On the day of the ceremony marking the transition from the A.D. to the Universal Century calendar, the space station Laplace, official residence of the Earth Federation prime minister, is destroyed by a terrorist bombing. One of the terrorists, a young man named Syam Vist, is caught in the explosion but barely manages to survive. He obtains a forbidden box that will come to be known as Laplace's Box.

Almost a century later, in Universal Century 0096...
we can look back on the
antiquated nation-state system
يمكننا أن نعيد النظر في نظام الدولة
.القوميّة العتيق ونرى المشاكل التي صاحبته
Wir können aus den ehemaligen Fehlern
des Nationalismus lernen.
podemos mirar al anticuado sistema
de nación-Estado y ver sus problemas.
podemos mirar al anticuado sistema
de nación-Estado y ver sus problemas.
Les carences
des anciens systèmes politiques
possiamo indicare criticamente
podemos olhar para
o retrógrado sistema anterior