I'm with you on that. There are efforts underway to get plain-old Linux running, but it's some time away as this chip only went into mainline as of kernel 6.0
Wow sorry to hear that. If you can, check if the device is still available over ADB. If it is, try re-running the script.
Not sure what happened in your case, I flashed many ROMs and ran the script against them to see if anything bad would happen. No issues.
In any case it won't be a Hard Brick. Power off, hold [volume-up] insert power jack and tap the [power] button 10 times. (I think. I lost my remote ages ago and can't check.)
No big loss though, it hasn't been used in years.