/**
 * A step in a pipeline of an asynchronous computation. When the last step in the computation is
 * complete, some objects captured during the computation are closed.
 *
 * <p>A pipeline of {@code ClosingFuture}s is a tree of steps. Each step represents either an
 * asynchronously-computed intermediate value, or else an exception that indicates the failure or
 * cancellation of the operation so far. The only way to extract the value or exception from a step