[shittyanalogy]

I can see wondering if this was a joke as 'maybe' is mildly reminiscent of promise[1] and the like but if you got to .on_my_machine and still couldn't figure it out, you got some 'splainin to do. :)

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/09/11/asynchronous-p...

[pluma]

There's also the Maybe monad, which is a good substitute for null.