Once there was a little boy, soft. Brilliant. Unsuited to his environment, on a poor agricultural world. A whole world of people, living and dying every day, without even the capacity to understand what he was. He could have been an architect, or an artist, but he had a serious turn of mind; he loved computers, and physics. He lived on a dairy farm outside of a dirt town called Cuffle's Breath Wash, on Aerelon. He was like a dog, with its food balanced on its nose. One day, he'd have to snap that treat out of the air; he knew that if he didn't catch it, if he didn't get it right the first time, the chance would be gone forever. He was an alien among his people; he was alien to himself. So he watched, and he waited, and he learned to survive. He was charismatic, because he had to be.

His name was Gaius. He practiced, for hours. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a ten-year-old boy to change the way he speaks? To unlearn everything he ever learned, in the middle of the Wash, waiting for that one day? For that small ray of hope about the future? He was hardwired for self-hatred; he nurtured his own self-deception, because it kept him alive. He lived in a world of his own creation, and protected it with his fragile hands. Oh, to be Caprican! In the Wash the men liked to work with their hands, grab a pint down the pub, finish off the evening with a good old-fashioned fight. The things they said, behind his back. In front of him. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a ten-year-old boy to change the way he speaks?

Gaius Baltar is a miracle. You want to talk about miracles? On the very same day that a very pale doctor informed Laura Roslin that she had terminal cancer, most of humanity was annihilated. And of all sadness, this was sad: a woman's arms, shielding the head of a sleeping boy from the jaws of the final beast. Gaius survived, by some mathematical absurdity; some probabilistic madness brought him and an angel to the remnants of humanity, trading places on Caprica with the father of his child. And -- wheels within wheels -- he somehow became President. Because he was charismatic. Because he had to be.

"If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't do it on a case-by-case basis," Elosha says.

What nobody really talks about is that the President of the Twelve Colonies stands between her people and darkness. Every second of the day and all through the night, like a mother bear, growling, snapping, hissing, bleeding for them. Shouting into the darkness. Shining in it. You either love them or you don't, but if you love them, you love all of them, because you're the woman that stands in the dark.