I am a DC Comics fan through and through. Batman is my favorite serial, and Bane is my all-time favorite character. Christopher Nolan is a highly talented director. I particularly enjoy The Dark Knight Rises. It was this passion for the film that led me to buy a copy of it, even after I had seen it more than three times while it was in theaters. I'm not a rich man, so I decided to look for cheap, used copies on Amazon.
To my surprise, I found one almost instantly. It was only a single cent. I looked at the listing.
Condition: Great
Ships from [...] THIS IS NOLAN'S ORIGINAL VISION FOR THE FILM. ARRIVES IN 5-7 business days.
It was a bargain. And I was interested to see what Nolan's "original vision" of the film was. I quickly purchased it without a second thought. Sure enough, only six days later it arrived. In horrible condition. I knew it was too good to be true. The box was covered in white paint. It took a few good tries to pull the box open. I placed it on the counter in my kitchen and decided to email the person I bought it off.
I couldn't, because the account had been deleted. It was only a cent, so a refund was out of the question. Whatever, I love this movie anyway, I'll watch it. I put it in the CD player, turned on my TV, all that. I was greeted by a black screen with only the word start. I pressed OK on the remote, and it froze for about a minute.
What was weird is that it started at the Uzbekistan Plane Crash scene. When it came time for CIA to take off Bane's hood, the screen heavily distorted and several frames were skipped. The scene returned to normal and CIA spoke.
"You're a big guy."
"For you.", Bane replied.
CIA's voice seemed like it was multiple people speaking at once. The voices of young girls. What happened next will stick with me for the rest of my life. The screen faded into an image of a girl in black and white, with a pair of coordinates tattooed on her forehead. It made me sick to my stomach. I opened my phone to take a photo. My phone opened up to the webpage where FBI tips are filed. I closed it almost instantly and took the photo. I reversed image searched it, and several articles came up. Reading through them all, it became apparent. Parents of these children received letters from a man who identifies as the "Big Guy", who claims to be connected to several cults in Eastern Europe. He reportedly claimed in each letter, that the children were "gone" and that he implored them to try to stop him, as he considered himself uncatchable.
The movie turned off right then and there. I thought about the box it came in, and the paint. I scraped it off with a pencil, and found a piece of paper under it. What I saw were a series of numbers. I'm going to listen them in the hopes that someone will understand it.
41.791390, 66.196380
-2.238841, 119.918115
51.649041, 32.900870
And finally, what looked like morse code at the bottom.
.. / .- -- / .. -. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / .... --- ..- ... . .-.-.-