I’m fairly certain that’s an electron microscopy image of axons. Axons are basically the cables that allow neurons in the brain to talk to each other.
If you have an image like that of axons, that tissue is dead. It’s been dissected for study. We clearly see Gemma’s vitals (heart rate, temperature) on the screen, so how do we have live vitals with dead tissue? What about all that other information on the screen? And what does this have to do with Walt Disney being cryogenically frozen? Ok, that last question was a bit out of left field, but bear with me.
*GEMMA*
Gemma *did* die in a car accident. Clinically speaking. But I believe Lumon, through its influence in the town of Kier, was able to quickly recover her body and cryogenically freeze her brain. Little by little, they thaw a section of her brain. They measure the neural activity and send it off to Macrodata Refinement. MDR sees these recordings as wiggling numbers. PCKT RATE, PCKT TIME, and DURATION are referring to the data packets they are recording from the axons, and how much time is left before that tissue dies and the numbers lose their wiggle.
*MDR*
You can read my previous theory here, but the TLDR is that Lumon is working to resurrect Kier Eagan. Kier believed a person’s essence was comprised of the Four Tempers. Macrodata Refinement is meant to take a person’s raw data and sort it into the Four Tempers, thereby recreating the person. MDR employees are severed to avoid tainting this process with their own lives, experiences, and personalities.
This sorting is what we see on the bottom of that image: the Four Tempers of Woe, Dread, Frolic, and Malice. The refiners are trying to categorize Gemma’s neural activity to reconstruct the person.
*WALT DISNEY??*
There’s a famous urban myth that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen. I think that’s what happened to Kier. Gemma is ITNO (iteration number) 25 of an attempt at reading data from a cryogenically frozen brain and creating a full human build. Once they are confident the system works, they’ll attempt it on Kier himself.
*FINAL THOUGHTS*
Doesn’t this mean the Macrodat Four are compromised? Yes, but I don’t take anything Lumon has set up in this episode at face value. Also see below.
They don’t finish each file, so aren’t parts of Gemma lost forever? I think Branch 501, the original location, is the only one with a Testing Floor and test subjects. Each file generated at Branch 501 is being solved simultaneously by all the other branches. If all branches across all 206 countries solve a random 80% of the file, collectively they will capture everything. Lumon can also check the results between branches, so the compromised MDR of Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving is less of a concern.
How is Gemma / Ms Casey still walking around? We do not have any evidence that severance actually sections off a person’s mind, only what Lumon says. But what if the chip actually holds an entire person? Ms Casey is the innie in the severance chip. Gemma the outie, really just her brain, but her outie no longer exists because her brain is cryopreserved. The cryogenics may also explain why Ms Casey has had such limited time out of the Testing Floor, it's all the process can tolerate. It also may explain why she is so "off" compared to the other innies.
