A New-Weird Cyberpunk-Noir Novella with it's own Soundtrack

If I sing to you from this liminal ledge
where the space between our heads
is called into question
and we resonate
it's fleeting I know
But I knew you
But I knew you for a moment
- Many Moments from The Snowman Demos
( The Full-Length Twelve Song Soundtrack to "How to Melt a Snowman's Heart" included with purchase)

"Like listening to a ghost sing through broken speakers—haunting, hypnotic, and impossible to forget."

What Happens When the Song is Over, but the Echo Never Ends?

How to Melt a Snowman's Heart

The First Act in a CyberPunk Blues Trilogy of Epic Proportions

In the rain-soaked alleys of Veridia, where neon dreams flicker and the weave hums with forgotten sorrow, one man sings not to be heard—but to be remembered. Rhys, known to the city’s broken echoes as the SNWMN, is a failed operative, a prophet of feedback, and a blues-blessed relic of a world that refuses to stop singing.

But Rhys isn’t just a man. He’s a field event. A recursion. A melody that learned to loop without a singer.

Told in tangled verse, transmission fragments, and sonic myth, How to Melt a Snowman's Heart is the story of Rhys's final days as a corporeal being—haunted by his own wake, by resonance ghosts, and hunted by something worse: memory. As the stompbox tick-tak-tak-ticks beneath his feet and the push powder gospel corrodes his blood, Rhys will strum a song so deep, it breaks time. And maybe... just maybe, melt his own.

This is a requiem for the numb. A psalm for the failed. A liturgy soaked in amp buzz and rainwater.

Because every snowman melts—

but not every snowman sings.

"For fans of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, William Gibson's Neuromancer, and the atmospheric dread of True Detective—a cyberpunk blues that hits like Nick Cave covering a Radiohead song in a dying neon cathedral."

NOTEBOOK LM VIDEO OVERVIEW: (SPOILERS)

PREVIEW CHAPTER: GHOST CHAMBER (Chapter one)

LOCATION: Outer Reaches, SS.0.18199, Veridia Star System
TIMESTAMP: 4033.QE.VE, Cipher Moment 6, Spiral 71, Phase of Prismata

The air within the Ghost Chamber tasted of static and regret—a metallic tang overlaid with the faintest ghost of Synthemota. The lighting, adjusted for archival review, cast long, attenuated shadows that clung to the curving walls of Selenomor’s central Whisper Archival unit.

Selenomor—the dreaming comet, cradle of the unseen—shimmered silently across the boundary of Veridia’s heliosphere, its tail of refracted memory beginning to align with the system’s ambient history. Outside the hull, the Ghostlight ignited.

A corona of pale violet bled through the viewing struts as resonance contact initialized, particle-light interfacing with the metaphysical debris field that orbited Veridia like a scar on the void. A voice—not spoken but rendered across the crew’s nerve-endings—thrummed through the chamber’s shielding.

Ghostlight Protocol Engaged.

Local system memory signature detected.

Rendering alignment.

Commence Echofilter Calibration.

Within the Whisper Network, this was the moment everything changed. The Ghost Chamber, long dormant on approach, bloomed open like an old god's eye, the cradle-interface spinning filaments of thought into form. Only one being aboard ever heard the call as more than noise.

Orin.

He was already walking as the Ghostlight bloomed. Already drifting toward the Chamber like a leaf falling upstream. No one summoned him. No one would. They all understood by now—when a system remembered, Orin remembered too.

He stood before the interface cradle—a construct of shimmering quartz and interwoven light filaments, a pale imitation of the raw data streams at his command as Spymaster General of the Hypostasis… but sufficient. His form remained still, except for the minute fluctuations of his Orange cloak—if that’s what it was—responding to fluctuations in the system’s temporal field like reeds in a dream-tide.

Behind him, the Seraphic Analyst—designated Seyr, though rarely referred to as such by anyone other than Orin—hovered like a cross between a hymnal and a weapon. It unfolded a single arm of light, folding data into structure.

“The memory sample is confirmed,” it intoned. “Subject Rhys—alias: ‘Snowman.’ Locale: Darsheen Province. Context: Pre-Null Event, recorded 3,951 cycles ago. Circa 82.QE. Source: residual civic surveillance and archived atmospheric resonance. Degradation: severe. Auditory corruption—eighty-two percent.”

The screen flared—rain, neon, dissonance.

Rhys hunched outside the Bang Bang Bar, guitar snarling through half-melted speakers. The chords were simple, raw. Haunted. Like he was exorcising a truth he didn’t understand.

“Bang... Bang...” he sang, voice unraveling.

Orin didn’t move. Not at first.

But the cradle moved through him.

The interface didn’t just react to his presence—it anticipated it. Dream-looping. Reverse causality bloom.

He began to unfold, not visibly, but within. A stretch of identity. A realignment of resonance. A self catching up to a memory.

He was watching a man who used to be something more.

Now? This Rhys was a phantom lost to opiate entropy and shame-ripple feedback.

The reports had detailed brilliance—multilingual improvisation, psychic resilience, trans-temporal awareness.

