"No government or corporation will control perpetual energy. My discovery will be free for the world, or nobody gets it at all!" His own words haunt Dr. Jackson after his wife's suspicious death. Can a reclusive man at a Lake Michigan compound, surrounded by security tighter than the White House, protect his son and himself from ever-powerful enemies? A generation later, an all-American whiz kid named Matthew Eaton learns the answer to that question. Who, if anyone, will control Dr. Jackson's miracle of science? The Perpetual series bursts off the first page when Matthew witnesses three men gunned down before his eyes. But not before he and Maria are handed the keys to solving one of society's greatest dilemmas-how the world can fuel its insatiable energy demands. Drawn by a chance encounter into the life of a charismatic stranger called Cracker Jack, Matthew is soon dodging bullets from evildoers-to whom profit trumps life. While Matthew and Maria take flight along the East Coast in a battered VW Bus, seemingly unrelated events unfold around the globe, some set in motion decades before Matthew was born. Can Matthew trust those closest to him? Can he trust the FBI? Can he trust anyone? Pitted against daunting forces-U.S. government-trained assassins, the oil industry, and Middle Eastern Islamic extremists-trouble abounds for Matthew and Maria at every turn. Their allies, a disheveled FBI agent and a mysterious philanthropic tutor, may be helpless to save them. Matthew faces choices that inevitably alter his fate and the future of all those around him, choices that could change the entire world.