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{{work}}
<code>'''NAME'''</code><br />
<code>
<code>'''SYNOPSIS'''</code><br />
<code> A computer program that runs continuously</code><br />
<code> in the background and performs specified operations at</code><br />
<code> predefined times or in response to certain events.</code>
Matthew Sobol is the young, genius programmer head of CyberStorm, one of the world's most successful computer gaming companies. At least until he dies from cancer. However, before dying, he spent a good portion of his prodigious talent and vast fortune designing and building custom hardware and writing a collection of sophisticated computer programs that have been left sitting passive on machines scatted around the Internet. Passive, that is, until one of them reads Sobol's obituary. This program sends triggers to other systems which activate a number of other distributed processes; the '''Daemon''' awakes.
Among its first actions are to kill two of Sobol's coworkers. When they try to forcibly enter his mansion after connecting Sobol with the aforementioned murders, a number of police and FBI agents are maimed or killed by an impressive set of boobytraps, including an autonomous, murderous Humvee that is nearly impervious to everything they can throw at it. The Daemon then frames its actions on a handful of people to cast doubt on its very existence and withdraws from the public eye. It quietly offers certain people in key positions fame and success if they make a deal with the devil, or more accurately, the Daemon. Then, ominously, it goes silent. [[It Gets Worse|When it resurfaces, things go downhill. Fast.]]
The book is unusual for the standard technothriller in that Daniel Suarez is [[One of Us]]. It becomes clear from the very beginning of the book that he is ''very'' familiar with computer systems, networking and security. (He is, in fact, a successful systems & networking security consultant.) It starts off a little jargon-
The sequel, ''Freedom™'' (yes, the trademark symbol is part of the title), picks up shortly after where "Daemon" leaves off and focuses further on the motives and goals of the Daemon's actions. As well as those who oppose it.
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There is a [[Daemon/Characters|character sheet]] that needs a lot more love.
[[I Thought It Meant|Not to be confused]] with [[Digimon Adventure 02|Dae]][[Digimon V-Tamer 01
* [[
▲=== <code>TVTROPES:/Daniel Suarez/Daemon/Tropes$ cat tropes.txt_</code> ===
▲* [[AI Is a Crapshoot]]: Explicitly subverted. The Daemon is in no way an AI, nor is it ever claimed to be one. Experts repeatedly have to correct people who do refer to it as an "AI" by explaining that at best it is a distributed network of expert systems with a predefined set of actions, and in no way intelligent. Although its actions can be construed as evil, the Daemon itself is just a program and no more evil than a spreadsheet or word processor. However, it is very, ''very'' sophisticated and comprehensive.
* [[An Offer You Can't Refuse]]: A favoured tactic of the Daemon in recruiting its agents. As an example, when it springs Charles Mozely from prison by cleaning his record, it warns him when he starts getting cold feet that it could easily put him back. Say, as a child molester.
* [[And the Fandom Rejoiced]]: "The Wall Street Journal has reported that Walter F. Parkes, who produced the 1983 film [[
* [[BFG]]: Nothing less than 50-cal will damage a Razorback or the first AutoM8.
* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: {{spoiler|As the story progresses, you learn that the Daemon is by far the least evil faction at work. Especially in the sequel.}}
* [[Boring Invincible Hero]]: Total surveillance capabilities. Penetration of all corporate, government and personal databases. Ultra-tech autonomous vehicles and an army of networked minions with superhuman abilities. After a while you have to admi4D8.0xABB9ß1?~?~[[Killed Mid-Sentence|NOCARRIER]]
{{quote|
[[The End of the World
* [[Chekhov's Boomerang]]: The Oberstleutenant Boerner bot, purpose seemingly accomplished in the first book, returns in the sequel.
* [[The Chessmaster]]: Sobol is a unique case since he's ''dead'' for the entirety of both novels.
* [[Choose Your Own Adventure|Choose Your Own Death]]: If you want to make a deal with the Daemon, it will test you. You have no idea what answers will lead to fame and fortune and which will lead to a quick, emotionless death. If you are in doubt, do nothing, and it will kill you anyway.
