So, with the Magnus Protocol being on hiatus, I can finally catch up. In the meanwhile, a theory I hope will not be disproven in the last episodes. Sorry if I ramble a little, there is a TLDR on the end.
I had a thought about FR-d1. The name sounds very much like the name of a computer program written in good ol' school leet speak. Considering the development of leet speak in the early 1980s and FR3-d1 was made in the late 1980s, it is very likely. (DPHW codes could also be leet speak, however, I do not see it)
But what if it isn’t an acronym at all? What if it ties instead into the series’ central themes of alchemy and chemistry?
At first, I wondered if FR3-d1 could be broken down into chemical elements: F–Re–Dy (fluorine, rhenium, dysprosium). There isn’t a natural or artificial compound containing all three of these elements, though it would technically be possible to create one. (Dysprosium fluoride and rhenium fluoride do exist, though they’re rarely used.)
Looking at the properties of each individual element though, I can see something interesting:
Fluorine is highly reactive and widely applied — for instance, in making electrical insulators and in binding to elements to lower their melting points.
Rhenium is a rare metal often used in high-performance alloys, especially in jet engines.
Dysprosium is another rare element, crucial in electric motors and nuclear control rods.
Put together, these suggest some kind of energy conversion.
Another thing about fluorine. If FR3-d1 really is an acronym drawn from chemistry, why is fluorine listed first? Usually, fluorine comes last. That led me to another possibility: refrigeration. Fluor is a very common element in refrigerants. And would you look at that? These coolants are classified by a R-number system. In this system, the “R” must be followed by at least two digits to specify a compound, so “R3” doesn’t name an exact molecule/coolant. But it could still point to the R3xx series of refrigerants, which includes fluorobutane-based refrigerants, with “d” indicating it as an isoform.
This all would make FR3-d1 literally something designed to convert and then preserve something...
And then there’s Colin. Why did FR3-d1 take him? Colin is the ICT guy, familiar with C languages, which presumably is needed to work with FR3-d1, considering it runs on Windows NT 4, which is built with those languages. A lot of C's, and C makes me think of the C element, carbon. Carbon can bond to all three elements individually and create stable, usable compounds. Or perhaps it’s simpler and more symbolic: all life on earth is carbon-based.
(And perhaps, when looking at the R3xx series and realizing that butane is a 4-chain carbon molecule and FR3-d1 possibly already had 3 life forms (Norris, August, Chester) in it, it just fits that a fourth life form had to be consumed, and with Colin it is finally complete.)
Interestingly, there is one other possible element that could, in theory, be used to make life: silicon. And what element is very much present in computers? Silicon.
Alchemy was thought to grant people eternal life. What if FR3-d1 is a magic-science algorithm that with these statements is learning to convert humans into a digital consciousness? Carbon to silicon... and perhaps silicon to carbon.
TLDR; FR3-d1's name could possibly hint towards it being some kind of conversion and storage system that is made to grant people digitized immortality through alchemy.
