mp_obj_t internal representation doesn't have to be a pointer to object,
it can be anything.

There's also a support for back-conversion in the form of MP_OBJ_UNCAST.
This is kind of optimization/status quo preserver to minimize patching the
existing code and avoid doing potentially expensive MP_OBJ_CAST over and
over. But then one may imagine implementations where MP_OBJ_UNCAST is very
expensive. But such implementations are unlikely interesting in practice.