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The computer program Daemon has taken over the Internet, and millions have joined its virtual world. Now the effect is spilling into the real world as Daemon assumes control of financial institutions, and the program’s real-life converts flock to small towns to re-create a sustainable lifestyle amid the agribusiness monoculture of the Midwest.

During my trip to Arizona last week for Spring Training ’11 I finished “FreedomTM,” Daniel Suarez’s sequel to “Daemon.”

The story picks up a few months after the events at Building Twenty-Nine and covers about 8 months, beginning to end. The daemon has continued to infiltrate corporate networks to exert its control over the global economy, which is starting to show signs of collapse. Meanwhile, off-the-grid darknet-based communities have begun to spring up everywhere, run by people who understand the implications of the daemon’s new social order. Then there are the shadowy government agencies, led by the Major, who want to control the daemon for their own personal (and financial) gain. In the middle of all of this, former detective Pete Sebeck (now known as Unamed_1 on the darknet) is on a quest to justify the continued existence of humanity to the daemon.

A lot of the major players from “Daemon” return in “FreedomTM”: Russian hacker Jon Ross, cryptographer Natalie Philips, Sebeck, the Major, and of course, the terrifying darknet agent Loki who continues his bloody rampage in the name of defending the infrastructure of the daemon.

The darknet communities in middle America reminded me a little of Asimov’s Foundation, especially this particular line: “Repositories of human knowledge and technology are being designed and built by various curator factions around the world … That way, should human civilization be lost in a region, this system could put locals back on a path to regain knowledge in a generation or two. It could also be useful in resisting a downward spiral to begin with.” My favorite line of the book, though: “The modern world was undergoing a cold reboot.” Scary.

Like the first book, this one was fast-paced and fun to read, filled with technology and online gaming references mixed in with a healthy dose of global economics. And, unlike the first one, it had a satisfying ending.