Cheater

I had this idea for a scifi novel. The character in it is a Precognitive Slider with limited biological immortality. Its not as awesome as it seems. First, they're a Slider so skip to different paralell worlds, really similar to this one, to the point they have the same friends and the same in jokes, most of the time. Its just there's subtle differences, since the version of them they displaced is also a Slider who slipped into the next version, bumping the next one, ad nauseum. Starting the see a problem? Yeah.

Also, the precognition is not controllable, and not always specific to the universe they happen to be in at the time they get the vision. Its a universe they'll be in when the precognition becomes reality, but that's some distant time in the future. Since they're slightly immortal, possessing a really long life, then the WHEN of an event is even more difficult, so knowing it is even less useful.

Despite this, the character learns enough, sliding around, to take better technology or visions of technology and patent them or buy the right stocks and ends up turning into a millionaire, repeatedly. Cheating, basically. Unfortunately, angry SEC cops that are time travellers are after them for insider trading (TTSEC). Because technically they are. They have inside information, from the future or other universes, which allows them to make unfair trades in stocks and bonds. And they do. They're guilty. So the TTSEC cops chase this person across universes, sliding, time travelling, all Dr. Who-style.

Its the kind of story which could culminate in the hero getting arrested. Then a show trial because its really tacky and 1980's lame, and they'd get a surprise not guilty because they're not US citizens after all so all the evidence is inadmissible but Immigration wants to arrest them and deport them, somehow but SEC won't share its slider tech with INS thanks to a budget grudge. And the hero gets shot outside the courtroom by angry day trader with a zip gun. Or maybe a shiv made from a screwdriver. Something like that. Doesn't die, mind you, but lots of pain and INS arrests them in the hospital. Slider just slides out and gets away to a non-affliliated hospital universe.

I don't think this has been done, exactly. Quantum Leap was about history rather than sliding. And Sliders was about some very different universes caused by history, and used technology to jump. This character will be almost supernatural with their portals. Not even a shimmer. Sometimes brings people with them to strand them in the wrong universe, out of spite or revenge. How'd you like to be stranded in a universe where the prior you is a felon on the lam? Not so much. Doesn't matter that you didn't do it. A you did. You can't prove you aren't them. Missing tattoos or regrown fingers aren't good enough. Just sayin, is all. Then again, they might strand you in a world where you're married to Emiliana Torrini and have two kids and a mansion above Monaco.

Sliding is probably one of those really common things, one of the misdiagnosis causes for Schizophrenia because things don't match up from the prior universe. Just fell through a portal and important things are different. It would be really disconcerting. You'd doubt yourself, try and convince yourself the life you had before was a wrong memory, a falsehood. But if you are your memories, and your memories don't match everyone else because you fell into the universe next door, who are you?