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Asterium Launches Real-World Crypto Payments Across Cafes, Airlines and Retail in Uzbekistan

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Asterium is expanding crypto beyond trading into real-world usage in Uzbekistan, enabli...

Tokenized Gold Expands As Asterium Launches AUZ With 0.01g Entry Point

Asterium has launched AUZ, a tokenized gold token supporting fractional ownership from 0.01 grams and 24/7 liquidity with regulated backing.

Asterium Introduces AUZ: Tokenized Gold with 24/7 Liquidity and Regulated Backing

New digital asset enables fractional ownership of physical gold with 24/7 liquidity and blockchain-based transparency

Portals are the only way knowns so far to travel faster than the speed of light. Felinis can open and use portals without any problems, but humans not so much

Everywhere there are mushrooms a gigantic network grows underground, made out of mycelium. The mushrooms can connect to this network and communicate with each other via a combination of hormones, proteins, and electrical signals, pretty similar to the Internet of humans, but a lot cooler. The networks themselves are semi-sentient beings, sometimes referred to as "overminds". There are several notable properties of these overminds that make them unique throughout the galaxy.

The overminds can store information. in fact, they can store a mushroom's entire consciousness. What this means is that if a mushroom is dying, it needs only to connect to the overmind underground network and let its body wither away. A new body can then regrow anywhere on the network and get imbued with the consciousness of the mushroom. This makes them pretty much immortal by aging, allowing them to live for eons, by constantly regenerating.

Being a giant electrical network the overminds act as antennas. It is not clear how exactly they do it, but they can communicate with each other at speed defying the known laws of physics, allowing for instant transfer of information over pretty much unlimited distances. This, combined with the previous property allows mushrooms to travel from planet to planet, by letting their bodies die and regrowing at the destination. It is a form of teleportation, although it takes some time for the new body to grow.

It was a warm evening, as most evenings were at the Nile valley. Ramses Mau III was sitting on top of the small temple watching the sunset and licking his paws. After finishing his cleaning ritual he jumped down the steps, planning to go down to the fishing village and maybe steal some little fish from the fisherman. Just as he was passing in front of the temple door, something caught his attention. There was a funny smell coming out of the small temple and a soft purple glow was lighting up the walls. This needed to be investigated, so Ramses went in. In the small inner chamber was the High Priest, the same one that had kicked him 3 years ago and who still received a daily dose of piss-in-shoes for that horrible trespass. In front of him on the floor, there was a big red circle with numerous funny characters written on its outer edge. What really caught Ramses' attention though was within the circle, or rather above it.

Fifty centimeters above the ground at the center of the circle something was... levitating. It seemed alive and it would have passed for an animal, as it had the correct number of limbs, eyes, and ears, only they were all in the wrong places. It had a mouth though and from this mouth, a chant came out in unison with the humming coming from the High Priest. As Ramses stood there watching the chanting grew louder and faster and the light coming out of the thing's mouth grew brighter. Ramses wasn't one for action but at that instant, he had the unmistakable instinct to kill. And he always followed his instincts. As the chanting grew to a pitch so high it was painful to listen to he leaped through the air, his talons out, fangs ready to bite, at the same instant as a purple lighting bolt jumped from the levitating mass to the Priest's staff. The rest was a quick blur of lightning fangs, claws, screams, and a lot of blood. When Ramses came back to his senses several hours later he didn't remember much of the fight. But he had a sudden feeling of clarity, something he had never felt before.

There is some possibility that this is what happened. At least that's Ramses' version of it. There are, of course, other versions, some including a clumsy cat falling inside a cauldron which was at the time being used to boil a potion infused with elder magic. Whatever the exact situation was the result is the same - at that instant, Ramses Mau II seized being a normal cat and became a Felini - a cat with intellect rivaling that of humans and the power to channel the magic of the elder gods. One particular manifestation of that power was the ability to hypnotize humans with lower willpower and turn them into mindless slaves, creatures whose only purpose is to serve their Felini masters, and who call themselves "cat-people". Using his newfound powers Ramses quickly set about enslaving everyone he could lay his eyes on. His conquest was unfortunately cut short when he encountered the High Priest and found out that not only did his hypnotism not work on the man but that there are others much more adept at the use of elder magic than he himself is.

