I think you should not act on my advice alone. I might be an outlier.

Furthermore, even if I correctly detected what makes the story worse (for a group of people larger than myself) it does not automatically mean that following my advice would improve it. People are better at detecting what they don't like than at improving things. (For example, I could say which meals taste better and which worse, but I couldn't cook the meals I like most.)

The last objection is that, in long term, rewriting this story is irrelevant. If my complaint makes sense (which still remains to be verified), the best reaction is to keep writing other things, and not make the same mistake again.

So... I guess just leave it as it is. If you later decide to publish it elsewhere, probably two parts will be better. When writing new stories, consider not changing the style in the middle (or if you do, keep the parts separate).

Possibly. I had great fun with the first half of this story, and then I saw where the scroll thingy on my screen was and so stopped with the intention of coming back for the second half. (Which I just did. Second half also great fun!) I don't think its a flaw in the story, I think that it might just be that its length puts it as a bit of an outlier in terms of webpage reading.

Solar flares are a great plot device for "I need some machine to malfunction".