A shaken O'Brien returns to Deep Space Nine after his mind has been altered to make him believe that he spent the last two decades in prison. Accused of espionage by the Argrathi, he is given the painful memories of a twenty-year incarceration and released before his fellow officers could arrive to stop the punishment. While O'Brien is told that what he went through was not real, the memories are too vivid for him to dismiss. When they begin to spill over into reality, O'Brien's false memories threaten his marriage and life on the station.