and before you know it, we were practically running a full-time company out of that computer room. Word spread through the school like wildfire that we had access to a faster Internet, and the students were lining up out the door to pay for it. We were making hundreds, soon thousands, off of these students. One time, Ralph and I even got paid by a teacher who was behind on his grading and needed some quick Internet to catch up.
Ah, life was good. We were going out for ice cream every single night, and pretty soon we had enough money to buy the supplies to make another antenna.
“Can you imagine if we started selling these things? What do you think… $500, $1,000 per pop?”
“I don’t know Ralph, I’m pretty sure it’s like a federal offense to mess with Publinet. Aren’t you worried we’re gonna get caught?”
“Come on, Max. There’s no way anybody would ever find out. And plus, who would tell on us? We’re helping people!”
After just three weeks of being in business, we decided to start making more antennas and sell them individually. We agreed on a price of $1,000 , and it took us about six hours to make each one. This was all happening out of my garage, since my parents could care less what we were up to. We sold seven routers within one week, and each of us took home $3,000. I had never held this much money in my life. It was thrilling.
Then one day, it all came crashing down. Apparently, one of the girls we had sold an antenna to actually had a dad who worked for Publinet. She warned us that he saw it in her backpack and was determined to find out who gave it to her, but she promised she didn’t rat us out. That’s one thing we’ll never know, if she gave him our names or not. The very next morning at school, we heard our names called over the loudspeaker, and just like that we were taken into custody.
“Grandpa! Do you mean you were arrested?!” exclaimed Claire.
“Well, yes. For a short time. Tampering with connection speed was considered a felony, but that’s not where the story ends.”
“What happened Grandpa what happened?” begged Luke
Max chuckled. “That’s a story for another time. It’s far too late for you two to be awake! Off to bed, go! Go!”
