The Hacker's Echo Town

The hacker, or hackers, had populated Echo Town with a handful of randomly generated, senseless, silent people who could never be approached. The programming loophole was eventually closed, but the identity of its weirdly dedicated perpetrator was never discovered. I finally came to Echo Town on an oppressively hot, muggy day in June, parking my rental car outside a length of tilting fence on the west side. It hardly seemed possible that years after this monstrosity had been born, any of it should still be standing.