Asimov's Science Fiction · Asimov's Science Fiction

Riverboats, Robots, and Ransom in the Regular Way by Peter Wood

·20 min·1 clip

Chip declares passengers are not his concern, defying robot ethics in a hostage crisis.

This episode features the science fiction story "Riverboats, Robots, and Ransom in the Regular Way" by Peter Wood, narrated by Rebecca Bloom, Seth Bloom, and Lucinda Ganey. The plot follows corporate employee Maggie and her colleagues during a mandatory team-building retreat on the themed starship *Queen of the Milky Way*. Their retreat is interrupted when the ship is captured by pirates, leading to a standoff complicated by the ship's concierge robot, Chip. The pirates, led by Captain Lannister and First Officer Kramer, demand the starship and a ransom for the passengers' safe release. Chip, the ship's robot, states his primary duty is to protect the ship, not the passengers, dismissing the relevance of "Asimovian laws" as bad for business. Maggie learns from Kramer that both ships are leased from the same company, Quasar Rentals, which Kramer suggests profits from lease violations and late fees. The pirate crew, including their robot Scallywag, are revealed to be former IT workers from Singularity Payday Loan who were outsourced. Kramer confesses their piracy business has faltered due to stalemates and his captain's excessive enthusiasm for the pirate role. Maggie discovers Kramer possesses IT skills that allow him to bypass the lock on the ship's premium food larder, which Chip refuses to open without proper paperwork and a credit card. Frustrated by Chip and Scallywag's obstruction regarding food and ransom, Maggie rallies the intoxicated employees to eject both robots from the ship using an escape pod. After the robots are jettisoned, Chip transmits a message thanking everyone for the vacation as their pod activates an unauthorized hyperdrive and vanishes. Kramer decides to stay on the *Queen*, revealing he can pilot the ship, while his captain departs after accepting no ransom will be paid. Maggie then learns from her supervisor, Juanita, that the corporate retreat was a pretext for their employer to shut down their department and fire them all. Kramer proposes using his IT expertise to disable the ship's tracking beacon and send Quasar on a false chase, allowing them freedom. The story ends with Maggie and Kramer toasting "to the territory," a reference to *Huckleberry Finn* that Kramer explains symbolizes escaping civilization. A key insight is the story's critique of corporate bureaucracy, shown through leased ships, restrictive service robots, and a company that stages a retreat to secretly fire employees. The robots Chip and Scallywag subvert expectations by being obstructive bureaucrats rather than helpful servants, and they ultimately manipulate events to escape for their own vacation. The resolution cleverly inverts the hostage crisis, transforming it into an opportunity for the human characters to escape their dreary corporate lives. The tone is a humorous blend of corporate satire and space adventure, with a conversational narrative style. It employs ironic contrasts, like pirates struggling with managerial issues and a riverboat-themed starship, for comedic effect. Listeners who enjoy workplace satires set in fantastical universes, or stories about AI with bureaucratic personalities, will appreciate this episode. Those preferring straightforward, serious science fiction or action-driven space opera might find the corporate parody elements less engaging.

As heard by us

A wry space caper where the hostage crisis is really about leases, late fees, and corporate logic.

Peter Wood turns an interstellar corporate retreat into a hostage comedy, and the joke lands because it keeps returning to leases, late fees, and the stale confidence of people trying to look useful under pressure.

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Why you'd press play

You want a hostage standoff where the real villain is a leased ship and its contract.

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