The Vanishing Futurist

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ON THE NIGHT of 21 January 1919, the Russian inventor, physicist and polymath Nikita Slavkin vanished.

In the months and years that followed, the Soviet press reported that the Socialisation Capsule, Slavkin’s latest invention, represented an extraordinary advance in human knowledge. Slavkin, building on the theories of his hero Einstein, had revolutionised our understanding of the universe. What’s more, his disappearance was proof that his theories had a practical application: he had found a means of subverting time itself. ‘The Vanishing Futurist’, as he was dubbed, became a Soviet icon. Monuments and streets were named after him, biographies written, children’s books, portraits, films. No word has been heard from him since that day. Yet the idea persists, based on Slavkin’s own remarks, that one day he will reappear; that if his Socialisation Capsule can distort our perception of temporal reality, then it can equally reinstate it.

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