The explosion ripped through the ship’s hold and then through his heart. But it didn’t kill him. If only it had. He was on the outside edge of the blast and had only been knocked down. But it had indeed ripped through his heart because it had taken his cherished son, the one person he held dearest to his heart. And the blame was on his own head. He had given the assignment to his beloved child. And now he was dead.

Ben woke up in a sweat, sick dread in his heart, but no memory of the dream which had put it there.  He sat up and looked around. In the dim first light he saw the familiar silhouettes of his bedroom furniture.  He relaxed and settled back on his pillows. Somewhere in the back of his mind was expectancy.  When he woke fully, he remembered the reason. It was his birthday.  But hard on that realization was the reminder that today of all days, he was alone.

Of course, each of his sons had good reason to be away. An enterprise like the Ponderosa had vital interests to be looked after, things that couldn’t come to a standstill just because someone’s birthday happened to fall on a certain day. He’d had so many birthdays, having the celebration of this one delayed by a few days really made no difference. And it only made sense for Hop Sing to accompany Adam to San Francisco so he could take care of his family business while Adam minded the interests of the ranch.

He stayed in bed later than was his custom. The house would be cold without Hop Sing to start a morning fire. When he finally got up, it was because he lacked any alternative, not because there was anything pressing for him to do.

But when he came downstairs, his heart lifted a little. There were three wrapped gifts on his desk, guarded by a bottle of brandy from his three sons.  He spent a long moment admiring the gifts, but he didn’t open them. He would wait, just as he always made Little Joe wait.  He’d have breakfast. And then he’d do the morning chores.  And then he’d see. Maybe he’d open one present and save the others until after lunch.  Perhaps he could muster the discipline to save them all until after dinner.

And so he did.

He roasted the chicken Hop Sing had left hanging in the larder and ate it with some boiled new potatoes and fresh green beans. Only when it came time for coffee with Hop Sing’s peach pie did he decide he had prolonged the anticipation enough. It was time for his presents.

He took the coffee and a Hoss-sized piece of pie to his desk.  Again he simply admired the gifts for a moment.  He didn’t care so much what was in them. They were gifts of love from his healthy, handsome sons and that was their value. He noticed that although there was a tag indicating the bottle of brandy was from all three boys, there were no tags on the individual packages.  He couldn’t tell which was from who by the wrappings. In fact, he suspected from the way the satin ribbons were neatly tied that Adam had wrapped them all. Perhaps there had been no need for tags because the nature of each present would disclose the identity of the son who had chosen it.

He reached out and chose one at random. In a moment he'd unwrapped a beautiful carved box made of mahogany with unfamiliar exotic woods inlaid in a complex design. A tickle in the back of his brain said the box was familiar, or perhaps it was the design, but he couldn’t bring the recognition to the front of his mind. He put the box down uneasily, finding nothing about it which suggested which son had given it.

Cautiously he reached for a second package. He hefted it a moment in his hand. It was heavy for its size. Finally, he opened it to find a ceremonial dagger with an intricately carved handle. He stared at it a moment before he realized that the design was a simpler version of the complex one on the box. The feeling of unease returned.

He got up and paced the room, his coffee and pie left untouched on the desk. For some reason he dreaded opening the third package.  He told himself he was being foolish. These were gifts lovingly chosen by his sons. Perhaps the design was something that he’d seen under less pleasant circumstances in his sea-going days so long ago.

He sat down at his desk again and reached for the third package. He slowly tore off the wrappings to expose a leather bound book. Embossed in the leather was the same symbol he’d seen on the box and dagger. Slowly, almost fearfully he opened the book. On the title page was an inscription.

He didn’t have to read it to know what it said. He screamed out the name of his best loved son as he threw the book in the direction of the fireplace. And he couldn’t stop screaming. Just before blacking out, he screamed his final words.

"Computer end program."

"Do you think it worked?" Ezri Dax asked cautiously.

Julian shrugged noncommittally. "We were able to extricate him from two other holo-programs only to have him build a fantasy so elaborate his mind gave itself over to it almost completely. This abrupt extrication might have driven him to incurable madness."

