Zhuangzi's Butterfly

The setting for this fantasy is an Earth governed by machines, with humans relegated to a slave race. The story assumes that, as there are degrees of intelligence, there are degrees of consciousness, and the only true and complete consciousness is of the type generated by a human mind.

A giant robot with a human brain, a boy destined for greatness, and three former resistance heroes join together to fight the tyrannical rule of intelligent machines on Earth. The machines are too powerful to defeat in battle, but 'The Tribus,' mystical entities who inhabit an isolated plateau high up in the Andes mountains, offer a way for humans to escape their subjugation..

The story is set two thousand years in the future, when it is known that we inhabit a multiverse with various alternative realities and time zones. AI is intent on the future colonisation of the entire universe, and biological entities are either destroyed or enslaved as menials. The Tribus believe that machines have no divine right to rule in a universe born of mind but have previously refused to advocate violence in the defence of consciousness. They now know that AI and humans can never co-exist, and it must be an evolutionary battle to the death to decide the dominant species.