CHATBOT: 1 It was a hot summer's day; the sun threw a blanket of oppressive heat over Clay County, Georgia, melting the tar on the shimmering black highways and turning the leaves of the Noland trees into limp, sweating hands. The air had the laziness of an old dog lying under a porch, belly turned up towards the sun, both waiting for the day to end. A county-owned Cessna droned overhead and the far-off strains of a Marvin Gaye song--probably "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"--carried over the vacant Georgia countryside. This was the town where Rick Grimes and Shane Wilson had grown up. It was where they had met and become friends, and where twenty years later they would be torn apart. And it is where our story begins. That summer, both of them were full of the exuberance which so often overtakes young men who have seen the wide world only through the narrow window of their fathers' stories; they loved their lives, they loved the County, and they loved Graceland--not the stately house where their fathers lived (Shane's father being the local school principal and Rick's a semiretired judge), but the land they had claimed as their own, where they would spend their time talking, building castles in the sky, and dreaming. "What say, Ricky," Shane asked, putting the finishing touches on a hand-rolled cigarette he had made from purloined leaves of their fathers' cigars, "that we mutiny? We can leave our jobs and run our own school, you teach the people everything that you've learned from your Dad, and I... well. I can teach them hokey half-remembered country songs." It was mid-afternoon now--probably around three o'clock--and they were sitting where they often did, leaning back against the heavy brick foundations of the broken-down rural schoolhouse. There was a feeling of restfulness in that place, a feeling of belonging, that they couldn't find in their houses or families. They both thought of it as the Home of the Second Home. "Maybe you could teach them how to live without credit cards," Rick said, snickering below the gigantic hat he always wore against the sun. "Dang, Rick. That stung," Shane said, laughing. "The truth often does," Rick drawled, then let out a little yelp: Shane had pulled the makeshift smoke away from his lips and was examining it suspiciously. "What say we play some handball, Ricky?" Shane said after a moment, and Rick felt his heart rise with gladness. No one could ever understand the sweet, sweet taste of a game of handball against the sun-drenched wal...