Ramses was lucky though because at that time cats were revered as sacred in Egypt, so instead of killing him, the priests just entombed him in a pyramid buried under the timeless sands of the Sahara desert.

This would have been the end of the Felini race if some pesky archeologists didn't excavate the tomb some 10,000 years later. By that time nobody remembered that there are cats who can wield elder magic and enslaved humans, so the main emotions when they saw Ramses emerge from the tomb, were a mixture of pity, and some disgust (nobody had seen a hairless cat for some millennia). The archaeologists were promptly enslaved, and those who couldn't be enslaved were promptly executed. In the ten millennia he has spent underground Ramses had learned a trick or two on how to use his newfound powers and several unlucky archaeologists found themselves locked in the same dimension as a thousand elder gods. Not a pretty place to be in, even if you ignore the smell of rotten eggs.

In the beginning there were the mushrooms. But since they were the only intelligent beings around the mushrooms are bored. So the mushrooms said, “let there be drugs”, and drugs there were. Being a peaceful race, not inclined to do anything more violent than some simple pranks, the mushrooms dedicated themselves to exploring whatever states of consciousness they could get themselves into. Some dabbled in meditation, but given how strong their hallucinogens were, this option was quickly discarded as too slow. At some point during the drug filled eons when the mushrooms were populating the galaxy, they became really good friends with frogs. Not for any other reason, but because frogs, as we all know, are nature’s top chemists, second only to the mushrooms themselves. So, a symbioses formed, where the mushrooms would feed the frogs in exchange for whatever chemicals they produced. Since none of the two species was interested in eating the other, this friendship survived the test of time.

The morning cold was always refreshing, pinching bare skin. And this world's mornings seemed to be colder than the ones back at home, which was an upside. Their fire burned just like one at home too. Their fauna was so different than what he was used to, and the buildings much more.. simplistic. All so very different, yet so many similarities.

But this place was more crammed than the wide streets of Oxarin and much more lifeless than the wilderness outside of Citadels. It helped remind him that this wasn’t home, but just a noisy, often bad smelling parody of it. It didn’t let his mind rest, which helped him focus on his goal of getting back, but only made the ache of yearn that much more worse to bear.

“Still battering the streets in your futile arrogance, I see.” Lawrence heard a voice from somewhere down the alley. Having anyone else in this world would have made it easier on his soul. Anyone else but them.

With a swift motion, the piece of wood was extinguished and placed back with the rest, in the bag he had on him during the accident. And in that same instant he faced the tall and slim figure that had crept up on him. He wasn’t going to fight the same fight he already lost. It was already hard enough for him to admit defeat in the first place.

“And you still exploit these people. Having set that both of these are on the list constants in this world, what else have you found?” The sooner they would part ways the better. At first he stuck with this creature because they both needed to each other to survive. Now only getting back would make him happier than having to never see their face again. 

“They don’t have anything that amounts to our Will. I did hear about a certain Will Smith, but besides the name there are no parallels with out Smiths.” So nothing to match their power. At least nothing obvious. That was a relief to some extent, it helped both of them lay low. “They’re simpletons, as I told you. And here is where our paths part. If you have survived that cliff you can survive blending in.”

With that, the tall figure faded back where it came from, down the alley and past a corner, towering over everyone, yet fitting in perfectly. They were in a rush, if not simply eager to leave just as much as Lawrence was. It didn’t matter now, but for some reason he stood for a few moments, as if to make sure they left or possibly as if to wish they didn’t. No goodbyes were said, after all.

They were right on that. These people, all seemed to be so closed and absorbed into themselves, viewing so little of the world. It was both relieving and suffocating at the same time to be the only one like himself he knew of.

Lawrence lingered there for a few more moments, trying to muster up the courage to go into this new world and find a way back. Without any sort of universal power, it would be a hard task to find a way back alone, made even harder by all of the chaos of this world, all of the noise and all of the unfamiliarities. 

From his bag he reached for one of his cigarettes, pulling his bandana down, bringing the cigarette between his lips and igniting it with a snap of his fingers. The end burst with heat, followed by a small flame that quickly died out, leaving embers.