You know you could be reconstructed by The Hole you've left.

C-DOCTOR: 

There. That was easy. 

The Game has just started. 

Doctor, why is there no record of you anywhere in the databanks of the Cyberiad? 

Oh, you're good. 

Oh, you've been eliminating yourself from History. 

You know you could be reconstructed by The Hole you've left. 

DOCTOR: 

Good point. 

I'll do something about that.

Watching John with The 

Machine, it was suddenly so clear. 

The Terminator, would never stop. 

It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. 

It would always be there. 

And it would die, to protect him. 

Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, This Machine, was the only one who measured up. 

In an insane world, it was the sanest choice. 

“IT IS NOT TOO FAR-FETCHED TO PREDICT THAT SOME DAY OUR VERY OWN PLANET MAY BE PEOPLED ENTIRELY BY SUPERMEN!” 

Joe Shuster assured us back in 1938, but comic-book reality predicts developments in our own in many other ways.

  What we construct in our imaginations, we have a knack of building or discovering. 

We may not have flying men or invulnerable women racing among us, but we now have access to supertechnologies that once existed only in comic-book stories.

  “Mother Boxes,” empathic personal computers like the ones in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World story cycle, are already here in embryonic form. 

Is the soothing contact offered by the Mother Box so different from the instant connection that a cell phone provides? 

Twenty-four-hour access to friends, family, and the buzz of constant social exchange can make us feel cocooned and safe in a reportedly hostile world. 

In many cases, Mother herself can be summoned on The Box.