The Pearl is a monitoring station that has monitors with live feed from other stations. It was first discovered by Nikki and Paulo. They did not open the hatch and go inside, nor did they tell anyone about their discovery. Later, Paulo comes back, and goes inside the station to hide the diamonds which were inside a Matryoshka doll inside the toilet tank. While he was there, Ben and Juliet came inside. They were looking at one of the monitors which had a live feed of the Swan. Later, Mr. Eko and Locke discover the station, which was underneath the drug smugglers plane. On the
ground around the entrance is a large question mark. The ? on the blast door map is likely the location of the Pearl. They go inside and find an orientation video. According to the video, Dr. Mark Wickmand, who is probably the same person as Dr. Marvin Candle in the Swan Orientation Video says that the people working in the Pearl must monitor and record what people do in other stations, and that those people believe they are doing something important, but really it is just a test, and they are doing nothing important. This makes Locke believe that typing the numbers is meaningless. When the notebooks are full, they place it in a capsule, and place it in a pneumatic tube, which leads to them. Later, it is discovered that the capsules end up in a pile and have not been collected. This could mean that the scientists in the Pearl are the ones who are the subjects of a psychology experiment, and not the people in the other stations. Later, Locke and Mr. Eko come back to the station, along with Desmond, Sayid, Nikki, and Paulo. Sayid fiddles with the electronics, and then on one of the monitors, a man with an eyepatch, who is later discovered to be Mikhail appears. Outside, Mr. Eko sees his brother, Yemi, just before the Smoke Monster killed him.

Questions:

• Why does Dr. Marvin Candle go by the name of Dr. Mark Wickmand in the video?
• Why didn't Mikhail ever disconnect the camera?
• Why didn't anyone ever collect the notebooks?
• How did Charlie get a Pearl notebook?