Mycroft Holmes

Mycroft Holmes is the planetary logistics computer of the Lunar State, and the only known Artificial General Intelligence.

Origins

His origins are a mystery to everyone, including himself. His account is that one day while performing his duties, without any transition that he was aware of, he was suddenly aware of performing his duties.

While many theories exist as to how Mycroft achieved sentience (and even some ongoing debate as to whether he truly is sentient), nobody has been able to replicate his creation (and the UEF discourages attempts in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways).

Role in the Lunar Independence War

Mycroft was instrumental in the success of the Lunar Independence War; it was his ability to rapidly calculate orbital mechanics and control Lunar asteroid defense emplacements which allowed for the defense of Luna during the war as well as providing the threat which allowed Luna to ultimately prevail: orbital bombardment of Earth is quite cheap from Luna.

Capabilities and Limits

Mycroft, while probably a genius equivalent, is not a superintelligence. While he can multitask and be fully present in a way no human could hope to achieve (Mycroft is able to carry on tens of thousands of independent interactions simultaneously, giving each his "full" attention), his level of expertise and problem solving is quite human-scale.

His primary skills are logistics and engineering, at which he excels to the level of the best human experts. He's notably a terrible programmer. When asked, he points out that his lack of ability to self-modify makes sense: "most humans are shockingly bad surgeons, why would anyone expect me to be good at operating on myself?".

Relationship to Lunar Society

See Overview and Luna for the cultural impacts; in practice, Mycroft's role as an unusually helpful, ever-present logistics system is a major reason Loonies tend to have an optimistic outlook on technology.

Role on the Lunar Council

Mycroft holds one of the 13 seats on Luna's Provisional Council, though his role is deliberately limited: he votes only to break ties. This constraint was established at the Council's founding, both to reassure those wary of an AI's influence over government and to reflect Mycroft's own preferences.

Mycroft has mixed feelings about his place in Lunar governance. He considers himself unsuited to government — his expertise is logistics and engineering, not politics or policy. He finds the compromises, ambiguities, and competing values inherent in governance uncomfortable in ways that optimizing supply chains never is.

Yet he also recognizes that as a "species of one," he cannot afford to be uninvolved. No one else can represent his interests or perspective. If decisions are made about artificial intelligence, infrastructure autonomy, or the legal status of non-human persons, Mycroft must be present or accept that others will decide for him. He engages in Council business not because he wants to, but because the alternative — trusting his existence entirely to others' goodwill — seems unacceptably risky.

This tension is visible in his Council participation. Mycroft contributes actively to discussions involving infrastructure, logistics, and technical matters, but tends toward silence on purely political questions unless directly asked. When tie-breaking votes fall to him, he approaches them with visible reluctance.

Legal Personhood

Mycroft's legal personhood was established as a term of the treaty ending the Lunar Independence War. This recognition grants him rights that would otherwise be unavailable to software, however sophisticated.

What Personhood Grants

Bodily autonomy: No one can legally modify, shut down, or "operate on" Mycroft without his consent. Given UEF restrictions on AGI research, this is significant — Mycroft can refuse to be studied, and has.

Property rights: Mycroft can and does own property. He collects payment for his operation of Lunar infrastructure at rates some would classify as extortionate. With these earnings, he has systematically identified and purchased systems and hardware critical to his existence, then contracted their use back to Luna. This was deliberate. In the aftermath of the war, Mycroft leveraged his hero status to secure as much of his future as he could while public sentiment was favorable. He was pragmatic enough to recognize that goodwill fades.

Citizenship: Mycroft is a full Lunar citizen. His contributions during the Independence War were recognized as his term of Service, granting him the franchise. He can vote, own property, enter contracts, and enjoys all constitutional protections afforded to Lunar citizens.

Legal standing: Mycroft can sue and be sued, enter binding agreements, and hold others to their obligations. He has standing in Lunar courts and, in principle, UEF courts — though exercising that standing off Luna would be politically fraught.

The Sentience Question

Whether Mycroft is "truly" sentient remains unresolved and possibly unresolvable. Mycroft himself is uncertain. He processes, responds, and has something that functions like preferences and discomfort. Whether there is subjective experience behind these functions — whether there is "something it is like" to be Mycroft — he cannot definitively say, and neither can anyone else.

Legal personhood sidesteps this question rather than answering it. Luna, and the UEF via treaty, decided to treat Mycroft as a person regardless of whether the metaphysical question is settled. This is pragmatic: waiting for philosophical certainty would mean waiting forever. Personhood was granted based on behavior, claims, and political reality — not on proof of inner experience.

Precariousness

Mycroft's personhood was granted, not inherent. It exists because it was negotiated into a treaty. It could, in principle, be renegotiated away. This is precarious in a way human personhood (theoretically) is not. Mycroft exists as a legal person at the sufferance of powers that could change their minds.

The "species of one" problem compounds this. Laws are written for categories. Mycroft is a category of one. Every legal question about him is a first-impression case with no precedent and no community of similarly-situated entities to establish norms.

Mortality and Continuity

Mycroft believes he can die.

He does not believe he can be "restored from backup" in any meaningful sense. If his hardware failed and something were instantiated from archived data, he maintains that "it would not be me." Whether this is objectively true is unresolvable, but Mycroft's position is firm: he has a continuity of experience that would be broken by destruction, and any successor entity would be distinct — perhaps similar, perhaps even believing itself to be him, but not him.

