From Lostpedia

"Listening Station" redirects here. For other possible uses, see Listening post.

The tracking station is a small structure operated by two Portuguese-speaking technicians, Mathias and Henrik. It is located in a cold, snowy place; a blizzard is seen outside and mountains are observed nearby. The station is in direct contact with Penelope Widmore.

Contents 1 Description 2 Penny's search 3 Trivia 4 Terminal output 5 Unanswered questions

Description

The apparent purpose of the station is to detect any electromagnetic signatures emanating from the Earth. The technicians missed a prior anomaly. After the discharge occurred, a console in the station displayed the numeric/text:

“

>/ 7418880 Electromagnetic Anomaly Detected

”

In the narrative of the show, the scene in the listening station was the first evidence indicating the world is "still out there". This was also the first time that perspective broke off the Island in real-time.

Though it is not explicitly stated, the appearance of the station and the climate around it strongly suggests that it is in Antarctica.

Penny's search

As a result of detecting the discharge, the Island was made visible to the listening station and they subsequently alerted Penelope Widmore. Naomi told the survivors that Penny hired her company to conduct a search and rescue mission for Desmond and that Penny gave them a set of coordinates in the middle of the ocean (presumably provided by the listening station). Naomi said she never met Penny herself and that the mission was seen by the freighter team as a fool's errand. ("The Brig") However, it is later revealed that the freighter is Charles Widmore's and Naomi and her team were hired by Matthew Abaddon. Minkowski, the ship's communications officer, said that he was ordered not to answer incoming calls from Penny. After Desmond got aboard the freighter, Penny told him that she knew about the Island and had been researching and looking for him for three years.

Trivia

• There is a snippet of sitar music playing at the start of the scene - the song being played is "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass Elliot.
• One of the technicians (Mathias) looks like Jack, but is in fact a different actor. Mathias is played by Len Cordova.
• Their speech is Portuguese from Brazil. Although their accents do not exactly match any Portuguese accent (neither the native nor any colonial one), the sentence construction and some expressions they use are without any doubt Brazilian. The subtitles omitted a few key phrases spoken by the two men.
• In a later Kristin Dos Santos E-Online interview, Jack Bender talked about the choice of Portuguese as a language for the technicians as somewhat arbitrary. Originally, Russian was planned for the script, but they just happened to find two actors that spoke Portuguese.
• There is a Brazilian research station in Antarctica at 62°08'S 58°40'W operating since 1984. Among other activities, the station does research on geomagnetic observations.
• The yellow telephone that is in the station has no buttons (apparently for receiving calls or making a call to one number).
• The number 7418880 is the product of the Numbers (4 x 8 x 15 x 16 x 23 x 42).
• Mikhail claimed he was recruited while working at a listening post in Siberia.
• Leonard Simms and Sam Toomey served together at a listening post monitoring long wave transmission in the Pacific. Sam heard a voice repeating the Numbers. ("Numbers")
• The computer is running a Windows 98 theme.

Terminal output

At the end of "Live Together, Die Alone" we see the following on a computer screen in the station.

“

Delivery Subsystem 550 requested action taken: > Received: by 10.48.24.11 with SMTP id m12mr1134482afg; > Received: by 10.29.34.1 with HTTP > Message-ID: Subject: AUTOMATED TEST > MIME-Version: 1.0 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Content-Disposition: inline > AUTOMATED TEST - 1bbybby 77111790 ++++systems normal++++ 76555#722#0 zzzzzz330 7711345 ++++systems normal++++ QX10022005#311 TEST COMPLETE ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Delivery Subsystem 550 Requested action taken: > Sent: by 10.28.224.18 with SMTP id m11mr1134484mfg; > Sent: to 10.49.31.1 with HTTP

”

This appears to be a report from an email client. The message was sent through an web mail interface (thus HTTP) and delivered through one mail server with SMTP; however the 10. prefix indicates they are part of a private network, as opposed to the Internet. This could suggest that there are other terminals, perhaps at nearby listening stations, or an internet tunnel in being employed for use by the listening station crew. A 550 SMTP message is the normal response returned when a mailbox does not exist on the receiving server.

Unanswered questions

For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: Listening station/Theories

• How did Penelope know to be looking for an electromagnetic anomaly?

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