Zhuangzi’s Butterfly

'Zhuangzi's Butterfly' is SCI-FI / FANTASY, YOUNG ADULT FICTION, suitable for a wide spectrum of readers. A giant robot with a human mind, a boy destined for greatness, and three former resistance heroes join to end the tyrannical rule of Intelligent machines on Earth. The 'Tribus, ' mystical entities who inhabit an isolated plateau high up in the Andes mountains, arrange an escape for the fortunate few to a parallel world where AI development has been abandoned. The current world will break away like a rotting branch from the main trunk of existing realities and self-destruct. Those left behind will die but in the multiverse identity is fluid and other versions of themselves will live on in alternative futures,

AI lacks the vital biological substrate to experience true consciousness, but that does not stop them from trying to get it. The human resistance movement sets up a high-tech., realistic illusion that allows chosen AI representatives to live through the extreme spectrum of emotions experienced by real RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain in 1940. They are persuaded that becoming an exact copy of a pilot for a limited time will allow their systems to absorb and replicate the fundamental elements of consciousness. A mysterious Canadian pilot tells the group that he is a human member of the resistance who devised the scam, but the group suspects he is an android spy. This seems confirmed when 'Captain Joe Johnson, RCAF' is observed wearing his heavy flying kit at a temperature of forty-two Celsius, without a single bead of sweat on his brow....