CHATBOT: I Kendrick County, Georgia, was a land of stone and pine, pregnant clouds and hills that rolled away like green waves forever. There would be no new roads in or out, no satellite dishes, and no industrial parks, only Sheriff Jonas Kavanaugh who dozed away the hot afternoons in his old Ford cruiser beneath a shady live oak and old Wannamaker, who came through on Wednesday afters afternoons with ice cream in a brown Keystone truck, dickered with the local housewives over their vegetables, and promised the kids that he would bring them bicycles just as soon as he had them in stock. In 1969, Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh were two boys who lived in Kendrick, children of a world that remains innocent even in its forgotten heart. Rick lived in one of the rustic outskirts of Kendrick County with his mother and father; Shane lived near the school with his mother and older brother. They were friends in that unconsidered, passionate way that only children are capable of, and one hot, promising summer's day in 1973, they sat on logs near the edge of the highway because they just did not have anything else to do. "Let's go over to the bridge," Rick said abruptly. Shane looked up. "What for? It's all the way `cross town." "So what?" Rick asked, and began walking. It was a hill of burning grass under the late afternoon sun, and they walked side by side, their arms not quite touching. "Let's go to the bridge," Rick said again, more firmly. Shane looked at him and rubbed a wrist across his damp forehead. "You been there before?" "Got no pollution," Rick said, and cast his eyes up the road a little way. Men such as George Grimes, a series of liver spots tattooed across his forearms by age, were prone to use words like 'pollution' when referring to what had happened to Little Boy Grimes, who was Rick's Uncle Dick; a man confined to a wheelchair after losing her legs in Vietnam. There was a conspiracy of silence whenever Uncle Dick's war wounds were talked about. These were not wounds of the kind that are honored on Veterans Day, spoken of by politicians, or bandied about in campaign speeches. It was as if some sticky, tenacious paste that had spilled around the community since Uncle Dick had come home from the war. It had just begun to congeal and no one wanted to break the skin - least of all Rick Grimes. As they walked through the mixed drowse of sun and shade with their hair slicked back and foreheads gleaming sweat, Rick looked to his right and saw a shadowy conversation b...