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If somebody had asked Gaius Baltar what God looked like a year ago, he would have refused to provide a description because he firmly believed no such entity existed. If somebody had asked him an hour ago, he would have refused because God was an inexplicable, indescribable force that had forced its way into his life in spite of his profound atheism.
At no point would he have guessed that God was a tall brunette man with distinctive, mobile features and a tendency to smirk at confused humans. "What did you say?"
"I said that I'm God. I thought you were meant to be some kind of genius, Gaius."
"I don't understand. Where are we?"
"Nowhere special," the man said, shrugging. They were standing in what appeared to be a white void – it wasn't how he'd imagined the realm of God, when he'd imagined it at all. He'd been minding his own business in the laboratory when he'd found himself here, involved in this bewildering conversation. "Just somewhere we can talk, man to God."
"You're God," Gaius said, still having trouble with the premise of the discussion. "And you wanted to talk to me?"
She had told him repeatedly that he was an instrument of divine will, but although he'd begun to at least half-believe it, Gaius hadn't actually expected God to pop by for a chat. She'd given him the distinct impression that her God preferred to express himself in less direct ways, and he didn't resemble any of the Lords of Kobal that Gaius recalled.
"You might say I'm a scholar," the man – or possibly deity – continued. "I find the development of your species interesting, limited though your capacities are."
"Gaius, don't listen to him. I don't know what this is, but he's certainly not God."
She entered stage left – if there was a left, here, although now that he thought about it they certainly seemed to be standing on something – wearing a sequinned black dress he hasn't seen before. It wasn't her usual style, but it stood out sharply against the background of the void. It was safe to assume she intended it to do so.
Possibly-not-God rolled his eyes. "I was hoping you wouldn't show up - I'm here to talk to Gaius, not to argue with a Bible-bashing android." He turned his attention back to his preferred subject. "Really, you should be embarrassed, letting a glorified sexbot push you around the way she does."
Gaius didn't have a reply to that, but he didn't need one. The next moment, he was standing in his living room – or perhaps the perfect simile of it she brought him to so frequently. He was facing the balcony, although the door was closed against a strong wind blowing outside, rippling across the lake.
"Now, if we could get down to business –"
"Gaius," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder, "you must not do as he asks. It's very important for our plan."
God-or-maybe-not snapped his fingers, and just like that, she was gone. "There – problem solved," he said, dusting off his hands.
Gaius didn't know whether to be relieved or disturbed. He didn't always appreciate her presence, but the idea of somebody silencing a part of his psyche that easily was disturbing. As a demonstration of power, it made a bigger impression than the apparent teleportation. She'd never vanished before unless she had wanted to.
"Of course, she won't be gone for long," he went on. "Any moment now, she's going to knock on your door wearing nothing under her coat, and seduce you into destroying your entire species."
It took Gaius a moment to realise what he was talking about. "You're trying to tell me that this is really my house? That we've – what, travelled in time?"
"That's it exactly. I'm giving you a chance to change your mind. All you have to do is ignore her today, and you can alter everything. You won't even remember any of this – you'll live out your life in blissful ignorance of all that you've done."
"What, just like that? Rewriting the course of human history?" He looks at the lake, trying to remember that day. It was cool and overcast, he remembers, because he wasn't surprised to see that she was wearing a coat when he opened the door, only when she removed it.
"Well, I am God. There would much point being a supreme being if I couldn't alter the fate of entire species, now would there?"
Gaius considered his options, trying to think clearly in spite of the bizarre circumstances. The most likely possibility was that this was another hallucination, just another sign that his mind is fracturing. He knew that time travel was impossible. All the improbable things he'd seen recently hadn't entirely unhinged his grasp of basic physics.
"I have no way of knowing how events will unfold if I made a different decision," he said, playing for time. "In my opinion, the most likely hypothesis is that the Cylons will find some other way to infiltrate the security net."
"It is possible. I know what you're thinking." The stranger smiled enigmatically.
If Gaius didn't give her a way into the security net, if he didn't somehow cause her to fall in love with him, she wouldn't be there to save him when the bombs fell on Caprica. If the Cylons came without his aid, he'd just die with the billions of others, insignificant and unmourned.
Gaius Baltar had never wanted the responsibility of helping a group of fanatical robots to kill almost all of the human race. He'd never wanted to become Vice President to the pathetic leftovers, or the father of a new species. But he never wanted to be an unimportant cloud of cinders, either.
"What would be in it for you?" he asked.
"I'm God. Can't I do these things out of the goodness of my heart?"
"If you are God, that means you let almost the entire human race be destroyed once already. It makes me doubt that your concept of goodness has much to do with human norms."
God shrugged fluidly. "If it makes you feel better, think of it as an experiment. As I said, I'm a scholar of human nature. So many of your species are weighed down by the limited concepts of morality you indoctrinate each other with - but not you, Gaius. That's what makes you interesting. I want to know what a human acting on purely selfish motivations will do in this position."
"It's all up to me?" Gaius asked.
"Yes. You can have absolution, if that's what you want. The freedom to live out your life, never doing anything worse than take credit for your colleagues' discoveries and cheat on every girlfriend you ever have."
Gaius wondered if this was not God, but the Devil. Surely if one existed then the other must as well? But the Devil was meant to offer temptation, not confusion. "Can you at least give me a hint?"
When the knock it comes, he can't decide if it's more like an invitation or a threat.