Digital ACT Reading Practice Question #1550

The primary conflict in the passage centers on Elias's: Passage Excerpt (Literary Narrative): Master horologist Elias Vance worked not by the chime of the cathedral bells outside his attic garret, but by the muted, rhythmic click of brass escapement wheels under his loupe. For forty years, his fingers had smoothed the pivots of pocket watches for the city's merchants. Yet this autumn, something had changed. His apprentice, Julian, brought a battery-powered quartz crystal clock into the shop—a silent, plastic cube that kept time with unfeeling, quartz-locked precision. Elias stared at the battery ticking away on the mantel. To him, a mechanical escapement was alive; it possessed friction, wear, and an idiosyncratic heartbeat that reflected its maker's pulse. The quartz block was undeniably accurate, yet to Elias, it felt entirely dead.