Mickey7

Mickey Barnes is the protagonist of Mickey7. He was born on the planet Midgard, and his mother passed away when he was eight years old. Mickey struggled to find meaning in his life on Midgard as he went through the education system. As he recalls, “I wasn’t a scientist. I wasn’t an engineer…I was…the sort of person who in an earlier age would have been a low-level academic of some sort. I would have read obscure books that I found in obscure archives, and written obscure papers that nobody would ever have read” (25). Both Midgard and the greater Union value STEM pursuits, while Mickey finds history more engaging, establishing him early on as an outsider in general society. Mickey’s attitude toward history, in which even he describes everything as “obscure,” illustrates the depth of his society’s disdain toward his chosen interest. This disdain led Mickey to become bored, and as he notes in a moment of self-awareness, “Like bored young men throughout history, I spent an unfortunate amount of my time finding ways to get myself into trouble” (25). The trouble Mickey found himself in was debt, debt that led to him becoming an Expendable.