Ever since we took those first steps out of
the primordial soup, mankind has long since looked to the night sky and dreamed of setting
out among the stars. Space is, as it has been said, the final frontier;
that vast, inky void that, for all its perils, still holds a sense of wonder and calls us
to venture out and explore the cosmos. The earliest missions of the Space Race during
the fifties and sixties showed the people of Earth that, while it wasn’t easy, the
dream of achieving space travel was possible. And that dream, the willingness to chase it,
is all you really need to get there. Well, that, plus a couple of friends and a
Volkswagen microbus. For William, that dream of traveling away
from Earth and up to the starry skies was inescapable. At twenty-one, he was a guy like many others
growing up in the fifties. His friends and family all thought of him
as a bit of a beatnik, who was in deep with a lot of hip counter-culture types. William had even dabbled in a few alternative
religious groups as well, most notably practices like the action of Transcendental Meditation,
as well as the teachings of Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual leader who claimed to be
God in human form. In other words, William would have been a
full-blown hippy in the sixties, if he’d only lived long enough to see them. Even now, the idea of taking a summer road
trip with a small group of close friends isn’t unheard of. And that’s almost exactly what William had
in mind during the summer of 1958, but with a few key differences. For one, this was set to be a one-way road
trip, with zero plans for a return journey. And why? You guessed it: It was because William and
his pals wanted to go to outer space. More specifically, they wanted to drive to
space, to leave the world behind and cruise all the way out into the shining lights of
the solar system. In March, William bought a brand-new microbus,
a Volkswagen Type 2 Samba-Bus after pooling money for a down payment with his three friends,
Jerry, Sam, and Susan. Ask anyone nowadays to picture an old-school
minivan, and they’d probably end up describing the exact same type of bus. What had spurred them to buy a bus in the
hopes of traveling off-world in it? Well, the three had recently been excommunicated
from the Fifth Church, a highly secretive new age religion. Members of the Church, or “Fifthists”,
are all about conformity and control - you may remember these eccentric folks from our
video on SCP-3512 - The More You Know - but William’s intention of traveling to space
seemed to conflict with the Fifth Church’s beliefs, most likely on account of his free
spirit defying a group whose two main hobbies were obsessing over patterns and mind control. The young man believed there was magic up
there among the stars, and refused to work a boring nine to five waiting for that magic
to come down to Earth. So, with the help of Jerry, he began to work
on modifying the bus. Heaven was up there, and according to William,
it was waiting for its angels. It took about two months, but Jerry came through. The engine compartment and cabin of the microbus
were now air-tight, with the section near the rear doors transformed into an airlock. The windows were replaced with shatterproof
acrylic, the outer surface treated to withstand any space debris. The gas tank had been replaced with technology
decades ahead of its time, but the steering wheel, gear shift, hand brake, and pedals
all functioned exactly the same. One look at the outer panels of the microbus
would have told you what it was, and where it was heading. The word “Starmobile” was spray-painted
on one side and on the other “Alpha Centauri or bust”. The fourth of July rolled around and their
Starmobile took flight. William, keeping a diary of their journey,
referred to himself and his friends as the only four people in the universe who were
truly free. Careening upwards at eighty-two miles per
hour, without any police to stop them, no longer restricted by mundane life on Earth,
the group traveled higher in their microbus. Their plan was to travel straight to Alpha
Centauri, the closest star and planetary system to our own solar system. Thinking their journey would only last a few
short weeks, William and his friends waved farewell to Earth. The bus had everything on board that these
intergalactic travelers could possibly need, from bedrolls and pillows to sleep on, to
enough dehydrated food to feed the four of them for three whole months in space. There was even room aboard the microbus for
Susan’s cat Milly, as well as all the comforts of home. William and his friends packed bongos, a guitar
and countless books. But this road trip wasn’t just an aimless
joyride out into the cosmos. The intrepid group had enough supplies with
them, and enough ambition, to set up the first off-world human colony. They’d packed a seed bank, containing hundreds,
if not thousands, of varying seeds from a number of common domestic plants from Earth. On top of that, there were even frozen egg
cells of domestic animals like cats and dogs and livestock such as cows and pigs. These embryos were all ready to be unfrozen
and allowed to grow once the gang reached their destination. However, it didn’t take long for problems
to start arising. For one, the group quickly ran out of libations
within the first five days of leaving Earth. Spirits were naturally dampened by the absence
of spirits, but William tried to remain optimistic, hoping to grow barley and concoct some homemade
brew once they arrived at Alpha Centauri. But, while the lack of ale and lager was an
inconvenience, there was worse on the horizon. During a group sing-along, something collided
