That darkness includes Jimmy being killed by police for allegedly trying to break into a car, and Benny being savagely beaten for protesting and punching one of the police. When he returns to the office, on crutches and wearing dark glasses, it is to find that the issue with his DS9 story on the cover has been “pulped,” destroyed by grinding it up into pulp paper. On orders of the publisher, his story will not be published, and Benny himself is fired from the magazine staff.

This is the fatal blow, the final crippling, and Benny is lapsing into a complete breakdown, but as he does so, he makes an impassioned statement. “I am a human being, dammit. You can deny me all you want, but you can’t deny Ben Sisko. He exists! That future, that space station, all of those people—they exist—here—in my mind. I created it and everyone of you know it. You read it, it’s here—you get what I’m telling you? You can pulp a story but you can’t destroy an idea...a future, I created it and it’s real!”