Commuters Pump Handcars For Fun

Brightly dressed clerks are pumping heavy steel handcars across the Ceres salt flats. The three-metre vehicles, once used to transport brine before the tracks were automated, have become the asteroid’s most popular fitness trend. Young office workers now use them for morning core workouts.

They call it rail-pumping.

Elderly residents are horrified. To those who worked the deep salt seams under the old mining syndicate, the wooden pump-handles represent decades of forced labour. Retired driller Kieran Cho spent six years chained to a lever. He says the sight of young people wearing expensive linen shorts while sweating on the gallows-frame makes him physically ill.

"It was a punishment," Cho said.

The trend has begun to delay commercial freight. Asked if the automated ore-trains could stop in time to avoid crushing the slow-moving gym-goers, the track manager said the trains ran on a fixed loop. He added that the cargo would arrive on time regardless.

Meanwhile, the commuters are petitioning the council to remove the modern roller-bearings from the axles. They want more friction to increase their caloric burn.