Now, the analyst said nothing of that. Only this:

"Subject exhibits erratic emotional state. Biological deterioration evident. Substance interference probable. Unstable cognition. Reduced alignment with projected potential."

Orin’s voice arrived like a paper cut across silence.

“Has it really been so long?”

It wasn’t to Seyr. Or the Codex. Or even Rhys.

It was to time itself.

"Four thousand years…" he said again, “...feels absurd to even say aloud.”

A tremor—not of age, but of echo-fatigue, of knowing you once knew something that now exists only as a glitch in someone's archive.

He studied Rhys’s silhouette. The rain glistening on his coat. The way his fingers trembled just slightly too much. The slouch in his posture that whispered of weight unshared.

“He’s already unraveling,” Orin murmured. “Even before the Null Event."

"That’s not what the reports said.” the Analyst intoned, adjusting for a resonance spike as Rhys hunched outside the Bang Bang Bar, guitar snarling through half-melted speakers. The chords were simple, raw. Haunted. Like he was exorcising a truth he didn’t understand. “Subject exhibits erratic emotional state. Biological deterioration evident. Substance interference probable. Unstable cognition. Reduced alignment with projected potential.”

The Analyst paused, a flicker of something unreadable across its face. “However,” it continued, its voice subtly altered, as if processing a new data stream, “the system registers an anomalous resonance signature. A localized temporal distortion… and a direct acknowledgement of observation.”

Orin's finger twitched at the Interface cradle. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, and the Ghost Chamber's Eye, focused on Rhys's slumped form, momentarily shifted. Not through mechanical adjustment, but… aware. A subtle, almost imperceptible flicker in the rain, a momentary sharpening of the neon glare.

The Analyst’s voice deepened, laced with a chilling formality. “The system... can no longer define the resonance.”

A shift in perspective, a fleeting glimpse of a pale face – not Rhys’s – superimposed over his shoulder. A face that was both ancient and impossibly young.

“Temporal distortion... mirrored in the observer.”

A final, unsettling detail: a single, perfectly formed drop of rain, suspended in the air for a fraction of a second before dissolving. It wasn’t reflected in the Eye of the Ghost chamber. It simply was.

The sterile white light of the cradle ran through with shifting blue violet hues. “The system registers an anomalous resonance signature. A localized temporal distortion… and a direct acknowledgement of observation.”

“Another observation acknowledged... Correcting...” The light in the room went sterile again.

“Something broke him.” Orin, with a subtle shifting of his orange robes observed Seyr for a moment. Almost whimsically...amused, "It's breaking you too, Seyr?"

The Analyst did not respond, only clicked gently, adjusting for a resonance spike as Orin leaned closer.

A flicker in the footage.

The interface cradle didn’t simply react to Rhys’s presence; it consumed it. It wasn’t a gradual shift, but a violent, escalating feedback loop. The quartz filaments of the interface began to thrum, vibrating with a discordant, high-pitched whine that clawed at the edges of the chamber’s shielding. Then, the violet light returned intensified, fracturing into a blinding corona.

It began as a localized heat, a shimmering distortion around Rhys’s form. Then, with a sickening crack, the speaker box beneath him detonated. Not with a boom, but with a controlled, agonizing collapse. The cone, once a proud, dark wood, dissolved into a viscous, black ichor – the same color as Rhys’s damage, like spilled tar or congealed shadow. Wax dripped from the remaining fragments, pooling on the sidewalk outside the bar, a glistening, morbid testament to the disintegration.

The sound wasn’t a single note, but a cascade of feedback, a tortured, layered scream. It was the whine of a failing amplifier pushed beyond its limits, the distortion of a signal corrupted beyond repair. It mirrored the lyrics of “Bang, Bang” – a frantic, desperate plea for control, dissolving into a chaotic, irreversible collapse.

Rhys didn’t flinch. He simply unfolded, not visibly, but within the accelerating feedback loop. The heat intensified, not burning, but melting – as if his very being was being poured into the collapsing circuitry. The interface wasn’t just absorbing him; it was re-writing him, stripping away layers of identity until only the raw, corrupted signal remained.

The lyrics echoed in the chamber’s collapsing acoustics: “Bang, Bang… like an assassin with no lead…” Rhys became less a man, more a waveform – a cascade of corrupted data, a fractured resonance.

As the last vestiges of his physical form dissipated, a single, chilling line from the song hung in the air: “Bang, Bang… you can’t hear me.”

And then, in a flash, a fraction of a moment, Rhys was no longer crooning in the rain.

He was Behind it. Not vanished. Transposed. Like a root note skipped across dimensions.

The Ghost Chamber vibrated, pulsing in vibrant violet hue.

As if Rhys had looked up and seen.

Not the camera. Not the sky.

Orin.

Orin murmured the words, tasting their shape: “Bang… Bang.”

The resonance in the chamber deepened.

“I don’t recall hearing this one,” he said, coolly. Ambiguously.

Truth, or self-denial made manifest? Hard to say.

