It was the summer of 2021, only a couple months before the deadline. The journey for the prize had met him with mockery, time after time after time. The left said he’d never get the prize, let alone deserve it. The right called him a “dumbass,” which he had once used to describe himself in a most unfortunate situation.

Thank God for the vital center. He was ready to put his eyes on the prize for yet another year, hoping it would be the time to show them all. A ride in a private jet, black as the night, soaring him to the epicenter of the new project: Sanity City.

Sanity City, the first truly clean city in America, set up by the brightest minds of Silicon Valley. As the jet dropped into the cleaning pod, he felt the air intensify with cleansing alcohol, frankincense scented. Like the vital center that kept his career afloat, he was blessed with the baptism of the most important testing ground for the future of the world.

Your shots, sir. A shot of the Clean Gene, courtesy of the Immunity Cause Foundation, greeted his arm as a necessity before leaving his jet. From the bubble dome was a series of tubes, interconnecting every road and building so that every speck would only breathe filtered air. He exited the bubble to find his first rare sight: a couple holding hands.

“You can take it off now. You’re sanitized,” the being on the left explained.

He moved his fingers to his ears, pried lightly, and breathed in the air. I forgot what this was like. The lights illuminated every bit of cleaning alcohol in the air, creating an atmosphere of vaporwave across the entire landscape.

The smell. A soothing lavender permeated his senses, while a purple glowing arrow pointed him to the destination, the big scoop: for the first time in forever, he was going to see what he had missed out, something that almost ended his career long ago.

I can’t believe this of all things is gonna give it to me. His eyes gazed up to see a glowing red stripe, underneath it an orange, shuddering him for a second, then relieved by a contrasting yellow, then green like what used to buy things, blue, and finally violet.

I’m stepping on indigo, what’s that doing here? The door opened to a harsh milieu of hues, the color overpowering the very objects he was supposed to cover. An oven was partly visible between the flashes, the flames rising in an arc.

“One cheese, I have a press pass so I’m covered.”

Oakenwood, I remember your OG site, we’re glad you returned.

“I can’t believe there was a time you’d have to pay JUST to see it on a screen.”

A small figure walked out from the fire, plain features.

Finally.

“But first, LIGHTS!”

A series of strobe lights burst into a rectangle, branching out into two hoops, then fading out. The smell of alcohol intensified as rainbow vapor clouded his sights. The lights then flashed a message through his eyes:

THANK FUCK WE’RE NEVER WEARING THIS AGAIN; SANITY AND SANITIZATION HAS TRIUMPHED!

“But…but…what about saving lives?”

“Already saved here, can’t get sick if you kill every germ.”

“But…lives…save…lives…together…apart…”

He had been saving lives so long he forgot what it was like not to save them.

One figure grabbed a smaller being from the flame.

NO MORE LIVES TO SAVE

BUT IF THEY’RE NO LONGER WEARING IT

THEY AREN’T SAVING LIVES

“I’LL SAVE YOU ALL!” With a seemingly holy rage, his egg head bucked the figure that first greeted him into the flames. He walked out unscathed.

K, what’s gotten into you? The fire was exposed as a mere projection, not like he couldn’t figure out from the bodies exiting the “flames.”

“WE HAVE TO SAVE LIVES! WE HAVE SPENT THE LAST YEAR SAVING LIVES! TO NOT SAVE LIVES IS NOT TO BE!”

Everyone here is already saved, what do you mean?

“THAT’S NOT ENOUGH! WE HAVE TO KEEP SAVING! MY LIFE WAS HUMILIATION AFTER HUMILIATION, AND THEN I WAS MET WITH THE SAVING! I CAN’T GO BACK TO NOT SAVIN—“

The strobe lights had gone on during the whole visit, but he was so caught up in the experience that his own body forgot his condition until this moment.

NEW YORK TIMES’ EDITORIAL STAFF OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON THE PULITZER PRIZE

On January 25, 2022, a former writer for the Times was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer prize for his undercover journalism in the Sanity City experiment. Readers may remember the health scandal where civilians were shocked to learn constant inhalation of sanitizing vapors killed the necessary gut microbiota in all its denizens, and Proctor and Gamble’s efforts to develop an over-the-counter regeneration pill, dubbed Align Sane, which the Times has covered in a previous article. Due to this individual’s prior controversies, the Times’ editorial staff would rather not mention them by name, but nevertheless acknowledges that the journey to finally achieve this prize began with this outlet, regardless of what followed after.

The individual’s autopsy also became key to another scandal, wherein Sanity City’s experimental Clean Gene may have had the side effect of immunocompromising the body, as the Times covered here.

Currently, the Sanity City project staff is building a foundation in honor of the deceased individual, with the intent to rebuild accidentally destroyed systems through a traditional but risky experimental method: the injection of transplant immune system cells combined with heavily weakened pathogens, a large departure from the common method of medicine used by most corporations today. The Times will have a report on the results of early trials beginning next month.

Stay safe,

The NYT Editorial Team