with the Starmobile. Naturally, all aboard were rattled, and it
was Jerry who stepped up to calm everyone, stating it was likely just space dust or debris. He opted to take a look outside and see if
there had been any damage to the microbus. Donning a homemade space suit, Jerry left
via the airlock at the rear of the bus and examined, finding that no significant harm
had been done. But as he was about to make his way back inside,
something struck the Starmobile again. The force of it caused Jerry to lose his grip,
sending him drifting out into space. William was the only one at the wheel of the
bus but had never learned to drive. Eventually, he was able to turn the Samba-Bus
around, but it was too late. Jerry was dead, adrift in the cold vacuum. The loss overwhelmed the group but hit Susan
worst of all. She and Jerry had wanted to get married the
moment that they arrived at Alpha Centauri. William had even obtained a minister’s license
so he could officiate his friends’ wedding that would now never happen. Three days later, Sam and William awoke to
find Susan dead on the floor of the bus. The grief and sorrow had gotten too much for
her. According to William’s diary, she died of
a broken heart. Drawing up his guitar and strumming Amazing
Grace for his second dead friend, William watched as Sam let Susan’s body drift out
of the airlock. He wrote in his journal that he hoped she
would find Jerry out there in space, at least they would be together. By now, it had been well over fifty days since
the Starmobile had left the safe confines of Planet Earth. The group had suffered two tragic, heartbreaking
casualties already, one by accident and one as a result of the first. And yet, William and Sam, the survivors, were
still traveling ever deeper into the dark void above, plotting their course to Alpha
Centauri as best they could with the hand-drawn star charts that they had brought with them. So far, their journey into space had begun
with promise and optimism and was now fraught with dangers and obstacles. And these were far from over. Slowly, William began to realize that it was
taking much longer to reach their destination than he and Jerry had first anticipated. Alpha Centauri is roughly four and a half
light-years from Earth, bear in mind that a single light-year is equivalent to roughly
six trillion miles. William was unsure if the microbus had been
traveling in the wrong direction, or if it had even managed to miss the terminus of the
journey. The charts Jerry had drawn were of little
help, he had been the expert, the one who planned the trip and modified the Volkswagen
Type 2 Samba-Bus for space travel. William was out of his depth, hurtling through
the galaxy with little help from his passenger. To make matters worse, both William and Sam
had started feeling unwell. Not just travel sick, as you might expect
after spending a long ride in a microbus trundling through space. Their illness wasn’t even caused by being
trapped in the cramped space for such a long duration of time. Blotches had begun to appear all over their
skin, and Sam had been having trouble eating. At random, even a tooth spontaneously fell
out of his mouth. These aren’t symptoms typical of space travel
though. Due to a severe lack of Vitamin C in the food
they had packed, the pair of them had developed scurvy. Just as it seemed like the trip to Alpha Centauri
couldn’t have been a bigger disaster, William awoke to see something out of the microbus
window. Something he had probably seen hundreds of
times in his lifetime, but seeing it now filled him with dread. It was the Moon, as in Earth’s Moon. They were barely close to Alpha Centauri. Quickly realizing that they would never reach
their destination on their current course due to their grievous errors in calculation,
William did the only thing he could. He closed the curtains so that Sam couldn’t
see how big of a mistake they had made. Eventually, Milly crawled behind the sofa
and died. Meanwhile, Sam stopped being able to keep
his food down. Towards the end, he could barely so much as
see or even sit. Every time he asked his friend if they had
arrived yet, William would tell him that they would be there tomorrow. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Sam the
truth. Finally, Sam asked William to read to him,
a poem by Dylan Thomas called And Death Shall Have No Dominion. He was dead before William finished reading. Saddened and filled with remorse, William
pushed the last of his friends out of the airlock, realizing that no one would be left
to push him out when he eventually died. The final thought he recorded in his diary
came after another two whole months spent isolated and alone in space before William’s
death. The last thing he wrote was that the stars
looked so beautiful against the dark backdrop of the universe. In spite of the tragedy of his situation,
so few others - especially from his time - would ever truly see them like this. Today, the bus is still drifting quietly through
space. Now known as SCP-1958, it rests in orbit of
Mars, the withered remains of its driver still sitting at the wheel. William and his friends never made it to Alpha
Centauri, in fact, it would have taken them almost forty million years to reach it. They never saw their dream come to the ending
that they had planned. Instead, William, Jerry, Sam, Susan, and Milly
the cat all died among the stars, driving their magic bus, their Starmobile out into
the unknown. For them, space, that final frontier, had
a lot more finality to it. Now go check out “How NOT to Kill an SCP
- SCP-1609 - Remains of a Chair” and “SCP-701 - The Hanged King's Tragedy” for more anomalies
that veer into the tragic!
