I didn't question them at the time. I never questioned anyone higher in rank then myself back then.
In a way, I was just as delusional as I assumed him to be.
I did my job as well as I could. Though he protested that "Sisko needed to open the Orb" he actually looked like he was going to paint them over. Then he floored me and went back to writing.
I'd never seen anyone write anything half as fast. By the time I was back on my feet, he'd finished five paragraphs, ignoring the paint, which had spilled around his ankles. When he saw I was up he looked at me and said the strangest thing:
"You're always like that, Damar. Always doing whatever Weyoun tells you. Why don't you just snap his neck, huh? Put him in a transporter accident, and mess his clone up. And stop working for the Pah-wraiths."
Understandably, at the time I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked the nurse in charge of him about it. Her name was Elizabeth Dawn. She explained that the story Benny wrote included characters based on actual people, and more often then not he confused the real people and characters. Her character was apparently an alien female called Ezri.
I was told I was to stay with Benny and convince him to give it up. My superiors wouldn't take "I couldn't" for an answer. So for awhile I felt my career was spiraling, and I gave up trying to stop Benny.
I had to spend an hour each day with Benny. Eventually it was settled by unspoken agreement that I would sit in the corner and he would just go on writing. The boredom started to get to me.
Then, about two months after we met, Benny told me and Elizabeth he was writing a movie, with "Worf"'s old crewmates. And I wondered how much harm it would cause if I read it. So I thought that maybe I could read a paragraph or two, just to past the time.
I read the contents of the entire wall that day. And when he wrote more, I read that too. By the time I he had finished writing the movie, I was reading everything he had written. I told Elizabeth, and soon she was reading too.
Now when he wrote, I read. I even smuggled him paper, so he wouldn't have to write on the walls anymore. The first time I did that, he asked me if I thought he was right. I didn't have an answer for him then. When I told him that, he replied. "You have treachery, Damar. You need faith. Treachery, Faith, and the Great River." And he began writing again, in which "Weyoun" was killed(but recloned). To this day, I still think Benny meant for the readers to think that Damar killed him.
Months more went by, and I pondered his question little at first, then more often, until I became desperate to find an answer. I was further aggravated when he stopped writing, saying he had to think for awhile before writing "the big finale".
When he started writing again, I reached an answer. He was right. We were wrong for imprisoning him. And I told him that.
I don't think it's any coincidence that Damar, who had previously been playing puppet for Weyoun, rebelled.
During the final weeks Benny was writing, both Elizabeth and I lost most of other concerns in favor of devouring the pages the minute he finished writing them. We were that hooked.
I must admit, I was dissapointed by the ending. Somehow I'd expect something bigger. Okay, casting off the cliff was good, but destroying a book and saving the universe-it just didn't seem right. Perhaps Benny was starting to internalize the world's opinion of him.
After he was done, he sank into a depression. He wrote another set of stories taking place in the same universe. At first they were good, and both Elizabeth and I found ourselves absorbed in the adventures of the starship Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. But then they degenerated until we both begged him to stop. Finally he did. He stated he would never write again. I told my superiors that. They congratulated me, hinted I would get a promotion, and released Benny.
My first act was to resign. So was Elizabeth's. We were both disgusted with the society that had labelled Benny mad because his writings didn't quite conform. I tried to figure out why, and couldn't. I finally had to ask Elizabeth, and she told me: the captain was black. I had seen it mentioned once or twice, but just hadn't noticed until I was too absorbed to care. I admit, I would have cared if I had noticed immediately, but I hadn't. I count my blessings for that piece of luck.
The day we both resigned, I proposed to Elizabeth, and she accepted. We told Benny before he left. He sputtered out, "Damar and Ezri?" then wished us luck and left. We never saw him again.
Over ten years later, we got a letter from his wife, Cassie. He had been shot by police during a civil rights demonstration, and his will left his stories to our keeping. We accepted them, and we keep them carefully preserved, waiting for the day when they can be published, and thrive in a world where the public knows as well as we do that there is nothing wrong with them.