For many of us who write in places like Panhistoria and Pan Erotica that are collaberative/roleplay communties - call it what you will - a character whose mantle we assume often becomes more than simply a fictional being. Over the years we become so familiar with that character that it becomes ourself. The avatar and name we've chosen becomes our public representation; we are known, measured, and often influenced by our alter-ego. They are more real than a childhood invisible friend, and yet insubstantial as a daydream.

"Jerry Cornelius" or "Jerry C" or even "Jerry" is not my real name, but I have travelled under it to the extent where it feels like it is. It's no longer anything to do with the selection of the name of my favourite Moorcock character for my new Staff persona at Panhistoria, since my Jerry swiftly took on an identity all of his own. He was always much more outgoing and cheekier than his shy and introspective creator, and maybe sadly, he was also outspoken *chuckles*. But he was for a brief time even popular I believe, and he opened doors for me and grabbed me by the hand and dragged me through winding corridors and dusty attics and soaring ivory towers.

And now I don't know what to do with him.

He was never a character I wrote in fiction, with one brief exception (a role as mad scientist Professor Willi Van de Graaff in the pulp scifi episode of Pan's version of Survivor!), and the purpose for which he was created is no longer valid. Baldly, he is excess to my now-modest requirements, a shadow, a relic no longer needed. I considered terminating his existence, but even as my fingers hovered over the 'delete' button next to his name, I just couldn't go through with it *chuckles*. I've always been sentimental and nostalgic about even my lesser alter-egos, so it's probably unsurprising.

Maybe one day I will have grown away from him enough to sever the umbilical cord, but for the moment, my beloved brat continues to linger in precarious limbo, endlessly chain-smoking his hand-rolled cigarettes and passing wry observations on life, the universe and everything else he's not at all qualified to judge.