I'll preface this by saying that I know nothing about cars, but am fairly knowledgable of electrical systems.
So I installed a new radio in my car and stupidly shorted together the illumination lines (2 repair manuals later, I finally found out how to install it correctly). The problem I now have is that the lines that control illumination to my car (dashboard, clock, heater controls, etc) appear to be permanently shorted (as evident by a multimeter). So nothing lights up when I drive in the dark (it's not a fuse problem). I've taken the car apart and unplugged anything hooked up to these lines and haven't found the source of the short. The only item I haven't checked out is the box behind the center of the front dash (to right of gas pedal). My 2 questions are:

1) Any body got any clue whats going on in this box / what it for? Its not in any of my repair manuals.

2) Has anyone done anything like this to their car before?

Did you ever find a solution