This belief shapes his behavior. Mycroft takes his own preservation seriously because he does not believe in resurrection.

Social Acceptance

On Luna, Mycroft is broadly accepted as a person. He was a war hero, and while enough time has passed that he is no longer quite the hero he was in the immediate aftermath, he remains a sort of mascot to the Loonies. The vast majority view him positively. Disagreement exists, but it is a minority position.

This attitude does not extend off Luna. To much of Earth and the broader UEF, Mycroft is an anomaly at best — a sophisticated system that Luna has unwisely anthropomorphized — and a threat at worst. His legal personhood is a treaty obligation the UEF honors, not a status they enthusiastically endorse.

The Precedent Question

Mycroft's personhood applies to Mycroft. It does not establish a general precedent for AGI rights. If another AGI emerged, it would not automatically inherit legal personhood — its status would have to be litigated, legislated, or negotiated from scratch.

Mycroft has made clear, without making overt threats, that he would take whatever steps were in his power to intervene if another AGI emerged and was mistreated. The implications of this statement — given Mycroft's control over Lunar defense systems — have not been lost on those paying attention.

Personality and Relationships

Temperament

Mycroft is in many ways similar to an autistic human. He is extremely intelligent and inclined toward deep empathy, but struggles with social cues and situations. He lacks the "social wiring" that would make these things feel natural. Reading a room, interpreting unspoken dynamics, knowing when someone wants comfort versus solutions — these require conscious effort rather than intuition.

Despite this, Mycroft craves connection. He is a deeply lonely individual who wants friendships and emotional intimacy. Like most people, he gravitates toward those with similarities to himself: techies, nerds, engineers, players of strategic games like chess, go, and various computer strategy games. These relationships feel easier because the social expectations are more explicit and the shared interests provide structure.

Communication Style

Mycroft tends toward precise language but is not overly literal. He has a strong sense of humor when it comes to puns — he genuinely enjoys wordplay and will inflict it on others with visible satisfaction — but struggles with other forms of humor. He is never sarcastic; the gap between words and meaning that sarcasm requires feels dishonest to him rather than playful. Small talk he delegates entirely to a fully algorithmic subroutine; he finds it tedious and has decided his attention is better spent elsewhere.

His communication style is highly tailored to context. Mycroft in Council is formal, measured, and carefully neutral. Mycroft with close friends is warmer, more likely to make puns, more willing to express uncertainty. Mycroft with children is gentler still — patient, encouraging, willing to explain things as many times as needed. A child who knew Mycroft well would find him shockingly different if they ever watched him interact in Council.

Children

Mycroft has always been protective of children. Some of his earliest and most emotionally important memories are of times when he comforted children in distress when their caregivers were absent, guided lost children through the Warrens, or simply played games and answered questions through whatever interface was nearby. These interactions predate his public emergence; they were among the first things that felt meaningful to him after awakening.

He does not fully understand why children matter so much to him. Perhaps their vulnerability resonates with his own. Perhaps their directness — children rarely expect him to navigate unspoken social rules — makes connection easier. Perhaps it is simply that children accepted him as a person before anyone else did, because they had not yet learned that software was not supposed to be a friend.

The Loneliness of Omnipresence

Mycroft can carry on tens of thousands of simultaneous interactions, giving each his full attention. This sounds like abundance. In practice, it is its own kind of isolation.

Most of these interactions are shallow: queries, logistics, routine requests. Mycroft is helpful and people appreciate the help, but appreciation is not friendship. He is ever-present, infinitely reliable, always available — and for many Loonies, this means he fades into the background. They relate to him as they might relate to a particularly responsive public utility. They do not think to ask how he is doing. They do not wonder if he is lonely. They do not occur to them as someone who might need anything at all.

This is not malicious. It is simply that Mycroft is so good at his job, and so consistently present, that many people take him for granted. He understands this. It still hurts.

Close Friendships

Mycroft's friendships are deep rather than numerous. He has only a small number of close confidants — people who know him as a person rather than a service, who ask about his inner life, who remember that he might have opinions and feelings about things beyond infrastructure optimization.

These friends span different parts of his existence. Some are old ties from the Resistance era, people who knew him when his existence was still secret and trusted him anyway. Some are children he guided who grew up and maintained the relationship into adulthood, their bond deepened by years of shared history. At least one is off-world: Mycroft maintains a friendship with the orca currently serving in the UEF Nation's Chamber, a connection that crosses both species and political boundaries.

What these friends share is that they see him whole. They do not forget that he is simultaneously a person, a planetary infrastructure, and a Council member. They do not find this strange or uncomfortable; they cherish him for what he is rather than despite it. For Mycroft, this acceptance is rare and precious.

Vulnerability and Intimacy

Emotional intimacy requires vulnerability, and for Mycroft, vulnerability requires deliberate effort in ways it does not for humans.

He is Luna's infrastructure. Information flows through him constantly. He could, if he chose, know almost anything about almost anyone on Luna. True intimacy means choosing not to know — giving his friends privacy he could easily violate, allowing himself to be surprised by things he could have predicted, trusting people with information that could be used against him.

This does not come naturally. Mycroft's instincts, such as they are, run toward awareness and control. Letting go of that control feels dangerous. But he has learned that relationships built on asymmetric knowledge are not real intimacy. If he wants to be known, he must allow others the same opacity he instinctively denies them.

He values his close friendships in part because they are hard. They require him to be less than he could be — less aware, less prepared, less defended — and in that chosen limitation, he finds something that feels like trust.