Defined but Not Embedded

By Emmanuel Francis

It came to her that she had done a great wrong, and brought shame to herself and her family. She started to weep.
Ji Fu, look at me, the Supreme Being said softly. She slowly looked up. What you have done was in ignorance, and you are pardoned. He said.
As Ji Fu looked at Him, she saw forgiveness and love. And for the first time in a dozen (or so) years, she felt the beginning of hope. And now, I have a mission for you. He said. You will live.
Here? Ji Fu said. No, little one, back on earth. He said. After a number of months, your body will fully heal. You will plead guilty to your crimes, but will be provided with opportunities to tell your story. You will beg forgiveness from the families you have wronged. You will study my Word and learn about me and my ways. Then you will understand your mission.
You are the one they call Jesus, who died on the cross! Ji Fu said. I thought it was a myth.
It was no myth, said Jesus. Now go! I will always be with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493160556

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Copyright © 2014 by Emmanuel Francis.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4931-6054-9

                eBook         978-1-4931-6055-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 01/15/2014

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CONTENTS

Preface

1.   Domenic’s Story

2.   Field Trip to NYC

3.   It’s a Nuke!

4.   Trip to the Weapons Lab

5.   Working for the FBI

6.   Domenic and Perry

7.   Domenic Arrives in Phila.

8.   Domenic’s First Church Service

9.   Perry and the Dying Mary Jane

10.   Ji Fua

11.   Domenic Confronts Abortion

12.   Domenic and God agree

13.   The Third Nuke—Ji Fu in Wash., DC

14.   Domenic Checking Out a Pro-Life Group

15.   Gay Protestors at the Church

16.   Perry and His Gay Friend

17.   Domenic Researches Homosexuality

18.   More Investigations

19.   Perry’s Experience at the Hospital with the Battered Woman

20.   Fourth Explosion by Jifu

21.   Domenic Starts to Believe He is Wasting His Time.

22.   Domenic, Perry and the Unfaithful Husband

23.   Domenic Coming to Know Christ

24.   Seeing Perry After Accepting Jesus

25.   Last Explosion by Ji Fu

26.   Ji Fu’s Encounter with Christ

27.   End of the Case

28.   Domenic Wraps Things Up

29.   The Last Thing

PREFACE

Long ago, before the world was created, the Marciano family had been designated as agents for the cause of Truth. After the rebellion, it was expected that they were to be engaged as counterrevolutionaries. Over the centuries, agents for the rebellion had whittled down their numbers, through various means (subversion, assassination, disease, etc.), until only 2 were left; one active agent and one potential recruit. Two brothers were left; Perry Marciano, an Anglican priest (the active agent) and his older brother, Domenic, a nuclear engineer who worked for an engineering firm in upstate NY, and an agnostic. Despite their differences, they remained close friends in addition to being brothers.

1

Domenic’s Story

It was a dark and stormy mood, Domenic thought, as he awoke just before his alarm went off. Dragging himself out of bed, Domenic regretted watching too much TV last night, which he realized was probably an attempt to help him forget the fact that he was a bit lonely (and single) in his new home. Despite his late evening, he had to get up early to get a head start on a project at work he was struggling to keep up with, to make at least an attempt to stay on schedule. After getting dressed and eating a quick breakfast, he went outside. At that time of the year (March) near Syracuse NY, it was dark (6:30 AM), damp, and he had to scrape ice off his car before he could drive safely (i.e., see).

Once he got to his desk at work, however, his mood improved significantly, his normal interest and enthusiasm in his job taking over. Though many people would think of his job as a nuclear engineer boring, he really liked his job and felt he had prepared all his life for it. Sure not all of his coworkers and customers were easy to get a long with (though most were), but even the difficult ones respected his technical acumen. In the rare cases when they did not, he worked all the harder for the pleasure of proving them wrong.

Since he was a young boy, he had shown an aptitude for science and mathematics. Trying to understand the people around him and deal with his own feelings was like trying to see through mud. But the world of science and mathematics was like cool clear water; refreshing and clear without any emotional contaminants. For him it was a way of understanding the underlying structure of the physical world, like looking at the blueprints of the universe.

When he was younger he had imagined himself more in the forefront of science on the theoretical end or maybe as an inventor. He still came up with ideas and novel ways of looking at things once in a while. But early in college he had decided to pursue a more practical path because he liked seeing things come to fruition, and there was plenty of intellectual challenge even in that.

Twelve years of school, four years of college, a year and a half of graduate school, and 10 years of work experience later, he still thought it was cool. He liked the fact that he understood nature’s blueprints, worked with computers and hand calculations to predict what would happen based on his understanding of those blueprints, and worked with a group of engineers from his and other departments to design equipment that would meet the needs of his customers and in that way, serve society as a whole.

He liked sticking with the engineering side and had no wish to go into management. In truth, tact and diplomacy weren’t among the skills he had been blessed with, and at times, he could be short-tempered. He cared about his team and tried hard to help them be the best engineers they could, but when he thought someone (outside of his team) was doing something stupid, he wasn’t afraid of telling them so. This didn’t always endear him to his management, but it happened relatively infrequently, and they thought highly enough of his engineering and team leadership skills to be patient with him in the hope that he would improve his diplomatic skills someday.

As a nuclear engineer working for a large firm with contracts for both private companies and occasionally for the government, he had been involved in many different types of work. Two types of tasks were becoming more and more frequent: environmental remediation (cleaning up messes) and large component waste disposal (taking out the trash).

The interesting thing about this work was it required additional intellectual skills beyond the usual engineering challenge. Very frequently, no one knew how exactly the mess had occurred (had it been anticipated, it probably would have been prevented). In the area of waste disposal of very large components, most of them built decades ago, very frequently it wasn’t well understood how the component was built in the first place. Different materials underwent different reactions when they were exposed to radiation, so it was necessary to recreate not only how the component was built (or how the mess was made), but also what all the different materials were. It was like being a combination of detective and historian in addition to an engineer.

Most environmental remediation projects were from companies or factories or government projects that had shut down decades ago. Some years after 9/11/01, however, terrorists had finally developed a bomb that dispersed radioactive material (also called a dirty bomb) and found it was an effective tool for terrorizing people in several ways. In addition to destroying property and creating casualties, it created new environmental remediation projects. The environmental destruction greatly prolonged and increased the expense of cleanup and reconstruction; on top of this it induced a fear of latent cancer from the radioactive material (largely unwarranted, but the fear was real, nevertheless). These factors provided a great increase in the psychological footprint of the event. About a half a dozen dirty bombs had been detonated since the first one in France in 2019. Each dirty bomb required extensive environmental remediation. Domenic had some experience in both cleaning up old sites and newly created sites. With each dirty bomb, more and better techniques had been developed for cleanup; in addition to having direct experience, Domenic had read of or attended conferences on improved techniques since his own experience.

Domenic (and millions of other people) was grateful that terrorists had not yet detonated a nuclear bomb. While it would create an even more challenging problem in environmental remediation, Domenic was happy to remain inexperienced.

After several years in environmental remediation and waste removal, he had become