CHATBOT: On a day hanging onto the very end of a warm midwestern summer, the sweet, tenuous harmonies of baseball echoed in the distance; a symphony of dedication so subtle that any more volume would break the delicious spell of a slow, rolling Saturday afternoon. Beneath a slow-turning ceiling fan, swaying through endless fields of shifting light and shadow, Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh (friends since boyhood, young men since before boyhood passed from them like woodsmoke on the cool exhale of a northern wind) stretched out on the worn floorboards of Rick's treehouse, sweating in the tuchus-blazing sauna, their bodies saying, We must move unless we mean to expire, their minds saying, We could sit in this boiling darkness until Miss Maureen Grimes comes a-whistling for dinner-time. "Some kinda summer," drawled Rick, his trained eye watching the slow strokes of the fan as it cut into the day. "Never seen one stick around so long." "Y'think it'll stay like this?" asked Shane, contemplating the faraway sound of their classmates gearing up for another game down at the park. "Reckon we could move down to indoor sports, when fall finally comes. I ain't much for football, but I figure I'm better at it than those Montfort boys who think they can, y'know, tackle anything or somethin'." Rick chuckled at Shane's disdain for the Montfort boys, but knew he spoke the truth - no one appreciated the honest meaning of the word tackle better than his lifelong friend. The Montforts were the sort that thought they knew every move on the field of life, little more than well-groomed windbags, but Shane was a pattern woven into the very fabric of the Walsh family history, the pattern of resolve - enterprising people who knew the meaning of life was bound up in something more strict and less sweet that what they called tackle. "Yup," Rick agreed, feeling acutely aware of the impending changes life would bring. "We could go along with it, but y'know, there's a feeling in the air. With the new school year coming up, I just can't imagine things staying the same. Fall will come, eventually, and with it, change in a whole lotta ways." Introspective and sweaty, the boys continued to drift on that late afternoon haze of sunlight, counting sunbeams and dreams in equal measure. Rick thought about how as kids they would sneak out at night, sneaking through dark alleys, making impossible swings across the yawning chasms and shadows, daring each other to climb brick facades, and generally terrorizing ...