# The Case of the Perfect Delivery

Strip: The Perfect Delivery
Meta: 6 panels · 3 across × 2 down · LEAD: CONNIE CHASE · row 1 is a six-week progression

<b>Lead: Connie Chase.</b> Present day. Row 1 is a <b>progression</b> across six weeks — week 1, week 4, week 6 — labeled in the corner of each panel so the reader is never guessing. Not a flashback: there is no double frame and no sepia anywhere on this page.

Case notes at <a href="case-notes-perfect-delivery.md">case-notes-perfect-delivery.md</a>; radio script at <a href="radio-perfect-delivery.html">radio-perfect-delivery.html</a>.

> **This is the source.** The build is `comic-perfect-delivery.html`, generated from this file
> by `rake comedy:build`. Write here; the build is disposable and gets overwritten.
>
> Format: `##` opens a row · `**PANEL n · tone**` opens a panel · `>` is a
> balloon, one per line · `!` is the art note · `` `backticks` `` are
> on-screen text · everything else is a caption. They render in the order
> written, and captions number themselves (CAP 1/2, CAP 2/2). Blank line
> between blocks; a caption or balloon may wrap onto unmarked lines.
>
> Tones: `noir` `arena` `turn` `product`, plus `flashback` and `wide`. A tone
> carries forward, so write it only where it changes; the first panel must state
> one. Modifiers never carry: `wide` describes one frame, not a run.
> `Layout: widerow` under a row heading merges it to one frame, whose beats are
> then `### BEAT n` blocks each holding their own captions.

---

## Row 1 — the case (full noir · progression)

**PANEL 1 · noir**

Tag: WEEK 1

Sixty interest cards, sixty handwritings. The clinic hands them out on paper because that's what the IRB approved, and amending study materials takes longer than the study.

**PANEL 2 · noir**

Tag: WEEK 4

Every night a nudge went out. Every night the log was as quiet as a mouse gnawing a slice of cheddar with a Siamese on the other side of the wall.

**PANEL 3 · noir**

Tag: WEEK 6

Week six, we stopped nudging and asked a question.

Gotta be careful though. Ask too many questions and people disappear. Ask too few and you don't know when the needle moves, if it moves at all.

## Row 2 — the break

**PANEL 4 · turn**

`⚠&nbsp;&nbsp;031 — NO REPLY TO CHECK-IN · 3 DAYS`

No reply from participant number thirty-one.<br><br>Every message delivered right on time. But we ask one lousy question, and she pleads the fifth?

Then I saw it, like when you finally see your own hat on the coat rack: I'd swapped two of the digits in her phone number.

**PANEL 5 · product** <!-- 5 — CLIMAX -->

Box: CAP 1/2

Six weeks of step-count nudges were delivered to an unknown man two counties over. 

And he never once even thanked us for all the unsolicited tips.

**PANEL 6 · product** <!-- 6 — BUTTON -->

> Mrs. Lane? It's Connie, from the university. I've finally got the right number for you — sorry it took us so long.

Six weeks of her data. Gone with the wind. Fortunately, six weeks remain.<br><br>Nobody writes a paper about the half you saved.