* [[Complete Monster]]: {{spoiler|The Major}}. How many times does this guy cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]]? Let me count the ways. Let's start with brutally murdering {{spoiler|Roy Merritt}}. Cutting off/out {{spoiler|Loki's}} fingers, tongue, and eyes. Ordering his mooks to throw {{spoiler|Sebeck and Laney}} into a wood-chipper. And of course, rescuing teenage girls from brothels... so that he can get them darknet accounts and then behead them {{spoiler|to steal their darknet identity, keeping their heads chemically alive to spoof the biometrics}}.
* [[Cool Shades]]/[[Sinister Shades]]: The sports glasses used by darknet operatives.
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** In the sequel it becomes clear that {{spoiler|[[Private Military Contractors]] involved at the highest levels of government are taking every advantage they can of the worldwide economic chaos caused by the continued progression of Sobol's goals to gain private power for themselves and make a quick buck at the expense of the American public.}}
* [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]: The government sets up a task force, very secret, highly classified, accessible by only those with the highest level of clearance. Meanwhile, in the Darknet, {{spoiler|the base has a giant glowing neon sign hovering over it in the Darknet's AR space, reading "Super Secret Anti-Daemon Task Force Base"}}. Closely followed (both in hilarity, and chronologically) by Loki {{spoiler|dragging a box over the whole base, right-clicking, and selecting "Kill Everyone" to order his minions to... well... you know.}}
* [[Deal
* [[Decoy Protagonist]]: Oh, sorry, were you thinking this detective story would have the obvious hard-bitten [[Defective Detective]] (who knows very little about computers, yet the Daemon seems to be intently interested in) running the case? {{spoiler|Subverted when he comes back and does end up a major character.}}
* [[Defective Detective]]: Sebeck is cheating on his wife, whom he felt obligated to marry because he got her pregnant. His son is none too happy with him. And he's got an appetite for danger that borders on self-destructive. Then his mistress turns out not to be what she seems...
* [[Death
* [[Determinator]]: FBI Agent Roy "Tripwire" Merritt, of the hostage retrieval team that tries to get in Sobol's booby-trapped mansion is ''set on fire'' and ''still'' manages to breach the interior of the mansion. His run becomes the stuff of legend, the video passed around the darknet as recruitment material, members of which christen him "The Burning Man" as a measure of respect. {{spoiler|1=And he ''survives'', somehow, to later pursue Gragg/Loki and the AutoM8s in an epic chase through the streets of San Francisco.}}
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: In ''Freedom™'', Loki ruins a queue-cutter's credit rating.
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* [[Eye Scream]]: The Major {{spoiler|has Loki's eyes torn out - along with having his fingertips and tongue chopped off}} so he can to try steal his biometrics to try to sneak into the darknet.
* [[Fridge Brilliance]]/[[Fridge Logic]]: On one hand, everything worked perfectly. There were no bugs, glitches, mistakes, etc, despite the fact that there couldn't have been real world testing, beta testing, etc. The Daemon responded properly every time, and all the schematics produced working devices. On the other hand, Sobol was a genius with a ridiculously high IQ of 220. You can probably infer he was among the smartest people to have ever lived. Maybe he was just that good, putting this into [[Fridge Brilliance]].
** Sobol only had to predict how officials would react well enough to give time to get human operatives into the network for resilience. [[Humans Are
* [[Gambit Roulette]] / [[Xanatos Gambit]]: Matthew Sobol programmed the Daemon to anticipate every circumstance he could think of and take advantage of it. However you can only anticipate so much before you have to guess. Fortunately Sobol is so very, very good at [[Humans Are
** Rule #1: Matthew Sobol is SMARTER THAN YOU.
** Rule #2: No plan, no matter how well thought out, no matter how well made, no matter how many variables have been taken into account, survives first contact with the enemy.
** Rule #3: [[Finagle's Law|Murphy's/Finagle's Law]] - Anything that can go wrong will.
** Rule #4: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131111073352/http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-technology.html Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.]
** Rule #5: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030045753/http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-computer.html Debugging is at least twice as hard as writing the program in the first place. If your code is as clever as you can possibly make it, then by definition you're not smart enough to debug it.]
