Chapter Text
“I have a question for you, Mr. House.”
“In the amount of time it took you to say that,” he says, drily, “you could have just asked.”
Greta shoots him a look like she’s been wounded, but it doesn’t last long. With her, smiles are never in shortage. “It doesn’t make sense to ask questions out of the blue.”
“Yes… and that’s something you’ve never done. But go on.”
Still smiling, she pulls her eyes away from the screen and nods at the sky. “Between the stars in space and the sand on Earth, which one is there more of?”
House’s screen flickers. “Hmm. Interesting.”
The silence that follows is one of the longest Greta’s gotten from House. For close to three minutes there’s nothing but the sound of his tread grinding Mojave dust, the subdued beat of Greta’s boots, and the whisper of a gentle breeze devoid of any trace of Vegas.
Finally, the answer comes. “Stars.”
“Really?” Greta stops and once again directs her gaze skyward. House stops with her. “I guess I can believe it. I see so many of them from here alone. It’s funny to think they’re so big when sand is so...”
She scuffs her boot against the ground, unable to find the word, and the particles scatter in every direction. House shifts back on his wheel, interior whirring as his body recalibrates.
“You’re not an exception there. Most people struggle to interpret the scale of the universe with any meaningful understanding. From your frame of reference, a dozen miles is enough ground covered to call it a day; twelve miles in the context of the universe is, on the other hand, a number so small, so insignificant, it’s hardly a dot. If I were to tell you that, by pre-War estimates, there could be anywhere from two and a half to ten sextillion grains of sand on Earth – two and a half to ten followed by twenty-one zeros – what would you make of it?”
A stunned expression follows this revelation. “You have those numbers on hand?”
“I once considered the question of how many grains of sand were in the Mojave, myself. It was a matter of adjusting the equation.”
“And stars?”
“Ten to two hundred sextillion. Even at a lower estimate, the number of stars in the universe is at least approximately equal to the number of grains of sand on Earth. More realistically, the ratio is likely something to the tune of five to ten stars per grain.”
This time, Greta says nothing, and House’s silence similarly seems manufactured, pressing the significance of the numbers upon her with a weight like gravity pulling sand down to the Earth, or people, or the moon.
Then, after a few moments have passed, he says, “You know, there are potentially more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are even stars.”
Slowly she lowers her eyes again, looking him straight in the screen. She seems more puzzled than amazed this time, and House shifts again, the reaction perhaps unexpected. It doesn’t take long for him to recover, however, to regain his stillness; and Greta, blinking once, then twice, breaks into a smile that seems almost sheepish.
“That’s well and good, Mr. House, but… what’s an atom?”