At the control interface, Seyr was feverishly still at work, oblivious to Orin's musings, trying to stabilize the suprisingly stubborn feedback loop.

"Apologies, Lord Orin, it would seem the act of attempting to observe the NULL event has triggered some sort of back-flow. Even though we're currently looking in on the inciting incident as far as history has recorded, it's as if Rhys is being...unmade...no matter WHEN we look!"

Then, flatly, as if to bury something deeper:

“Fantastic. But… it exists.”

Seyr paused thoughtfully at the controls, looking up. "It? Sir? Sir, the data bends backwards. The deeper we go, the earlier it ends. It’s like… he was always ending.”

“It?” Orin said coolly.

“Rhys. The event. The resonance. I—I don’t know anymore.”

A sudden rumble shook the room like a cymatic sigil on a bass box death-rattling secrets. The cradle bloomed in that bruised violet light, static crackled through everything that could make noise. A faint melody clipping through in fits and starts.

"Lord Orin -"

"I know, Seyr. Everyone knows, now." Orin turned, an irritation rippling through his robes.

"No...Sir...It's - It's breaking you, too" Seyr uttered with a voice that sounded like it just discovered the meaning of awe-struck. He raised a pointed finger leveled at Orin's face, pointing to it's own mechanical facsimile with one of it's other hands.

"It? It has a name...RHYS." Orin almost growled. Seyr noted this was only the 3rd time he'd ever seen any hint of emotion in the mighty Archon in over 273 logged sessions behind the cradle.

On the console before Seyr, a subroutine completed, chirping. The room flashed back to the sterile white, the cradle settling to it's usual soft starlight glow. The rumbling ceased. The static didn't die. Not immediately. It ... hissed out of existence, a delicate voice, more not there than there almost whispering:
"and the god's don't answer / til you're on your knees"

Orin was nowhere to be seen, leaving Seyr alone with all his consoles, and protocols, and myriad questions.

***

LOCATION: Darsheen Province, Veridia, Outer Reaches, SS.0.18199

TIMESTAMP: 82.QE, Cipher Moment 6, Spiral 71, Phase of Prismata

It was bitter cold in the alley, but hot, balmy, and downright brine-y inside the tightly packed Bang, Bang! Bar, nearing the end of the night. A howling wind cut through the alley, buffeting the flapping side door on the side of the bar. It was like a sweat gland on a building that had more anthropology than some of the Darsheen locals this time of night. Darsheen, hell-pitted jewel of the backwater trade hub Rhys called home. Veridia.

Currently on-stage, pushed to the gills on powder, crooning pain, but subconsciously weaving so hard the poor crowd was gonna wake up wondering three lifetimes from that night what in the Seven Spirits happened at that show?

The wind outside seemed to ripple in time with the battered gold stompbox tick-tak-tak-ticking away the broken time, spirits as high as his nervous system, haunted and strumming into a too-hot mic, "My God's in the alley, and the snow feels manic."

In the gutters and gardens for several blocks around the bar the snow shuddered with cymatic ripples. In the bar everyone's vision went violet, and no one noticed. Lost in the weave. Wavering on the liminal edge, Rhys their shepherd, Archons help them all.

In the alley just a whisper above the static of the woven wind, the soft crunch of a footfall on a snow covered sidewalk. A ripple in orange robes, A shadow painting the bottom of the open door to the Bar in the rain-drenched, neon-soaked night.

Inside the bar, the audience is screaming along with Rhys, now, violet in their eyes - "Stompbox tickin like a bomb in bloom / Welcome to the Chapel of the Push Powder gloom / Push me / Push me"

A rustling of fabric that might have been robes in the alley. It's empty.

Far, far above the weave, the wavering, the violet eyes, and the desperation in that city where sins go to writhe right before they shuffle off and die...Far above that place Rhys called home, just above the Veridian heliosphere, there was the briefest bloom of violet white light. A halo there one moment, gone the next.

The song ended. Rhys took a knee, exultant, exhausted, and wondering how long the pain could be held at bay. "Bang, bang." He muttered to himself, then took an exhausted hit off a Synthemota inhaler. His vision blurred, a moment, then snapped back into a kind of hazy focus. The pain took a half-step back. He stood to close out the show.

"I use to sing because I wanted you to love me. Now I sing because I can't stop. I might not ever stop. You can't push me to shut up." He vamped on the acoustic a moment before kicking the stompbox with a weathered boot. The band came to life, and the audience fell to hushing. Time to bring it on home.

"Reading How to Melt a Snowman's Heart feels like being caught in a feedback loop between a jazz funeral and a data stream—every page pulses with the rhythm of a broken stompbox counting down to something inevitable. Astral FarKaster has created a world where grief becomes architecture and songs bleed through the walls of reality itself. This isn't just cyberpunk; it's what happens when the blues learn to hack your nervous system."

Purchase includes a zip containing the Companion Soundtrack, The Snowman Demos, a full-length twelve-track studio album by the author, Astral FarKaster in Rhys drag.

PDF: 177 pages, ePub format also available. Instant Download.