My short story “Recognition, Memory” came out December 8th in the Jan/Feb 2026 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact!1 The online version is available now via the single issue or subscription. 
It’s a near-future science fiction story about brain printing, the technological quest for immortality, and how our pasts constrain our present through all the fractious mechanisms we call “memory.”
He ran one thumb against another, tracing a scar he didn’t recognize. Yet he knew how he got it. No memory rose to the surface of his mind, but when he cast a line into those dark waters, he knew he’d been making dinner for Alice, long before he proposed. The knife slipped, a beginner’s mistake; blood in the salad, her hands on his with only a bandage in between.
Those memories were his, somehow. They could belong to nobody else.
This story draws directly from the real cognitive science of human memory. Our memories usually feel like a single thing, a past laid out behind us for us to chart our path. But under the hood, memory is a jigsaw, our past informing our present through parts and pieces that often prove separable – including recognition memory.
This is the story from my successful negotiations with Must Read Publishing, I’m thrilled to be able to share it with you all!