"Does this happen often with people who lose a loved one? Or was Bencari more vulnerable because he blames himself for Adjeric’s death?"

"Many people react to a loss by using the holo-suite program to resurrect the loved one." Julian kept his eyes on his patient as he spoke, looking for something to tell him the man had returned to reality with his mind intact. "They use the holo-program the way people use holo-cubes or other representations of the lost loved one. Some psychologists use holo-programs in grief therapy. But eventually after a period of mourning, a person goes on, understanding that the holo-character, however realistic, cannot replace their loved one."

"And Bencari?"

"He never tried to resurrect Adjeric directly. His programs simply gave him sons. He revived the feeling of being a father without the falseness of an artificial Adjeric."

"Why was this program so much harder to extricate him from than the others?"

"The Battlestar program was vulnerable because it was pure fantasy. The battle with the Cylons was just a way to give himself a hero son in Apollo who would survive the horrors of war. He even programmed a second son, Zak, to be killed early on, perhaps as sort of a sacrifice to save the other.  I doubt if he ever accepted it as reality even in his grief-maddened mind."

"He went back to 20th Century Earth for his second scenario. Again he picked scenarios involving danger. He became a firefighter with three sons, one adopted. That was a bad fit and we were able to tamper with the program and decrease the danger to the extent that it failed to satisfy his need to be a rescuer and to have sons who survived danger."

"But this third one -- this venture into the romance of the American West of the second half of the 19th Century -- that was a tough one. He invented three sons, each of whom had some of the important characteristics of his lost son – great physical strength and kindness, superior intelligence and wit, charm with the opposite sex and foolhardy courage.  All were competent to survive under adverse circumstances. And he resisted our tampering with the program. We tried to kill off or marry off one or more of the sons, especially the youngest, but he thwarted us at every turn. The sons survived everything and the women nothing. We finally just deleted the oldest son from the program with no explanation so he couldn’t come up with a counter-scenario.  He manufactured a replacement but that one lacked any of the characteristics of Adjeric. We were finally able to delete a second son but his reaction to that was to erase everything from the time the first son was deleted and go back to the original program. He just kept that program looping around, over and over."

"And it was Dr. Mordicoff’s idea to shake him out of the fantasy by inserting into the program those three gifts that he had to recognize as Adjeric’s prized possessions."

Dr. Bashir was equivocal. "His idea seems to have worked. The fact that Bencari ended the program on his own is a good sign. But it was risky. We still don’t know if his mind will recover from the shock. I think we could have gotten him to abandon the program more gradually. The Ponderosa program defied reality in more subtle ways than the Battlestar program. He would have eventually discontinued it without the shock of being confronted with Adjeric’s treasures ."

Dax seemed unconvinced. "But Julian, if deleting two of his sons from the program didn’t bring him out of it, why would he have abandoned it on his own?"

"The inconsistencies of the program – he’s an intelligent man. Four adult men with financial means living together in one house . . . ?  A father "suggesting" when a 30-year-old man should go to bed, telling his grown son not to put his feet on the furniture?  Three attractive heterosexual men foregoing the benefits of marriage to keep living with Papa. His fantasy was a house of cards.  It would have tumbled of its own weight."

It was Kira who asked the question Dax had on her mind.  "He was so happy in that program. What was the harm in letting him live in his fantasy when the death of Adjeric left him nothing else?"

Julian was scornful, "If he’d relieved his pain with Earth heroin or Bejoran mindweed would you suggest he’d be better off addicted? No, we had to wean him from the program. I just think we could have continued to let the program confront him with it’s improbabilities instead of using the shock of those reminders of his best loved son."

Dr. Mordicoff came in with Captain Sisko, interrupting their discussion. "And how is our patient?"

They all watched the unmoving figure of the silver-haired man.  It was Kira who broke the silence. "He was forced to confront again the death of his beloved son.  And in doing so he also lost all those he invented to replace him. Why should he wake up?"

For those unaware of Lorne’s life after the Ponderosa, he played Commander Adama on Battlestar Galactica and Fire Chief Joe Rorcheck on Code Red.  I hope some of you are Deep Space fans or this probably makes no sense at all.