** Rule #6: Sometimes a [[Gambit Roulette]] works.
* [[The Game Come to Life]]: Early on, the autonomous Hummer is believed to have been programed with videogame-style logic and CyberStorm's games are used to recruit talent for Sobol's cause. As the Daemon network becomes more sophisticated and populated by warm bodies, it's run very much like a MMORPG with the addition of [[Augmented Reality]] glasses providing a heads-up display; agents gain levels and earn "network credits" for completing tasks.
* [[Green Aesop]]: {{spoiler|The Daemon guides its operatives into building sustainable communities based on local manufacture and renewable energy, while striking at Big Business and its long supply chains.}}
* [[High
* [[I Did What I Had to Do]]: {{spoiler|Sobol consciously chose to become the villain to achieve his goals.}}
* [[If I Wanted You Dead...]]: Loki/Gragg tells Dr. Philips this when they first meet in ''Freedom™''.
* [[Immune to Bullets]]: Razorbacks and the first AutoM8.
* [[Improbably High IQ]]: Sobol's IQ is 220. Based on statistics, there is a chance of less than one person in 6 billion having this result.
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** How many other Matthew Sobols are there that worked at CyberStorm and died of brain cancer? Finding the right obituary really wouldn't be very difficult.
** Please note - The keywords used in each search are pointed out (bolded at the start of each chapter). The algorithm used to determine that this was the right one had a lot of ammo.
* [[Out
* [[Post Cyber Punk]]: Especially in the second book.
* [[Powered Armor]]: Some Darknet operatives show up in ''Freedom™'' wearing the primitive [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|five-seconds-into-the-future]] "artificial musculature" suits.
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** The Daemon sends {{spoiler|heavily-armed strike teams to surgically eliminate spammer groups around the world simultaneously; it considers them parasites on the system and need to be excised, but you can't help but think it's a bit personal on the part of Sobol as well.}}
* [[Self-Destruct Mechanism]]: {{spoiler|Sobol's Mansion}}, subverting the normal sequence:
{{quote|
"[[Oh Crap|Shit!]]" }}
* [[Sinister Surveillance]]: During a meeting of top government TLAs, one of them orders the [[NSA]] to track down the Daemon and everyone associated using Echelon. In a realistic subversion of this trope, NSA explains that the Daemon is using a sophisticated [[wikipedia:Darknet
** Played straight when it's discovered that {{spoiler|''the Daemon itself'' has infiltrated most of the accessible surveillance systems worldwide, either directly or through [[Social Engineering]].}} However it's again played in a reasonably realistic fashion.
* [[Shout
** "Not obvious"? That's the ''first'' thing I thought of as soon as he said "Alameda Naval Base." It's almost ''too'' obvious to be coincidence.
** Gragg/Loki's moniker is [[The Elric Saga|Stormbringer]].
** The Major is a key player in an faction not quite under governmental control. It's a bit of a stretch, but given that this is a cyberpunk work and the author has shown clear knowledge of anime/manga culture, [[Ghost in
* [[Shown Their Work]]: Daniel Suarez is a successful systems and networking security consultant, and it shows. The few times he varies from actual, implemented technology are for story reasons, and even then he still keeps it within the realm of possibility. See also [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|Five Minutes Into The Future]].
* [[Super Prototype]]: The first AutoM8 is an [[Immune to Bullets]] solid-tired Hummer. Later ones use normal cars as a base and aren't so survivable.
* [[Tear Jerker]]: {{spoiler|The Major decides Merritt must be liquidated and shoots him in the back from a helicopter during the final, epic chase between Merritt and Gragg. As Merritt is lying on the ground, waiting for the final shot, he struggles to get the two photos of his daughters that he always carries with him. They are the last things he sees before The Major blows his head off. [[Even Evil Has Standards|Even Gragg is horrified.]]}} I ''dare you'' to read that part without your heart breaking.
* [[Technicolor Eyes]]: Invoked by Loki/Gragg's special darknet-accessing contacts.
* [[Thanatos Gambit]]: The event that kicks off the whole plot, of course.
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