by Luna Challis
part of the juice we need and find some simple chemicals to stabilise the dye. One of the problems of this sort of solar cell is the rapid deterioration of the dye. I think we’ve solved that problem.”
Fuji looked thoughtful; this was actually an enormous amount for one little boy to have done in a few weeks with simple things he could buy locally. He also noticed that Charlie had said ‘we’.
“Who helped you?
“The project was my mother’s. Another thing that the police and my father didn’t find was my mother’s secret underground laboratory. Her notes and equipment are still there as well as some important papers including my birth certificate.”
Fuji asked:
“Why did she have an underground laboratory?”
“Mum was a survivalist. She had the idea that our industrial civilization will collapse in a few years and she built her laboratory which would also be a shelter.”
“But surely your father would have seen the excavation for the shelter?”
“No, my parents separated about six months before I was born. Mum told me about it. Dad had been a drug addict and dealer, but had completed rehab and appeared to be cured. Mum hated drugs, but admired my father for kicking the habit. They fell in love and got married, but then Dad started drinking and taking drugs again. He hit Mum and injured her. She got an apprehended violence order against him and he was banned from coming within a hundred metres of her. After Mum’s death he came back and lived here.
“When I had escaped from the clutches of the department, I came back to Charleston and kept watch on this place from a distance. I knew it was only a matter of time before the police discovered what he was doing.”
Fuji asked:
“But why didn’t you send an anonymous message to the police and tell them he was selling drugs?”
“He was still my father, and I didn’t want to dob him in. But if I had known he was going to try to kill you five, I would have done it like a shot.”
Fuji asked him more about the solar cell, and Charlie said:
“I used a laundry detergent with an optical dye in it in the thin layer just above the raspberry. This converts most of the ultra violet radiation into light that the raspberry dye can use to make electricity. This both increases the efficiency of the cell and protects the raspberry dye from the most damaging rays.”
Charlie added:
“What I’m aiming to do is to make a system that anyone can make more cheaply than commercial solar cells, and without the very high tech factories required.”
Ian said:
“You have ten varieties of Raspberry here?”
“Yes, I’ll show you.”
He showed us the ten little areas of Raspberry.
“My mum planted these before I was born. Each one is next to a shed and all the runoff water from the shed goes on the Raspberries. They have been steadily multiplying over about 13 years, but can’t spread too far because they can only grow with the extra water from the sheds. Of course they are badly overgrown with weeds and I weed a bit every day.”
The boys offered to help and they spent an hour working hard pulling out weeds and eating Raspberries. Not all the varieties had fruit on because some were early season ones and some middle or late bearing varieties.
Secret
Later in the afternoon we left. I walked with the four boys, and Fuji told the rest of us:
“There is no way Charlie can stay hidden from society for 8 years. The neighbours know what happened to Wilberforce Darwin and eventually they will start to wonder who is living here now; I think Charlie understands this. But the longer Charlie can go without being discovered, the better it will be for him. He really only needs to stay out of sight for four and a half years.
“All of us must keep his presence here a secret and no one is to know about the secret laboratory, even after Charlie is discovered.”
We all agreed.
The closest house to Charlie’s is the very old one being rented by the Fox twins, and really owned by Charlie. I wondered how David and Paula would react when they found out about him. They were very unconventional people and might decide to keep his secret.
Fuji was thinking and said:
“There are still a lot of things that Charlie isn’t telling us. He said that his mother was killed, but didn’t explain what he meant. He also hasn’t shown us the underground laboratory yet.”
Ian asked:
“Do you think Charlie’s father killed his mother?”
Fuji had clearly thought about this and answered:
“No, I’m almost positive that he didn’t. Charlie would have told us if he thought that, and he would have reported his father’s drug dealings anonymously to the police even if he couldn’t prove murder.”
I thought about Charlie, the little boy who had fallen through the cracks in society and had hit the ground running.
