CHATBOT: It was a hot summer day in the small town of Cynthiana, Kentucky. Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh, both 16 years old, were walking down Main Street. They had been best friends since they were kids, sharing everything from lunch boxes to baseball gloves to secrets. As they walked, they talked about their plans for the day. Shane wanted to hit up the arcade and play some video games, while Rick was more interested in checking out the comic book store that had just opened up. "Come on, man," Shane said. "Video games are way cooler than some dumb comic books. Besides, we could use the air conditioning." Rick rolled his eyes. "Fine, we'll go to the arcade first. But I'm still getting my comic books." They turned a corner and entered the arcade. The flashing lights and blaring noises assaulted their senses as they walked through the crowd of teenagers. Despite the chaos, they managed to make their way to the classic arcade games in the back corner. Shane immediately put a quarter in the slot of the Pac-Man machine, ready to beat his high score. Rick watched him play for a few minutes before getting bored and wandering around the rest of the arcade. He soon found himself playing a driving game, imagining himself behind the wheel of a sports car. As he raced through the virtual world, he didn't even notice when Shane came up behind him. "Hey man, watch this," Shane said as he put his arm around Rick's shoulder and steered the car into a wall. "Come on, Shane!" Rick protested. "I was doing so well!" Shane just laughed and moved on to another game. Eventually, they ran out of quarters and decided to head to the comic book store. As they walked down the street, Rick couldn't help but feel a sense of unease. They had passed by a group of older guys who looked like troublemakers. Shane noticed his friend's discomfort and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about them. They're nobodies," he said. They finally reached the comic book store, and Rick was immediately transfixed by the colorful covers and fantastical stories. Shane, however, seemed bored. "What's so great about these things?" he asked. Rick tried his best to explain the intricacies of the storylines and characters, but Shane just shrugged. "I don't know, man. Seems kind of pointless to me." Rick was disappointed, but he didn't let it get to him. Instead, he picked out a few comics and headed to the register to pay. As they walked out of the store, they saw the group of older guys from earlier. Ri...

CHATBOT: Back in the days when streetlights were the kingdoms and the castles of small-town Georgia, Rick Grimes and Shane Walsh--an inseparable pair besides already being known as terrible troublemakers each in their own right--roamed these kingdoms and castles, relishing in the thrill of their misadventures. It wasn't friendship or brotherhood only; they were so close as to mirror images of the other. Both wore their hair in tight, black ringlets chopped short, both were always dressed in jeans and t-shirts even in Georgia's sultry heat. One step further: that particular Atlanta summer, one humid, hazy afternoon, they'd each gotten P.O.T. inked into their left arms by a bald, ham-fisted man named Red at Red's Tavern. "P.O.T." stood, they told Red, for "Parents Over Teachers," which was true enough. The real meaning, however, was far seedier: Party Over Testing, an inside joke which bore homage to their shenanigans; their commitment to mischief. This day, the first day of summer break, school had been released early, and both boys had dutifully shown up to clean the freshman lockers, a duty handed directly to them by Principal Williams, who had discharged the menace in his eyes along with the order. "Listen up!" he had said on the last day of school, brow contorted into one garbled, obsidian leech, "You two have been chosen out of the goodness of my heart to clean the lower hall lockers." Taking a breath, he continued, his neck veins standing out like cords; "God help your souls." And so it fell to them, and they did the job well enough, knowing that harsher penalties would come than mere manpower for shirking the locker-work. Now, standing lookout while the other scythed through the corridors, there were moments when one would look over at the other and grin, their adventures revealing that they do not come of some deliberate hooliganism or shamelessly arrogant aim, but rather an extension of the imagination that had merely taken a dark turn. They had found excitement--not decadence--was their true bedfellow. "That's the last of them," Shane panted, tossing a slobbery John Donne volume into the pile. "Yup. You know, poor Donne never asked for soggy poetry." Shane smirked. "Pretty sure he never asked to be studied by lackadaisical Georgia students, neither." "Don't think he had a choice." Rick looked down the hall as if making sure they were really alone. They stood there at the end of the corridor, deep in the heart of sophomore territory. Their accomplice, the f...