Rock and a hard place

I have an OPM RPG program. It's a maintenance utility for an application.

I left it in OPM RPG, rather than converting it to ILE, because at the time, there was no advantage in converting it.

Now, I'm adding some new capabilities to it. Involving Data Areas with names longer than 6 characters.

But when I convert it to ILE, I find that it uses the FREE statement to deactivate a called MI program. And there's no FREE in ILE. (no "/free" jokes, please!)

On the one hand, I'd rather not rename the new data areas to something that will work in an OPM RPG NAMEVAR DEFN statement. (Although nothing has reached the shippable stage yet.)

On the other hand, it is absolutely imperative that the called MI program be completely shut down between calls from this utility, as with the OPM RPG FREE statement. (It must, however, remain active between calls when called from elsewhere.)

And on the third hand (if you're Lt. Arex*), I'd rather not re-implement the whole damned thing in a completely different language.

And on the fourth hand (if you're Amarie, the four-handed pianist of Qualor II**) I also need to be able to create data areas on-the-fly.

Can anybody suggest anything (other than an abrupt retirement from this crazy business)?

--
JHHL

* Star Trek Animated
** ST:TNG, "Unification, Part II"