" In his mind Ian saw Nicole propped up in her enormous bed, in her pink, frilly robe, her breakfast on a tray beside her as she scanned the programme schedules presented to her for her approval. Already she's heard about us, he thought.
She knows of our existence.
In that case, we really do exist. Like a child that has to have its mother watching what it does, we're brought into being, validated consensually, by Nicole's gaze.
And when she takes her eye off us, he thought, then what? What happens to us afterwards? Do we disintegrate, sink back into oblivion? Back, he thought, into random, unformed atoms. Where we came from, the world of nonbeing. The world we've been in all our lives, up until now. "

― Philip K. Dick , The Simulacra