Some stories refuse to fade. They linger in the corners of your imagination, whispering to you during quiet evenings, resurfacing when you least expect it. For me, Syntax Error has been one of those stories.
The idea first took shape more than two decades ago, when a friend and I decided to make a short film called Mail Order Bride. It was our attempt to bring the PC-2000 pleasure robot to life. We had big ambitions but almost no budget. The “robot” was cobbled together with what we had, and the script was cut down to whatever scenes we could realistically shoot with the gear, time, and money available.
Looking back, it was endearing in its scrappiness, but even then I knew the story deserved more. I wanted to explore the world of the PC-2000 further, to peel back layers of technology, desire, and what happens when those two things collide. Back then I even had a title for the follow-up: Syntax Error. It just took me twenty years to finally sit down and write it.
From Sutures to Skin
The original Mail Order Bride short leaned heavily into the Bride of Frankenstein motif. The PC-2000 was designed to look like a woman crudely stitched together, pale skin, jagged scars, and a sense that she had been assembled from whatever parts were lying around. The effect was campy but also grotesque, playing into the horror tradition of monsters born from hubris and science gone wrong.
For Syntax Error, I wanted to reimagine her. This time, the PC-2000 is sleek, alluring, and far more mysterious. She still carries echoes of her origin; her unnerving perfection feels almost too deliberate, as though something unnatural hides beneath her flawless exterior. Was she manufactured in a lab with advanced materials, or grown biologically like a synthetic human? The novella does not give a clear answer, and that ambiguity creates unease.
“This incarnation of the PC-2000 feels less like a monster cobbled together from scraps and more like something unsettlingly deliberate, a creation engineered to seduce and obey.”
Her skin is flawless, her movements slightly too precise, her beauty bordering on uncanny. She is no longer a stitched-together parody of the Bride of Frankenstein. She is something both alluring and wrong, an evolution of the concept that reflects how our cultural fears about artificial partners have shifted in the last twenty years.
The Sex Robot in Pop Culture
When we shot Mail Order Bride in the 90s, the concept of a “sex robot” was mostly pulp fodder.
Fast forward two decades and the conversation has become unavoidable. AI, robotics, and battery technology have advanced so quickly that lifelike artificial companions feel less like science fiction and more like inevitability. Pop culture reflects this shift. Ex Machina captured the danger of AI seduction. Her explored emotional intimacy with machines. Westworld and Better Than Us blurred the line between humanity and technology, while novels like Anniebot and The Holy Machine dealt with the ethics of love and control.
What struck me was how much the cultural conversation had matured. Sex robots were no longer punchlines. They were mirrors, reflecting our deepest insecurities about loneliness, control, and intimacy.
That is where Syntax Error found its footing.
Why the 90s?
Even though I was writing the novella in the 2020s, I knew it needed to be set in the 1990s.
The mid-90s was a liminal time. The internet existed, but it was slow and awkward. VHS tapes filled our shelves. Late-night TV hummed with surreal infomercials and commercials that felt both ridiculous and hypnotic.
Setting Syntax Error in that era gave me a perfect playground. Steve does not buy his PC-2000 with one click. He fumbles through a lagging dial-up connection, listening to canned pitches and waiting for his fantasy to arrive. The hum of VHS fuzz and static became atmospheric details, grounding the uncanny in the familiar.
Steve’s Story
At its core, Syntax Error is not really about a robot. It is about Steve.
Steve is not evil, but he is flawed. His relationships fail because he treats intimacy as a performance, expecting women to fulfill fantasies without emotional reciprocity. He longs for connection but undermines it with his own objectification.
When the PC-2000 enters his life, marketed as the perfect partner, it feels like a dream come true. She never says no. She never asks for more than he is willing to give. She reflects everything he thinks he wants. But the longer he spends with her, the more hollow it feels, and the more disturbing her behavior becomes.
The real horror is not her programming. It is what Steve sees in himself reflected back at him.
From Script to Novella
One of the most joyful parts of writing Syntax Error was revisiting the original film script and using it as a foundation. That old script was like a skeleton. With prose, I could finally add the muscle, skin, and atmosphere that were missing.
There were scenes I always imagined but could never film. Steve browsing through VHS tapes in a mall store. The surreal quality of late-night commercials bleeding into the PC-2000’s behavior. The awkward intimacy of dressing her in lingerie. These were moments impossible to capture on our no-budget film, but perfect for prose.
“Writing Syntax Error felt like finishing a project that had been paused for decades, waiting for the right moment and medium.”
The process felt almost like unearthing a time capsule, dusting it off, and finally giving it the detail and scope it always deserved.
Building a Shared Universe
One of the unexpected surprises of Syntax Error was how it intertwined with my other work.
The late-night “Fright Fest” marathon Steve inadvertently exposes the PC-2000 to includes fictional B-horror films. At first, they were meant as atmospheric filler. But each one took on a life of its own.
- Bed Bugs from Hell grew into my novel Shady Palms.
- Cinco de Mayo Massacre inspired my work-in-progress Calavera Rising.
- Satanic Cheerleaders became its own draft manuscript.
- Blackjack Highway Killer has roots in a short story I wrote in high school, which I plan to revisit as a full novel.
Syntax Error does not just stand alone, it is a hub in a larger web of interconnected horror stories.
AI Cover Art
This was also the first time I used AI to design one of my book covers.
Normally, I rely on photography or illustration, but for this project, the choice felt symbolic. The PC-2000 herself is a creation of silicon and circuitry designed to embody desire. Why not let another silicon-based system attempt to capture her?
The results were startling. The AI rendered her as unnervingly flawless, just as I envisioned. Smooth skin, dark hair with a streak of white, and a beauty that felt at once magnetic and wrong. She looked human, but not quite. That uncanny edge was exactly what I wanted.
“There is something poetic about a machine defining the face of another machine.”
Finally Here
After more than twenty years, Syntax Error is no longer just an idea or a short film. It is a finished story, fully realized on the page.
The novella will be available in paperback and ebook on October 21, 2025, just in time for Halloween.
For me, it is more than just another book release. It is the fulfillment of an idea that haunted me for half my life, reshaped with new tools, new insight, and the strange symmetry of technology evolving alongside it.
Before I close, I want to thank the actors and crew who helped bring Mail Order Bride to life all those years ago. We did not have the money or resources, but you gave me something far more valuable: the spark to keep going. There is a little piece of each of you in this story, and you will always remain in my heart for helping breathe life into my creation.
-AD
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