At any rate, it's written from the perspective of an AI which controls a ship. The AI may have once been a human on earth, and had its cognitive patterns transferred to the ship. It can do a certain amount towards modifying the ship, but they've apparently turned off its ability to speak. The ship at the beginning of the story has only 2 humans on it, down from hundreds. The ship is stationed at some place near the solar system (?) to look at a weird phenomenon, called 'Julia', presumably because it resembles a Julia set fractal, which defies all known physics. While the ship has been stationed there, the Earth has basically died.
That may give you enough clues to help you orient yourself, so that you can figure out what happens.