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A Romulan delegation arrives to
study reports on the Dominion, a privilege granted in exchange
for the use of a cloaking device aboard the Defiant. Meanwhile,
O'Brien, at Quark's riding out a mild case of radiation
poisoning from an accident, is suddenly transported to another
part of the bar, where he sees himself having a conversation
with Quark. He just as suddenly returns to where he was, then
falls over in pain. Bashir blames the radiation and assures
O'Brien that hallucinations are a normal side effect. But when
O'Brien returns to the bar five hours later, he has the same
conversation with Quark that he "hallucinated." Dax theorizes
that O'Brien's exposure to radiation could have caused him to
temporarily shift five hours forward in time. Then, O'Brien
experiences another timeshift — into the middle of a brawl in
Quark's between the Romulans and some Klingons.
Bashir examines O'Brien in the
present and determines that the timeshifts pose a serious threat
to his life. Five hours later, O'Brien returns to Quark's to
wait for the brawl, and the Klingons soon arrive and exchange
blows with the Romulans. O'Brien timeshifts again, and this time
sees himself in a corridor. He watches as his future self opens
a wall panel and is killed by a blast from a hidden phaser.
After shifting back, O'Brien leads Sisko and Odo to the wall
panel, but they find nothing. They assume that a weapon will
soon be placed within it over the next five hours. While Bashir
works to rid O'Brien's body of the residual radiation, Kira
reports that she has moved the Romulans to the quarters adjacent
to the wall panel. When Odo discovers that someone has put a
surveillance device behind the panel, he suspects the Klingons
are spying on the Romulans. O'Brien then shifts five hours into
the future again — and sees his dead body in the Infirmary.
 In the future, Bashir reveals to O'Brien how the radiation
killed him. When O'Brien shifts back, the doctor is able to use
this knowledge to save him. Meanwhile, Dax locates the cause of
the shifts, which is a quantum singularity orbiting the space
station. It periodically affects the radiation in O'Brien's body
and triggers the timeshifts. O'Brien then shifts again into the
future and finds himself aboard a crowded Runabout in the midst
of an emergency evacuation — during which he watches as the
station explodes and the wormhole collapses.
Hoping to learn how both the station and the wormhole are
destroyed, O'Brien uses a device to flood himself with radiation
in order to travel to the future again. Once there, he and his
future self join forces, discovering that the quantum
singularity is inside a cloaked Romulan Warbird, which becomes
visible and attacks the station. While the timeshifting O'Brien
becomes dangerously sick from the radiation, his future self is
forced to take the device and return to the other's time period,
where he tells Sisko what will happen. The commander deduces
that the Romulans plan to eliminate the threat posed by the
Dominion, making the station's destruction look like an accident
from the wormhole collapse. Sisko expels the Romulans, and the
future O'Brien must get used to living a few hours in his past.
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