CHATBOT: This is the story of a summer day when Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh were mere boys, back before the dead had reclaimed the world, before the terrible business that happened at the prison, before the endless nightmare we all call survival. Let us begin by imagining them back in 1989 in the little Georgia town of Cynthiana--a town of the sort people called "sleepy" and which they might have called "dead" when the walkers came--which was in some ways as lost to them as was their own bright and dark childhoods. It was the Saturday before the Fourth of July and the two of them were whooping and hollering in the abandoned field behind the Grimes' house, trying to shake off the curse of youth that had caused them to rise up so early that morning with nothing better to do. That day they had decided to build a fort, which of course sounds grander than the shoddy makeshift fort they'd built from warped scrap lumber and rusty nails, but, it should be mentioned, had a defiant spirit. "Might as well put it here," said Rick, a thin, lanky boy of 16 with dark hair like his mother's and a preternatural cautiousness, plodding across the brittle grass. "Yea but you know what they say," said Shane, who had already shed his shirt and was already beaded with sweat. "You ain't gonna ... they'll never know ... sunk cost." Rick grinned and nodded like he understood. That was what Shane always talked like ... the way a skipping stone made sense if you already knew the words he tried to get out. Rick thought of Shane as the swarm of bees in his brain, the buzz and hum of bees which never went quiet and sometimes reacted to existence with either terror or ecstasy. "Yea but I bet if we move the fort to the edge of the grass people will notice it more. And we can't have grown-ups fussing around asking questions," said Rick. "Rick, ol' man, buddy. Grown-ups don't come to this field. That's the point, ain't it?" Lightning strikes there, it's cursed, that's what they say, that's what the grown-ups say. Rick Grimes stamped on the ground and looked down to see if the thunder gods would part the clouds and strike him down in that instant. Shane shrugged. They stood in the quiet and strained silence that all boys have known when summer hangs too heavy on the air and the hearts of friendship beat slow and steady, their orange construction vest costumes hanging like ceremonial robes on their shoulders. "Yea," said Rick, finally, his eyes searching the distance, looking into the gray of the sky ...