CHATBOT: Once upon a time--about a million years ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and you could get a Coke made with real sugar for a dime--two young boys met on the first day of kindergarten in the little county school that served the rural area of Fentress County, Tennessee. Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh just seemed to take to each other. By the time noon rolled around, you'd have thought they were old friends. Friends who shared peanut butter and baloney sandwiches without even asking the other's name. Friends joined at the hip, the shoulder, the soul. Friends like real brothers who had been, as Garry Shandling once put it, "on the earth for many moons." They walked home from school that day, Rick and Shane, side by side, bigged up with first day pride, laughing and shouting. The road they walked home on--now called the Dixie Highway--was hardly more than a dirt track in those days, with a fringe of swampy grass on each side. You could hear frogs and even the occasional splash of a gator. Alligators, of course, hadn't been hunted down to near extinction in 1966, nor had the rural roads of Tennessee become choked with condos, trailer parks, and fast food joints. The boys stumbled and cavorted along this quiet, dust-covered road, telling each other one thing and another with the kind of wide-ranging excitement characteristic of five-year-olds. They stopped as the sun set, captivated by the beauty of the fading light, casting a blood-red shadow on the world. It's a miracle to have a friend when you're so young--a miracle that makes the world go round with hope and adventure, the sort of world where anything remains possible. Shane and Rick would fish for crappies and build a bonfire behind the bank to roast them up until they got black and crisp. They'd dig caves in the sides of hills and climb trees higher and higher into the blue or grope ever deeper into those shaky places where the streetlights never penetrated. And there, they swore they could see the stars for the very first time. As they entered their teenage years, they'd ride bicycles for hours. But not gentle Huffy models, no sir. These boys had motorcycles--albeit small ones, Kawasaki 90s or Honda Dreams that roared through the empty miles of two-lane blacktop that linked one sleepy Fentress County village to another--Billy Bob's Sandwich and Snack Food Emporium over in Crossville, the soda and candy dispenser at the Granite Cross monument marking the entrance of the Clarkrange School, and the ho...

CHATBOT: Sometimes life begins by sorrowfully admitting you've reached the end of a good thing; that realization came to Rick Grimes the instant he and his best friend, Shane, absorbed a hearty quantity of Two Snakes Pale Ale and fully understood the fabled brew was soon to be no more. As the golden nectar washed away the dust of the rural Georgia dirt clogging their throats from a long and adventurous day, the two boyhood friends began to measure the friendships that had held them together. This amber liquid was the sacrament of their final rite of passage, their teenage hurrah and Last Supper; it was a part of them as much as the dry grasses and clay dirt of their homeland. Rick and Shane had practically grown up in each other's pockets. Both belonged to a dying breed, the old American cowboy philosophers with their stubborn values and unsophisticated tastes. A time when all a man needed was a sky above his head, a few dollars in his pocket, and a gun on his hip. A time of simplicity, when the world didn't matter because the world was out of earshot, and it was those humble conventions that cemented their brotherhood. Over the years, they'd shared triumphs, heartaches, fistfights, and dreams. Their bond was as solid as a well-worn leather belt, with all the stains and scars expected of such endurance. Even as teenagers, they had spent their summers working and playing the rugged outdoors, exploring the swamps and forests of lower Walker County. Their only dream, it seemed, was to relive those early days before life became complicated and the whole world distilled itself into a cacophony of rifles and rituals. Rick would later fondly recall the feeling of melancholy that washed over him--like the moist Georgia air in the stillness that precedes twilight. It was time to say goodbye to that phase of life, to the teenage years of wicked fun and unabashed adventure that had filled his days and his heart. That day had been one such escapade of wildness and vigor, an adventure they'd retell over several more glasses of Two Snakes. Shane was always at the heart of their exuberant misadventures, and it was him who suggested stealing the still-sealed 12-pack of ale from Sam Latham's Orchards. Sam was a few years older than them, but he had already started transforming a few extra acres of his inherited land into a small craft brewery so he could fund his Ivy League education. Rick and Shane came from good families and they had been raised to know better, but something prim...