I'm reading the Stardrifter series by David Collins-Rivera, and reviewing each book as I finish it. Believe it or not, the short story Open All Night is a story about a diner and its struggle to retain its business license, but this is a Stardrifter story so there's a lot more to the actual story than just that. This review contains no spoilers.
The story of Open All Night is literally about a diner on 4th Street of some space station that's recently encountered some competition. The problem is, space is so limited on a space station that competition doesn't just mean your customers might choose a different restaurant for lunch, it means you have to justify your business license to the station business committee. Unfortunately for the diner's owner and employees, their competition has several friends in high positions in the station's governance, so things don't look so good.
Over the course of the story, we meet the owner of the diner and we learn that he feels entitled to his business license because he's been in business for so many years. In fact, he seems to take a lot in life for granted. His regular customers aren't really people so much as they are his regular customers. His girlfriend is his girlfriend and always will be, whether he bothers saying things like "I love you" or not. The new guy he hired recently will always be the new guy.
The new guy, in fact, is Ejoq, looking to pick up some extra cash until the next boat he's contracted on departs. When the competition across the street starts to push people around, Ejoq lends a hand here and there in some pretty clever ways. He does what he does best: his agreed-upon job, plus a little minor engineering to get both technology and people into advantageous positions.
Ejoq is a minor character in the story. He comes up now and again, but he's definitely a background player. The rest of the diner crew gets most of the attention, with the owner, Max, emerging eventually as the main character. While the conflict seems clear, the real enemy of the story is the threat of change.
Change is a tricky threat, because if you look at it one way it looks like an enemy, but from a different angle it often starts to look like an ally. In this story, Max spends a lot of time fighting the oncoming change that the new restaurant represents. It's a flashy place with high profile owners, probably a celebrity chef, and interiour design that's just so. It represents the new 4th Street, the one where "normal people" can't afford to go. It's gentrification, and it's targeted Max and the diner and the whole neighbourhood.
Ultimately, Max learns that there's a difference between change and adaptation. Change happens no matter what. It doesn't need a mastermind or a conspiracy to drive it, change is a constant. Whether the diner goes or stays, Max must learn to adapt with the changing times. And he does, in the end. He makes a lot of changes, some of them voluntary and others involuntary. His beloved 4th Street changes, the neighbourhood changes, but he's not crushed by it the way he was being crushed by the threat of change before.
Open All Night is a wacky story, honestly. I'm pretty sure Eddie K. must be sitting off in one corner of the diner, although he's never menitioned. The diner staff is funny, and silly things happen, but also a lot of endearing things. A lot of what David Collins-Rivera has written proves his skill at storytelling, but this story to me demonstrates his subtlety. He'll look you straight in the eye and claim to tell you a short story about a diner, while all along he's telling you a story about your own life and the lessons you ought to learn from the world before you get run over by it.
This isn't sci fi, exactly, aside from it being set on a space station and there being some high tech solutions to some high tech problems. In fact, it feels a little like one of those TV episodes that got filmed on a nearby soap opera lot so they didn't have to build sets that week. For that reason, I don't think I'd say this is the first Stardrifter stories somebody should read, but if you're looking for the soul of Stardrifter, then it's definitely required reading.