flutes on the ground honey and a sweet flow of wine and all around dancers, hands and eyes"