Nope, I did not buy it from you.
Yes, I shorted the pcb and had the recovery files on the usb.
(To be clear, I am not demanding help or anything. Just hopeful that there will be a resolution besides returning it to this reseller, who probably does not have another unit, and waiting longer to get one elsewhere. It seems to me that a recovery module should always be functional in this type of device, but I have no idea how exactly this one works or if there is non-corruptible recovery memory used for reflashing, etc. I'm thinking no, though, since I've never made it to an android screen).